European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Absolutely. I think that it comes down to the word “trust”. Many reports on the Bill come down to whether or not the devolved Administrations trust the UK Government to deliver what they are attempting to deliver in the Bill, and I do not think we can trust them to do that. The Law Society of Scotland has argued that the Bill should be revised because clause 11 has no transitional basis: it is an open-ended provision that could last forever. We could see Ministers in Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast and, indeed, Whitehall arguing about the minutiae of the detail rather than getting on with the job in hand, for political purposes. We have seen in the House, in respect of every single aspect of devolution, that when it comes down to the politics, it is the people who lose out and the politics that try to win out. We should be very wary of that while we are debating this Bill.