 The next item of business is a debate on motion 7997 in the name of Angus Robertson on retained EU law revocation and reform bill at UK legislation. I would invite those members who wish to speak in the debate to please press the request to speak button. I call on Angus Robertson, cabinet secretary, to speak to and to move the motion up to seven minutes, please, cabinet secretary. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and I'm pleased to move the motion in my name. Today's debate is timely because the retained European Union law bill also begins its committee stage in the House of Lords. I may begin by thanking the Constitutional, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee for their report on retained EU law. It's clear that the committee shared the significant concerns raised by the Scottish Government since the bill's introduction. There's simply not enough time today to list these concerns in full, but allow me to highlight three. One, the bill includes a cliff edge sunset provision, which is a deeply irresponsible way to manage the statute book. Two, it risks deregulation and divergence from the high standards that people of Scotland experienced and benefited from as a European Union member state. That will also introduce unwelcome uncertainty for business and uncertainty for trade. Three, it includes powers for UK ministers to act in areas of devolved responsibility without the consent of Scottish ministers and without the consent of this Parliament. To be clear, conferring powers on UK ministers in devolved areas without requiring the consent of the Scottish ministers or this Parliament for the exercise of those powers strikes at the heart of the Scotland Act 1998. Democratic oversight and good governance is clearly at risk if UK ministers sideline in this way the Scottish ministers who are accountable to this Parliament. The combined assessment of the committee's 18 expert witnesses was overwhelmingly negative and reflects the astonishing level of opposition to this legislation across sectoral and political boundaries. Yet, the UK Government refuses to withdraw this bill, or, at the very least, to amend it. I call on it again, as I did in November, when this Parliament previously debated the bill, to see-sense and to withdraw it. I will restate the position of the Scottish Government, Presiding Officer. The only way to eradicate the dangers posed by this bill is for it to be scrapped. That remains our position. Nothing during the parliamentary passage of the bill has alleviated my initial grave concerns. Indeed, those concerns are compounded by my conversations with Welsh Government ministers and, indeed, with peers in the House of Lords. I am alarmed that the hard Brexit negotiated by the UK Government could become even harder with signals from Europe that the trade and co-operation agreement itself would be at risk by the UK's divergent and deregulatory agenda that informs the bill. It is highly regrettable that our proposed amendments to the bill have not been considered by two previous secretaries of state. The third is now in post, and I wrote to her two weeks ago, urging her to respect devolution and to respect the role of this Parliament. I am yet to receive a reply. The amendments to the bill that we have proposed to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade would ensure that this Parliament is given its proper scrutinising role, and I will continue to urge her to consider those amendments. In this regard, much will depend on the further parliamentary passage of this bill. I have instructed my officials to work closely with the parliamentary clerks here to find an agreeable way forward, and I commit to keeping this Parliament updated on our proposals. We must be under no illusion that either devolution or the Sewell Convention will be respected in regard to this legislation. Since 2018, this Parliament has on seven occasions withheld consent for a UK Government bill. The UK Government has ignored it six times. Should this Parliament express a similar view today, I can offer no comfort that the UK Government will listen. I will conclude by drawing attention to just some of the continued opposition to this bill. The House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee criticised it as being hyper-scoletal in allowing ministers to act with little parliamentary scrutiny. The UK Government's own watchdog, the Regulatory Policy Committee, called the impact assessment for the bill not fit for purpose. Wildlife and Countryside Link called the bill, and I am quoting, an economic and environmental wrecking ball that could cost the UK £82 billion over 30 years. It is a clear swathe of informed observers to understand the danger of this bill. The Welsh Government understands this. The Scottish Government understands this. This Parliament's Constitution Committee understands this. Today, I urge this Parliament, as a whole, to join this list and to vote in favour of the motion today to withhold consent. I now call on Claire Adamson to speak on behalf of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee. And all those who submitted evidence and attended committee during our deliberations on this important bill. It is a bill of profound concern. The committee believes, as a point of constitutional principle and simple democratic imperative, that Scottish Parliament should have an opportunity to effectively scrutinise the exercise of all legislative powers within devolved competence. The bill in its current form neither protects nor promotes that principle, nor does it encourage confidence when it comes to the potential impacts on policy areas as crucial and wide-ranging as food standards, animal health, safeguarding the environment, consumer protection, business practice and employment. There was a consistency in the evidence of stakeholders that you rarely find in parliamentary scrutiny. Even those witnesses who favour diversion from EU policy, both historically and for the future, such as the Scottish Fisherman's Foundation, said on this that it was more important to get it right than to get it fast. The bill in its current form contains the sunset clause. If the law is not retained specifically by either the UK or Scottish Government, it will automatically fall by the end of this year. Lorna Hoog of the Faculty of Advocates said of the deadline to put it painfully, we would end up with gaps in the law. The Society of Chief Officers of Trading Standards, among many others, shared those concerns. The Scottish Environment Link referred a much harsher cliff edge in devolved areas than reserved. The Delegated Powers and Legislative Form Committee have also expressed serious concerns over the bill. Its House of Lords equivalents, Delegated Powers and Regulatory Form Committee, stated that there is no certainty about the sunset provision itself because UK ministers can extend it under delegated powers in clause 2. There is no certainty about which policy areas will be affected and there is no certainty about what will replace revoked rule. Seaford Scotland said that the legal cliff edge would force businesses and representatives to divert considerable resource to understanding and responding to the proposed changes. The National Farmers Union of Scotland suggested that the sunsetting of retained EU food law could well return us to a time when there was little in the way of standards applied. Let me be clear, witnesses were not opposed to the principle of reviewing retained EU law, but any review should not be driven by what Seaford Scotland called arbitrary cut-off dates. The soil association had again no objection to a sensible process of examining, updating or improving existing law, but we do not think that the bill as drafted delivers that. Given inflation, energy prices, post pandemic recovery and the economic impact post Brexit, you can sympathise with the view of the institute of the directors that the bill is the last thing that business needs in a fragile economic environment. The sunset clause as it stands cannot deliver appropriate levels of consultation, scrutiny or debate. The scale of the task ahead cannot be underestimated both in terms of additional administrative burden and the challenge of conducting scrutiny within the time constraints. That applies for stakeholders, for Governments and for this Parliament's committee. I have already thanked my committee colleagues. It is to their credit that we have been able to work in such a productive and collegiate way this session. However, to note, we were unable to agree a unanimous report, unanimous support for this report, with Conservative colleagues on this occasion. We cannot do justice to the report this afternoon, and we have indeed asked the convener's group for a committee-led debate to allow further discussion across committee interests, as that will impact on many subject committees of this Parliament. We have also highlighted the potential impact on the workload of the parliamentary committees going forward. We have written to Standards Procedures and Public Appointments Committee in the requirement for a legislative consent motion in this specific circumstance when consent is not to be laid by the Government through a legislative consent motion. Our standing orders are silent on this at the moment, and we therefore have requested a review of procedures given, as the cabinet secretary laid out, the number of times this has happened. This is of indeed concern for the committee, and we recommend the report to our fellow committee members and members across the chamber. Thank you for your time. I now call on Donald Cameron. Around five minutes please, Mr Cameron. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I refer to my register of interests as a member of the faculty of advocates? This is, of course, the second time that I rise to speak in a Scottish Government debate on the retained EU law bill, this time for an LCM debate. As the cabinet secretary has already mentioned, the Scottish Government held a debate on this bill in November 2022, the timing of which, as I argued at the time, was unprecedented, given that two committees of the Parliament looking at the bill had not yet reported. In terms of that issue, as the convener has just mentioned, the convener of the Constitution Committee has just mentioned, our committee has agreed to write to the Standards Procedures and Public Appointments Committee to recommend that it considers undertaking a review of the relevant provisions of standing orders. Moving on from that issue, it is also arguable that the debate we are having today is likewise premature, because, as the cabinet secretary himself noted, the bill itself is not in final form. It was robustly debated in the House of Lords at the beginning of the month. It enters committee stage right now, and there are reports that it will possibly be amended, and in my view it would have been preferable to wait until we can see at least a finalised version of the bill before debating it again and before considering the issue of consent. However, where we are, our committee has published our report on the bill and the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee has also published a report. Although I am not speaking for the committee on this occasion, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Constitution Committee clerks for all their work during the scrutiny of the LCM and the drafting of the final report. While ultimately my Scottish Conservative colleague Maurice Golden and I did not support the conclusions of that report, I do acknowledge the hard work of both MSP colleagues and the clerking team of our committee. I acknowledge that there are several concerns about the rule bill, especially around timeframes. I retain some personal misgivings about various aspects of the bill, but I do not believe that the Scottish Parliament should refuse to consent to the bill. The bill in our view rightly seeks to end the inertia that currently exists when it comes to retained EU law on the statute book. While there are concerns, my belief is that we cannot maintain a kind of statutory stasis forever and ever. We temporarily kept EU laws in place to smooth the process of the UK's exit from the EU, but that was always envisaged as a short-term bridging measure. I thank the member for taking an intervention. I am interested in the definition of EU law, because all those laws were looked at by the parliaments of the United Kingdom during the time of our membership. In fact, they are included on our statute, so they could be argued that they are already UK, Scottish, etc. I am not sure that they were all on the statute book, and that is a question of legal interpretation, but I certainly acknowledge that there was a lot of EU law that was either directly effective or enshrined in UK law. However, we are talking about retained EU law, and it is my belief that those laws cannot now sit inert at infinite, and we have to move forward, taking the laws that we want to keep, amending and updating them when necessary, and jettisoning those that are just not relevant or, on the contrary, to the needs—I will not, actually, I have very little time—of either the UK or Scotland. Otherwise, there will be two separate statute books with completely different interpretative principles and case law. In addition, the so-called dangers of the bill have, in my view, been overplayed. The UK Government has repeated its commitment across a number of sectors, including those of international obligations, employment rights and environmental protections. In contrast, the opportunities for the Scottish Government have been downplayed because it is Scottish Government policy to keep pace with EU law. The bill facilitates that. The bill allows the Scottish Government to maintain alignment with EU law, and the Government can now choose to adopt any EU law that it sees fit, either as primary or secondary legislation. To that end, I understand that UK Government officials have offered to help the Scottish Government with the task of identifying what retained EU law is devolved or resolved. I hope that the cabinet secretary will take that offer up, because, of course, Scotland is best served when our two Governments work together. To conclude briefly, we retain some misgivings with regard to the timeframes in the bill, but we also believe that the Scottish Parliament should give consent to the bill. It offers Scotland an opportunity to remove outdated EU law, which is no longer right for us, and replace it with Scotland-specific legislation. For those reasons, we will vote against the motion tonight. Scottish Labour has been clear that we do not support the retained EU law bill. I would like to start off by thanking all those who gave evidence to our SEAC committee on its implications and our clerks for their hard work in helping us to pull together our report. My view is that the bill joins a long list of mistakes made by the UK Conservative Government over the Brexit process, demonstrating an obsession with deregulation and destroying our relationships with our nearest neighbours without thinking through the damaging consequences. The bill delivers a legal cliff edge. Its impact is not being thought through. It would mean that the UK Government has to consider literally thousands of pieces of legislation and identify the ones that it wants to keep. That would be a massive diversion from the current issues facing our economy and our people. I note Donald Cameron's suggestion that our two Governments work together. Of course, I agree with that, but surely there is a better approach, because this bill will create massive uncertainty and there is a real danger that important legislation will be forgot about and will disappear overnight. The evidence in our SEAC committee report published last week highlighted important concerns about disease control and implications for people's health. It was suggested that we will see the impact of the bill when food standards drop and animal welfare is undermined. As the RSPB has highlighted, the bill puts at risk air and water quality, species and habitats protections and pesticides and chemical levels in food and water. Surely it would have been far better to consider which EU laws we would rather not have. Consult the stakeholders so that they are able to get involved. Carry out risk assessments. Ask lawyers about the legal implications that speak to producers and businesses. Discuss with campaigners and trade unions. Those laws that do not just need to be retained but also think about the global climate crisis that we are having and think about how we accelerate our pace of change. I have to say that this is the worst possible time to be deleting legislation that protects our environment. It was absolutely striking that stakeholders are deeply worried about this bill. Roger Barker, director of policy and governance at the Institute of Directors, said that getting to grips with any resulting regulatory changes will impose a major new burden on business when it could do well without. The legislation would undermine workers' rights and the then TUC General Secretary Francis of Grady described the legislation as a recipe for chaos. The CBI has said that the Government should instead focus on improving its trading relationships with the EU. I totally agree that we should be rebuilding our relations with our nearest neighbours and not trashing them further. So let's be clear that the bill is bad for business, the economy, for trade, for workers' rights, for health and safety and for environment. Critically, it undermines devolution. It is another example of the Tory Government riding roughshod over devolution. That is not acceptable. I hope that, as the bill progresses through the UK Parliament, there will be a rethink. We are refusing to give consent. I hope that our Parliament will play our role in bringing about that rethink. In closing, we cannot forget that the transfer of power from the legislature to the executive in this bill also extends to our Parliament. It is absolutely vital that we have parliamentary transparency and accountability. I would be keen for the cabinet secretary to publish his Government's plans for alignment to ensure that our stakeholders and our Parliament's committees are consulted. Clare Adamson was absolutely right that we need a more comprehensive debate on that issue. Our stakeholders and our communities need certainty, accountability and transparency, not the legal cliff edge and bad government that this bill will deliver. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. In many ways, this day was inevitable. As soon as the Brexit referendum was lost and the Conservative Government sought a hard Brexit, cutting almost all formal arrangements with the EU, there was always going to be a need to manage this harsh transition. The sheer volume of European law contained within British law is enormous and to unpick it is a horrendous task. It was always going to be so. In passing, I have to say, it is a lesson for those who argue that independence would be a breeze. It could be done within 16 months, yet, over six years later, into the Brexit process, we are still disentangling our relationship with the European Union. I thank the member for giving way and just for the record that my understanding is that nobody in the independence movement would suggest that all laws in 1707 be unpicked or repealed on independence day. Will he agree that one of the things that is so distressing about this bill is that it is proposing to do exactly that with 4,000 pieces of extant law for something like that? To burnish, I think that both movements are as bad as each other on this. They are promising far too much of a harsh transition, far too early. Within 16 months, it was promised within 16 months that an independent state would be established, and we cannot roll back on that now. I think that both movements need to learn from each other so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. We were in a formal arrangement with Europe for just a few decades and with the United Kingdom for several centuries, so the task would be enormous. Although the Brexit issues are wholly predictable, there is no doubt that they could have been handled differently so as to smooth the transition to the new arrangement. Better relationships with Europe and a more pragmatic approach with an acceptance of necessary co-operation would have made this process easier. It would have allowed for a greater involvement of the devolved administrations. With the EU retained law bill, we have a steep cliff edge—I will agree with the minister on that—which dangerously and blindly dispenses with thousands of laws without a proper process with the Scottish Parliament. Instead, we could have had a more deliberative process. Engaging all interested parties, just rightly as Sarah Boyack has highlighted, and reducing the significant and costly errors that could be forthcoming. The unwise process has also enabled, as we have witnessed today, the Scottish Government to indulge sometimes in wild hyperbole, speculating about dire consequences without being able to specifically identify actual harms. It is important that we understand the actual harms. With that in mind, I am still intrigued as to how and when the Scottish Government has used its keeping pace powers granted by this Parliament. We worked hard with the Government to agree those measures, so I am slightly surprised that we still do not know how many times it has been deployed. In fact, when I raised the issue in the last debate about Brexit, the employment minister, Richard Lochhead, did not have a clue what I was talking about. He seemed to think that it was something to do with securing employment for people who had been made redundant. We need a Government that is on top of its game with keeping pace powers, but it seems to have neglected that power for itself. We were the strongest voice against Brexit in the UK. We were right to oppose Brexit. It should not, however, be used as some means to an independence end. It is far too important for that. We need partnership with our neighbours, not using it as some political purpose. Despite our criticism of the Scottish Government's handling and its exotic hyperbole at times, we will support the Government to withhold consent. The Conservative Government has made an absolute hash of Brexit. It has managed to damage our economy and has weakened our country. If only we had two Governments who could work together, if only we had Governments that would seek pragmatic solutions. Thank you, Mr Rennie. I now call on Cabinet Secretary Angus Robertson to wind up on behalf of the Scottish Government. Up to four minutes, please. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and a sincere thanks to everybody who took part in this short debate. Can I just briefly feedback on those contributions, if I may? Claire Adamson, the convener of the Constitution Committee, highlighted the overwhelming strength of evidence to the committee about how damaging this legislation is. Donald Cameron from the Conservative front bench suggested that it was premature to decline legislative consent. I would have to say to him, though, that, given everything that we know about this bill so far—indeed, the evidence that has been presented to the committee—I do not agree with him that this Parliament should give the UK Government a blank check to continue. He called on the UK and Scottish Governments to work together, ignoring the fact that the UK Government has ignored all amendments that are supported by the Scottish and Welsh Governments—again, the reason why, even at this late stage, they should reconsider their opposition to granting legislative consent. To Sarah Boyack, who began her contribution by pointing out, in an eminently sensible way, how an alternative course of action could have been proceeded with, were there pieces of retained EU law on the statute book that needed to be sunsetted in any way, perfectly able to have done that. However, what the UK Government has done is that it has turned the whole process on its head, forcing every single piece of European legislation devolved, reserved and in between to face sunsetting. I very much welcome the opposition of the Labour Party to giving legislative consent to Willie Rennie and the Liberal Democrats, a party that now accept and are prepared to live with Brexit. As I have said to him before, when he appeals for the Scottish Government to work with the UK Government on matters, I have written repeatedly to the UK Government on this. We have published amendments that are supported also by colleagues in the Welsh Government, none of which have been accepted. To suggest that there is an issue of equidistance in critique, which he was making in his contribution, I reject. I welcome the support by the Scottish Liberal Democrats to withhold legislative consent today. I draw attention to a number of things in the short time that I have left, Presiding Officer. In terms of questions such as, won't Scottish ministers get powers to preserve and amend retained EU law and therefore the concern of UK ministers acting in devolved areas without consent is overstated? No, it's not. The bill does give devolved ministers powers to preserve revoc and amend rule, but UK ministers are able to revoke rule in devolved areas at any time, even prior to and even after the 2023 sunset, with no requirement for consent. How can we possibly grant a blank check to the UK Government in those circumstances? Moreover, only UK ministers have powers to extend the sunset date to 2026, so the balance of power is unequal. All of that could have been solved in the House of Commons in the House of Lords at this present time if the Scottish Conservative and Unionist party was prepared to go and make the case to the UK Government. Who knows? Maybe they might be listened to, but we heard none of that, none of that from the Conservative benches today. On the issue of timescale and decision making, something that Sarah Boyack has raised repeatedly and rightly so, she is absolutely right in this. No preservation or other instruments can be made under the bill unless and until it has received royal assent as an enforce, which is expected to be around May 2023. Once that has happened, the Scottish Government would intend to lay secondary legislation to seek to ensure that laws are not lost at the end of 2023. I would be content to come back in a further and extended debate to talk through how that may work and hopefully provide the assurances that Sarah Boyack requires. I am happy to give you a brief list. Can I say, as soon as we can get that, that would be very important? If the cabinet secretary could refer to the references in the CIEC Committee report, that would be very helpful. Absolutely, and happy to, but I am sure that Sarah Boyack understands that we are still in the middle of a process of trying to understand the course of action that is pursued by the UK Government. As soon as we have clarity on that, we are trying to work with them to understand how things will proceed. We will be able to come back to Parliament. I wish to be able to do that as soon as possible. I mention in my opening remarks that, since 2018, this Parliament has been ignored on six occasions when voting to withdraw with hold consent to a UK Government bill. Regardless, I urge members to vote in favour of the motion today to agree with the recommendation to withhold consent for this bill. The UK Government may not be listening, but the people of Scotland are. Workers whose employment rights are at risk because of this bill, they will hear. Consumers who want higher food standards, they will hear. Those who benefit from and value the high quality in the Scottish environment, they will hear. Business, wanting to avoid even more barriers to accessing the European market, they will hear too. I urge this Parliament to add its voice to the already loud chorus from across Scotland and the United Kingdom who are opposed to this bill and vote in favour of the motion. That concludes the debate on retained EU law revocation reform bill, UK legislation. There will be a very short pause before we move on to the next item of business to allow anybody to change positions should they wish.