Sewel Convention — House of Commons, 2018-06-18
Topic: Agriculture
Alexander Morrison Carmichael (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute to this debate and, indeed, for allowing the debate to happen at all There are a number of issues of some significance relating to our constitution that stand to be examined here. Regrettably, we have managed to avoid most of them thus far in the course of the debate, but I hope to be allowed a few minutes to touch on them. This is not just a debate about the constitution in the abstract. I represent two island communities whose economy overwhelmingly depends on fishing, farming and crofting. These communities will absolutely need to know what the future holds post Brexit. They will need to know what is going to come in place of the common agricultural policy—for agricultural support, in particular. When I met representatives of the National Farmers Union Scotland in Orkney on Friday, these were the questions that they were asking me, and time after time I had to say, "I’m sorry—I do not know because nobody knows." This is not just about the constitution; it is about something that is going to have a very serious and profound effect on the livelihoods of my constituents I want to say a word or two about how we got here. The Government have mishandled this whole aspect of Brexit just about as badly as it is possible to imagine. They have certainly managed it as badly as they have managed the whole of the Brexit process. Amendments were promised at the Dispatch Box and we were told that this House would have the opportunity to debate them. Those amendments did not appear. We were then told that they would come in the House of Lords, and indeed they did eventually come, at a late stage, in the House of Lords. In the meantime, the Scottish Parliament, for a variety of different reasons, voted against legislative consent. There was no single reason why the different parties in the Scottish Parliament voted in the way that they did but, notwithstanding that, they all decided that they would withhold legislative consent when the question was put to them The timetable that we were given last week should have protected the time available to debate the amendments from the other place. It did not—and that was not an accident. The Government used the procedures of this House to avoid a debate rather than to engage it. For that they are culpable and with that we are now all having to deal. Moreover, the consideration of Lords amendments should not have been presented to us as an either/or. This is the most significant piece of constitutional legislation that we will debate in my lifetime, and we should not at this stage, when it comes to voting on Lords amendments to it, be given a choice of either voting or debating The context for this debate is the abject failure of the Scottish Government and the United Kingdom Government to reach agreement. It is apparent to all who look on from the outside that there has been a lack of good faith in the negotiations between our two Governments. Let me say quite candidly that it is apparent to me that, if it is left to the Scottish and the United Kingdom Governments, then they will never reach agreement because they have no interest in doing so. They are both approaching the Brexit issue through the prism of their own party interest rather than the national interest.