I will not detain the Committee because time is pressing.
I tabled amendments 21 and 22, which were authored by the Law Society of Scotland. The two issues that they deal with are fairly short in their compass and I do
not intend to press them to a Division. However, I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to them and to have it on the record.
Amendment 21 would include the parliamentary term of the Scottish Parliament within the provisions that can be altered only by way of a super-majority. Under amendment 22, the same would be true of boundaries. It is the wish of the Law Society of Scotland that it should not be possible to influence those matters by a simple majority merely for political advantage.
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The more substantive amendment is amendment 62, which was moved by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). There was virtually nothing in her speech with which I disagreed on the role of the Human Rights Act 1998 in Scotland and the integral nature of it to the constitutional furniture that created and maintains the Scottish Parliament. It is a matter of significant importance.
I say to the Government that the way to avoid the difficulties that they will create in respect of the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly by going ahead with the abolition of the Human Rights Act in the rest of the United Kingdom is simply not to do it in the first place. They risk creating a constitutional mess and leaving a situation in which in one United Kingdom there are different standards of human rights, different practices and different bodies of jurisprudence. I see no advantage to the people of Scotland or the people of the rest of the United Kingdom of meddling in that way. I hope that the Government will listen to the wise words of the hon. and learned Lady.