(Brian Feeney, Irish News)

When is devolved government not devolved government? Answer: when a Sewel motion is used at Westminster.

The ‘Sewel procedure’, so-called after Lord Sewel, a junior Scottish Office minister who set out its terms in the Scotland Act 1998, effectively brings back to Westminster matters devolved to the Scottish Parliament.

It was supposed to be used only on rare occasions. Sewel himself, a Scottish Labour peer, thought it might be used a couple of times a year for administrative convenience. In fact it’s been used more than 50 times since 1998, in some years more often than primary legislation passed in the Scottish Parliament.

As a result, the Scot Nationalists are becoming very exercised about it. Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) were assured that when a Sewel motion was planned for any legislation it would first need to have the consent of the Scottish Parliament.

It’s claimed that the British government has instead been obtaining the consent of the Scottish Executive to include all kinds of issues in Westminster acts. One Scottish commentator last week said Westminster was using the Sewel procedure like a Disabled Parking Permit where all members of a family park the car in disabled spaces even though only one member is disabled. That cheats the disabled he said, whereas Sewel just cheats the Scottish Parliament and Scots. The implication is that they don’t count. What has ruffled kilts is the proposal, snuck through in a Sewel motion, to allow Britain’s proconsul in the north to transfer Irish prisoners to Scottish jails on ‘security’ grounds.

Nicola Sturgeon, MSP from the SNP, accused the Scottish Executive of ‘political cowardice’ for not going to parliament with the proposal because they knew it would get a rough ride or even be defeated.

At least they have to tell the Scots what’s being planned. Nobody here seemed to know anything about it until Nicola Sturgeon revealed the plan last week.

Even curiouser are the contradictory justifications given here and in Scotland for the plan. In Scotland it’s just plain blackmail. Our proconsul told Scottish objectors that the plan is ‘vitally important to the peace process’. Really? To stand in its way could end political progress here and lead to a return to violence?

On the other hand a spokesman for the Northern Ireland Prison Service said it was only bringing Northern Ireland into line with prisons in Britain.

Which reason do you think is the big lie? Maybe you think they’re on a par? However contemptible the explanations provided, it’s the issue itself which is important. Sleighting the Scottish Parliament may be serious to Scots, but yet another stupid proposal about prisons is completely unacceptable here.

Strangely, the only person who immediately objected was Monsignor Raymond Murray, former chaplain at Armagh Prison. He pointed out the entirely arbitrary nature of the powers our proconsul was taking upon himself and the denial of prisoners’ rights to serve their sentences here where their families live.

For decades the Home Office denied the right of Irish prisoners to serve their sentence here and regularly ‘ghosted’ them around inaccessible English prisons often without informing their families. Only as part of the peace process were they returned here.

Why threaten to use Scottish prisons? Could it be because some eejit believes loyalist prisoners would be happy in Scotland among their ‘ain folk’? If so, it would be an act of madness which could only have been dreamed up by some genius in the NIO working by e-mail from his home on the planet Uranus.

By the end of the year our proconsul will have the power to expel any prisoner, convicted or on remand, to Scotland. Now do you think any bookie here would give you odds against a violent reaction to such an expulsion? Do you think there might perhaps be an excuse for the UDA to end what they laughingly describe as a ceasefire? Can you imagine in what way the power to expel prisoners from the north to Scotland is ‘vital’ to the peace process? Answers on a postcard to the planet Uranus.

Note incidentally the strange silence from republicans on this whole matter. Is that because they think the NIO wouldn’t dare expel republicans to Scotland? Is it not a central feature of republicanism to cherish all the children of the nation? Even if that proves unpalatable in the case of some loyalists, do they have nothing to say about bringing the north’s prison procedures into line with England and Wales?

This article appeared first in the March 10, 2004 edition of the Irish News.

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