THE UK Government’s hopes of arranging a series of bilateral summits with the Scottish Government to iron out difficulties over its flagship Brexit Bill appear to have been dashed.
The political impasse in Northern Ireland means the regular intergovernmental forum, the Joint Ministerial Committee, has become logjammed and so, under the lead of Damian Green, the First Secretary of State, Whitehall has been attempting to establish a series of direct bilateral summits with the SNP administration under the leadership of John Swinney, the Deputy First Minister, starting with one in Edinburgh next month.
However, Scottish Government sources have made clear Nicola Sturgeon and her ministers believe the JMC is the appropriate forum for talks and not one-to-one bilaterals.
“The JMC is the place to take the issues forward. We should be reinstating the JMC,” declared a senior Scottish Government source.
Yesterday, Scottish and Welsh ministers met in Cardiff to discuss their opposition to Theresa May’s Repeal Bill as Robin Walker, the Brexit Minister, made clear that it was in the "interests" of the devolved administrations to work with the UK Government on the controversial legislation.
The Scottish and Welsh Governments have said they cannot recommend that legislative consent is given to the European Union[Withdrawal] Bill as it stands.
The legislation - designed to transpose EU law into British law so the same rules apply on the day of Brexit as the day before - will see EU responsibilities in devolved areas initially transferred to Westminster.
The UK Government has explained that this will allow common frameworks to be created ahead of further devolution.
But Edinburgh and Cardiff believe this amounts to a “power grab” and insist it must be amended to give certainty to businesses, citizens and to protect devolution.
Scotland's Brexit minister Michael Russell and Welsh Finance Secretary Mark Drakeford were joined at the meeting by the Scottish Government's Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC and the Welsh Government's Counsel General Mick Antoniw.
Mr Russell said: "The bill, as it stands, does not respect the devolution powers of either the Scottish Parliament or the National Assembly for Wales, or fulfil promises made by the UK Government.
"We have agreed that we can't back the bill as it stands and will continue to work together to reverse the attempt to take powers from Scottish Parliament and National Assembly for Wales."
But Mr Walker stressed how the legislation would increase the power of the devolved administrations and that having some common frameworks on devolved matters were required for EU negotiations for market access to the EU and to preserve the single market within the UK.
Speaking in Edinburgh, he said: "When people take a long, hard look at it, it will be in the interest of each of the devolved parliaments and administrations to work with us to make this process work.”
"There does need to be a recognition in this process there are going to be areas where we are going to need to agree on common frameworks and that that is important not only in terms of the domestic functioning of our economy, but in also in terms of our market access to the EU,” added Mr Walker.
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