DAMIAN Green, the First Secretary of State, will attempt to break the deadlock with the Scottish Government over the UK Government’s flagship Brexit Bill just days before the first key Commons vote next month, it has emerged.
Whitehall sources suggested more talks would be sought with John Swinney, the Deputy First Minister and his colleagues, to unblock the constitutional impasse with Edinburgh, which believes the EU Withdrawal Bill is nothing more than a “naked power-grab” by Theresa May and her colleagues.
MPs are due to start their first debate on the legislation on Thursday September 7 with sources saying the key vote on Second Reading is due to take place the week after.
No 10 has confirmed that the bill’s Second Reading will take place next month during the MPs’ two-week return to Westminster before the break for party conferences, which begins on Thursday September 14. MPs will return in October.
As things stand, the SNP looks set to vote against the bill. With the help of Northern Ireland's 10 Democratic Unionist MPs, the Prime Minister has a working majority of just 13.
Last week, Mr Green together with David Mundell, the Scottish Secretary, met Mr Swinney and his colleague Michael Russell for talks about the legislation in Edinburgh but differences were not resolved.
The bill says all powers currently exercised by Brussels will be repatriated to Westminster at the point of Brexit, even those in devolved areas. This, the UK Government says, is not a power-grab but a practical move to ensure UK-wide "common frameworks" can be put in place to avoid disrupting the UK's internal market. Once this is secured, powers would then be devolved.
“No one in Whitehall wants to have control over Scottish hill-farming. It’s absurd,” noted one UK Government source. Mr Mundell has insisted far from exercising a power-grab, the UK Government wants to give Scotland a "powers bonanza" after Brexit.
But the SNP administration believes this is all a ruse by London to seize powers that should go directly to Holyrood.
After the Edinburgh meeting, Mr Russell, the Scottish Government’s Brexit minister, demanded "serious and significant changes" to the bill, saying MSPs would reject it in its current form.
While Holyrood cannot veto the Brexit legislation, moving ahead without the consent of MSPs would create a constitutional crisis.
Some of the Nationalists’ opponents at Westminster believe the SNP is intent on provoking such a confrontation as they feel this would, in the current climate, be the only development that will give the campaign for a second independence referendum fresh momentum.
The Scottish Government is calling for the concerns around a Westminster “power-grab,” shared by the Labour administration in Cardiff, to be the subject of a new meeting of the intergovernmental Joint Ministerial Committee.
However, the reason Whitehall is keen to pursue a bilateral process with Edinburgh is because the JMC process has ground to a halt due to the suspension of Stormont and the political logjam between the DUP and Sinn Fein.
It is thought Mr Green has held out the prospect of another JMC in the autumn but this will be contingent on the Northern Irish parties being able to agree a way forward with the UK Government on restoring devolved government in the coming weeks; a prospect that still seems, at present, unlikely.
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