MAKING MSPs vote on the Tory Internal Market Bill could make them “complicit in unlawful action,” Patrick Harvie has warned.
In a point of order in Holyrood today, the Green co-convenor asked Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh if it was appropriate to ask the Scottish Parliament to vote on legislation that breaches international law.
On Tuesday, the Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis shocked MPs when he admitted that the UK Government is set to break international law in a bid to override the Brexit deal in a “very specific and limited way”.
Because the Internal Market Bill will legislate in devolved areas, the UK Government will need to ask the Scottish Parliament for consent - though even if, as expected, MSPs withhold consent, ministers in London can still force it through.
In his question to Macintosh, the Green said there was precedent to stop the Scottish Parliament voting on laws that would be illegal.
Harvie said the UK internal market bill was “extremely politically contentious, driving a coach and horses through the devolution settlement”.
He added: “It is also, as has been admitted by the UK government on the record in the House of Commons, a breach of international law.
“So I ask for your guidance on rule, 9B of our standing orders, which deals with legislative consent, as to how parliament is to be protected from having unlawful legislation, put before us.
“As you'll be aware if the Scottish Government introduces a bill, which, for example, breaches ECHR, it's your job to protect this parliament, and you have to make a decision as to whether that bill is competent to be introduced.
“And even if we consider legislation which was ultimately found to breach ECHR, It is no longer in that respect, law.
“What provision exists similarly, to protect this Parliament from being asked to take, or be complicit in unlawful action by scrutinising and potentially casting a vote on legislation which the UK government itself admits is a breach of international law?”
Macintosh told MSPs: “If the UK Parliament did decide to legislate in a devolved area or to alter the devolution settlement, then it's quite clear that the LCM applies.
"Now what I would suggest is that parliament would fully take into account the points that Mr. Harvie raises while deciding whether or not to withhold or to grant consent during that LCM process.”
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