NICOLA Sturgeon said the Conservatives had “given up on the day job” as she responded yesterday to the Queen’s Speech which had dropped a raft of Tory manifesto commitments on domestic policies.
The Tories’ legislative programme was outlined in Westminster on Wednesday and was dominated by the process of leaving the European Union.
However, it was conspicuously light on other areas, dropping pledges made during the election to reform social care and expand grammar schools after the Tories lost their Commons majority.
“There is not much in the Queen’s speech to respond to. The Queen’s speech that was published yesterday was humiliatingly vacuous,” Sturgeon told MSPs yesterday.
“The Tories at Westminster have clearly given up entirely on the day job—that is beyond any doubt. All that was in the Queen’s speech were damaging plans to rip the UK out of not just the European Union, but the single market.
“That is what the Tory Government now amounts to: perpetrating economic destruction on everybody around the UK.”
Concerns over Brexit dominated the latter part of First Minister’s Questions after Sturgeon was asked a number of questions on the issue from her backbenchers.
She raised fears about “a Westminster power grab” in the wake of leaving the European Union and said she was “extremely concerned about what appear to be plans to centralise power in the hands of Whitehall” as powers come back from Brussels.
She said it would be “unthinkable” if MSPs are not asked to give formal legislative consent to the Great Repeal Bill, although there is no “clear and emphatic acceptance” from the Conservatives at Westminster on the issue.
She called for clarity after Theresa May said there is a “possibility’’ the Bill, which will overturn the 1972 Act taking the UK into the European Economic Community, would need a legislative consent motion (LCM) in the Scottish Parliament.
The Prime Minister said the matter is “currently being considered both here and in Scotland”, although her Scottish Secretary David Mundell has already said he is working on the basis that an LCM would be required.
Sturgeon said: “Despite the hints we got yesterday that there is still no clear and emphatic acceptance on behalf of the UK Government that the Repeal Bill will require the legislative consent of this Parliament.
“It is unthinkable that anything else would be the case, so maybe the Tories could just confirm that and stop prevaricating upon it?”
Sturgeon also made clear she wants the Scottish Government to be represented in the Brexit talks as she turned on the Conservatives for giving MEP Ian Duncan a peerage so he can become the new Scotland Office minister.
Duncan had stood against veteran SNP MP Pete Wishart in the recent General Election, and lost out by just 21 votes in Perth and North Perthshire.
Sturgeon said her remarks are “not personal against the individual concerned” but she claimed it is “absolutely outrageous” someone who was “defeated at the ballot box fairly and squarely in an election” was to be made a Lord and installed as a minister in the Scotland Office.
She said: “It is an absolute abomination and shows what contempt the Tories have for democracy.”
“The way to involve Scotland in these Brexit talks is to... have the democratically elected Scottish Government at the negotiating table.”
SNP MSP backbencher Graeme Dey also raised a question about the impact of Brexit, saying fruit growers in his constituency faced a shortage of workers coming over from Europe and he asked the First Minister what she could do to support the soft fruit industry.
In response the First Minister urged MSPs across all the partie to unite in the demand for Scotland to keep its place in the single market which would ensure people can continue to travel freely between Europe and Scotland.
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