United Kingdom Internal Market Bill — House of Commons, 2020-09-22
Topic: Health
Elizabeth Anne McLaughlin (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I will address you in the Chair, Ms McDonagh, as is customary, but I hope through you to get a message to the people of Scotland, because it is our duty to warn those who are not yet aware of it that this Government down here in London are planning to take powers away from the Scottish Government, the Scottish Parliament and, ultimately, the people of Scotland They say that they have no such plans. Nobody in my party believes that, but let us say that they are correct. I am going to give a couple of examples of what we are so alarmed about, and I would be very happy for any Government Member to stand up when I have done so and tell me that I am wrong and have misunderstood. But they should be warned: if they plan to do that, they had better be able to point to the actual legislation that guarantees that our fears are unfounded. If no Government Member can do that, the people of Scotland will know. Whether this Government like it or not, an independence referendum is on its way to Scotland, and our people are watching very closely Let me start with the first example. We in Scotland, as Members will have heard many times today, are very proud of our minimum price controls on alcohol. It is a policy that I, as a former Member of the Scottish Parliament, and others fought tooth and nail to introduce many years ago, though unsuccessfully at the time. In fact, I remember making my speech in the Scottish Parliament, holding aloft a 2-litre bottle of what was at the time a very cheap top-strength cider, to illustrate a point. As an aside, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald) was my researcher at the time, and his job was to buy it and empty it down the sink so that I did not take alcohol into the Chamber We are very proud of minimum pricing, because in two short years we have already seen a decrease in harmful drinking in Scotland. But what if we had not passed that legislation already, and what if the democratically elected Scottish Parliament wanted to do so next year, after this Bill has been enacted? It would not matter how many bottles of cheap liquor we held up. It would not matter how many stories we shared of the untold damage done to individuals and their families because of the easy and cheap access to very high-strength alcohol. It would not matter if every single Member of the Scottish Parliament—Scotland’s democratically elected Parliament—voted yes to minimum pricing next year. With this Bill, the UK Government could drive a bulldozer through it and there would be nothing we could do while we remained a part of this Union As we heard earlier, Professor Michael Dougan of Liverpool University has identified that Scotland’s minimum price controls could be characterised as a form of product requirement. That would mean that the principle of mutual recognition in this Bill would apply, and once that obligation applies there is virtually no scope for Scotland to justify applying new rules to imports from England Members might ask, "Why does that matter now? Scotland did pass minimum pricing. This legislation applies to new rules, and minimum pricing is not new." But it does matter, because what happens when we in Scotland come to review minimum pricing? And what if, in that review, the democratically elected Scottish Parliament were to vote for tighter legislation? What if it were to step it up because it works? None of the new rules would apply to alcohol imported from elsewhere in the UK, so cheap high-strength alcohol from England, Wales and Northern Ireland could flood the market in Scotland and a bulldozer would again be driven through all of our good work.