The UK government is to table its new offer on post-Brexit powers for Scotlandand Wales within days after the three governments have failed to reach a deal.
The long-running dispute between the three sides is threatening to come to a head just as Theresa May meets Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish first minister, and Carwyn Jones, her Welsh counterpart, for talks on Brexit at Downing Street next week.
David Lidington, the Cabinet Office minister, said it was imperative that the Lords had a chance to debate his amendments to the EU withdrawal bill because the government was running out of parliamentary time.
Mike Russell, the Scottish Brexit minister, said it was deeply disappointing that Lidington had failed to offer further compromises when the governments met in London on Thursday.
They remain deadlocked over the UK government’s insistence that up to 25 policy areas, including over-farming, fishing and food-labelling, need to be controlled at UK level until common frameworks can be agreed between them.
Scottish and Welsh ministers insist that demand amounts to a “power grab” and are refusing at this stage to accept a UK government amendment to the EU withdrawal bill that would hand a large majority of EU powers directly to the devolved parliaments on Brexit day.
Russell claimed he and the Welsh had offered a fresh concession at the talks, pledging that the Scottish parliament and Welsh assembly would not throw up unreasonable obstacles to those UK-wide agreements so long as UK ministers agreed to fully devolve every single power to the devolved administrations.
“We are clear that the EU withdrawal bill must be amended so that the devolution settlement cannot be changed without the consent of the Scottish parliament,” Russell said.
“Right now we are being asked to sign away the [Scottish] parliament’s powers with no idea of how UK-wide frameworks will work, how they will be governed, and how we will go from the temporary restrictions the UK government wants to agreeing longer-term solutions.”
Lidington implied the Scottish and Welsh governments were exaggerating the impact of the UK proposals, which involve temporary powers which would subject to full negotiation.
“I strongly believe our proposal would respect and strengthen the devolution settlements across the UK and do so in a way that still allows the UK government to protect the vitally important UK common market, providing much-needed certainty and no new barriers for families and businesses,” he said.
Both devolved governments are pressing on with their own rival legislation at Holyrood and Cardiff Bay, home of the Welsh assembly, which would sidestep Westminster and repatriate EU powers into Scotland and Wales without a UK–wide deal.
Lord Wallace, the Liberal Democrat peer who served as the UK government’s Scottish law officer in the 2010 coalition government, said there was now an urgent need for both sides to publish the material at the centre of the dispute.
Lidington said all three governments had agreed on Thursday to do so. Each side claims that publication of those joint frameworks would prove their case, and undermine the claims of their opponents.
“What we’ve got is on the one hand the UK government saying we’re prepared to devolve a considerable amount of powers back to Edinburgh; we’ve got the Scottish government saying yes we agree that there’s got to be UK common frameworks,” Wallace told BBC Radio Scotland on Thursday morning.
Wallace, a former deputy first minister of Scotland, said both sides distrusted each other but the dispute seemed to hinge on a very narrow point. “They can’t be that far apart, so I’m saying let’s see what they’re actually discussing.”
“I think it would be far better if we actually knew far more of what was going on,” he said. “We hear stories about what one side is proposing; what another is rejecting. This could do with a healthy dose of transparency.”
The Guardian
