Sturgeon ‘dialling up division’ with refusal to approve UK Bills

NICOLA Sturgeon has been accused of ‘dialling up the manufactured division’ in her final weeks as First Minister as she prepares to ‘stoke grievance’ with the UK Government on new Westminster laws.

Her government is likely to refuse to pass ‘legislative consent motions’ (LCMs) on up to ten different pieces of legislation that are now proceeding through the House of Commons.

The Bills include proposals to boost trade with Australia and New Zealand, scrap EU red tape post-Brexit, support the transition to net zero, help the people of Northern Ireland to move on from the Troubles, advance the levelling up agenda, and crack down on organised crime and money laundering.

It will be an unprecedented show of dissent, as only six LCMs have been opposed by Holyrood in the history of devolution.

Details of the likely refusal of the LCMs – a process set out in the Sewell Convention for Westminster legislation which affects devolved areas – have emerged during talks between the UK and Scottish Governments. If an LCM is refused by the Scottish parliament, the UK Government can still press ahead – but an inevitable constitutional row with the SNP would ensue.

A UK Government source said the Nationalists were manufacturing rows ‘to fuel their old, invented grievances about Westminster’.

Scottish Conservative constitution spokesman Donald Cameron said it appears Ms Sturgeon is ‘dialling up the manufactured division’, adding ‘it would be good’ if her successor ‘was more co-operative than her and did less to stoke grievance with the UK’. A spokesman for Ms Sturgeon said that the UK Government simply wants Holyrood to ‘be subject to Tory diktat’.