THIS has certainly been one of the most shocking weeks we have had at Westminster for a while. As the revelations of illegal parties at Number 10 last Christmas came hard and fast, the callous Nationality and Borders Bill was voted through in the Commons to the delight of Priti Patel.

There were also a number of twists and turns in the ongoing quest to find out just what the Tories have planned for the Human Rights Act (HRA) and whether the UK will continue as a member of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

As I explained in my column last week, Westminster’s Joint Committee on Human Rights has concluded that the Nationality and Borders Bill breaches the UK’s obligations under the ECHR as well as International Refugee and Maritime Conventions to which the UK is also signed up.

The government denies this but some of its more rabid backbenchers were determined that, in relation to asylum seeker removals from the UK, it should be clear that the HRA and the ECHR do not apply, nor indeed any EU law retained after Brexit, nor the international convention relating to the status of refugees. The amendment they had designed to do this did not pass but when the Immigration Minister was summing up at the end of the debate, he was keen to give them re-assurances.

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He told them the Home Secretary fully agreed with the sentiment expressed in their amendment about the “challenges that frustrate the will of the British people in terms of our ability to remove people with no right to be in the UK”. And he went on to say that the “government has imminent plans to consult on substantial reform of the Human Rights Act, which will be announced imminently in Parliament.”

Then he went further and said the Home Secretary recognised their concerns about “aspects of the ECHR and other international agreements” and that the government was “committed to reviewing and resolving these issues with the urgency that the situation warrants”.

As you can imagine, these comments caused excitement on the Tory backbenches and consternation on the opposition ones. Until recently, the government has been keen to re-assure us that it has no plans to change its renewed commitment to ongoing membership of ECHR, but this sounded like it was planning to revisit that commitment, at least in part.

I intervened to ask the minister whether he was now announcing something a bit more radical than perhaps we had anticipated in relation to the Human Rights Act and to confirm that the government is still committed to remaining a full signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights. But he refused to do so, saying he would not pre-empt a forthcoming government announcement about its intentions.

The next day, the new Lord Chancellor and the anti-hero of the Kabul airlift, Dominic Raab, appeared before the JCHR. He is the lead government minister on the HRA. In a surprisingly polished performance, particularly after his farcical comments last weekend to the effect that police don’t investigate past crimes, he sought to re-assure us there is no intention to withdraw from the ECHR.

He does, however, have fairly radical plans for reform of the HRA which may limit the extent to which people in the UK can rely on their ECHR rights in our domestic courts, at least in so far as reserved matters are concerned.

Where devolution is concerned, the ECHR is written into the Scotland Act and so unless that Act was to be amended, people in Scotland could still rely on their ECHR rights in our courts in respect of devolved matters, potentially leading to a two-tier system with different levels of protection for human rights for reserved and devolved issues.

I questioned Raab closely about his plans for Scotland. The JCHR report concluded that the UK Government should not pursue reform of the HRA without the consent of the devolved legislatures. I asked him if he would undertake not to do so. He said he wasn’t prepared to give that undertaking until the text of the legislation he plans is in the public domain, but that he was “very mindful of the different traditions of the UK particularly in Scotland”.

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I then asked him what steps he will take to engage with the devolved governments in respect of any planned human rights reforms and he said he will set out how he proposes to do that when he announces a UK-wide consultation. Raab said he was keen to avoid a two-tier system and that he wants to work with all the devolved governments and MPs to get it right.

I pointed out that the problem with this is that when the Tories said they were going to do that during Brexit, they failed to keep their promise and treated the Scottish and Welsh governments with contempt. I asked Raab for an undertaking that there would be a more respectful approach this time around and he gave that commitment.

We shall see ...

Perhaps the highlight of the committee was Harriet Harman’s put-down of Dominic Raab, reported in The National yesterday, in relation to his past comments that feminists were “obnoxious bigots”. She successfully got him to eat his words but when he sniped back that she might have raised the matter earlier as he said it back in 2011, she replied that if she had to police the misogyny of government ministers, all the time, she would not have time to do anything else.

It was a laugh-out-loud moment and a fitting parting shot from the Mother of the House who has just announced her retirement at the next election, after 40 years in Parliament fighting for women’s rights.

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Some National readers question why SNP MPs bother with Westminster. The answer is simple – that is what we were elected to do. We did not stand on an abstentionist platform and the majority of our constituents want us to be there doing our job of standing up for them, scrutinising the UK Government and putting forward an alternative to their obnoxious agenda. Sure, being in opposition to a government with a huge majority is difficult, sometimes soul-destroying, but that is our job.

When a second independence referendum is announced with a prospectus we can get behind, we will be spending more time in Scotland campaigning but as regards the independence long game there is preparatory work to be done at Westminster as well.

We are making alliances at home and abroad. Getting to know the people with whom, one day when independence is secured, we will have to negotiate a deal. Politics isn’t all about fine words it is also about pragmatism and forging relationships.