Scottish Independence and the Scottish Economy Debate
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Nigel Evans
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Scottish Independence and the Scottish Economy
Nigel Evans Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Angus Brendan MacNeil
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order to suspend proceedings so that the Secretary of State can have a tutorial on how elections and ballot boxes work and how an x is put on a piece of paper?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I am sure that the hon. Member’s leader would not be delighted if I were to suspend proceedings for any reason whatsoever.
Mr Jack
I say to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil): take the splinter out of your own eye. I am explaining how ballot boxes work. There was a very good, legal referendum in 2014, and it was won by those who wanted to remain in the United Kingdom. It is as simple as that.
I return to the point about the neverendum campaign being a millstone around the neck of the Scottish economy. The last thing that people need is greater uncertainty. The last thing that Scotland needs is the SNP’s continual push for a divisive referendum on leaving the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom Government are working tirelessly to strengthen the Scottish economy.
During the covid pandemic, it was the UK Government who had the ability to support our economy through furlough and business grants, keeping businesses in business and protecting people’s livelihoods. We are now supporting households and businesses facing increased energy costs. The UK Government are also providing the Scottish Government with a record block grant settlement of £41 billion a year over the next three years. In real terms, that is the highest settlement since 1998.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Mr MacNeil, you could start an argument in a room on your own. The Secretary of State is not giving way. Please pipe down.
Mr Jack
We are close to announcing two new UK freeports in Scotland, backed by £52 million of investment from the United Kingdom Government. That is a great example of how much more we can achieve when Scotland’s two Governments work together. We know that we can achieve much more by working together. So I repeat my offer to the Scottish Government to come and work with us on transport by improving cross-border links such as the A75 and on agriculture by giving farmers the gene editing technology that they desperately want. Gene editing will make crops more disease and drought-resistant and thereby drive down food prices. They should also work with us on energy, bringing small modular nuclear reactors—yes, you heard it here—to back up our tremendous renewable energy.
Ian Blackford
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. On the day of the referendum, the pound-dollar rate was 1.64. The Government have crashed the pound over the course of the last few years. That is the harsh reality and the Secretary of State might actually recognise that.
Mr Jack
To clarify the record, I was referring to the recent turmoil in the market. [Interruption.] Let me proceed.
This is a challenging economic period internationally and we should not pretend that the UK is the only nation which faces difficult times. The overall economic stability that the UK offers is the best long-term guarantee we have, so the right hon. Member is simply wrong in the motion about the state of the UK economy. He compounds his mistake, because his motion speaks of a land that exists only in his overactive and deeply aggrieved imagination: the so-called failing state of the UK. That will be the United Kingdom which has the sixth-biggest economy in the world, the UK which is a leading partner in NATO, the UK which is at the heart of the G7, and the UK with a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations. [Interruption.] They do not like hearing it.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Please resume your seats. Come on. Stop it, please. Stop it. We did not have that noise when the leader of the SNP was speaking, so in deference, and in good behaviour, please stop the shouting.
Mr Jack
SNP Members do not like hearing it. Instead of insulting Scots’ intelligence, the SNP might explain what it is doing with Holyrood’s extensive powers in economic development, education and skills, planning and transport to grow the Scottish economy.
I hope that as the debate progresses we will hear something constructive from SNP Members, but I fear ferries will float before we do. Rather than deal with what actually matters to the vast majority of Scots—growing the economy and creating jobs—SNP Members want to talk about the Scottish Government’s “independence papers”.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
If the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) carries on moving across the Labour Benches, he will find the door is there. [Laughter.]
Angus Brendan MacNeil
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order to put on a Liverpool accent so that the Secretary of State will maybe give way to a Scottish MP?
Mr Deputy Speaker
It is up to whoever is on their feet who they allow in. For whatever reason, you are not the flavour of the month, Mr MacNeil, and I have to say you are rapidly going down my list as to when you will actually come in.
Mr Jack
Mr Deputy Speaker, I admire the tenacity of the hon. Gentleman. He is obviously very good a playing musical chairs, but I am going to finish.
We share these islands. We share a rich history. Together, we have been able to develop the great institutions we are so proud of, such as the NHS and our armed forces. People in Scotland want their two Governments to be focused on the issues that matter to them: growing our economy, ensuring our energy security, tackling the cost of living and supporting our friends in Ukraine against Russian aggression. Those are the issues that matter to the people of Scotland, not the motion before us today.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. When we ask a question of a colleague in Parliament who finds it difficult to understand, is it in order that he responds with insults?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
The hon. Member did apologise immediately, Mr MacNeil. I think you should accept that with good grace.
Neale Hanvey
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I know it may feel politically expedient for the shadow Minister to slur me in the way that he did, but he should be aware that I was reinstated into the SNP because the accusations of antisemitism did not stand. I have worked tirelessly with Danny Stone from the Antisemitism Policy Trust and other Members in this House to ensure that that scourge is not furthered. I am not an antisemite.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
That is now on the record. I think we should move on. As “Erskine May” states, there should be good behaviour, but to be honest I am not seeing a lot of it in this debate. Let us try and change the tone.
Ian Murray
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I accept the timeline, but I was accurate to say that the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) was thrown out as the SNP candidate following accusations of antisemitism.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Will everybody please resume their seats? Madam Deputy Speaker suggested speeches of seven minutes, and that speech was almost twice the limit she suggested. It is not doing any favours to other colleagues in the SNP, the vast majority of whom would want to contribute in this debate. Please can you look to seven minutes and no more?
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. That speech was easily within seven minutes; that is the way to do it.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
It is a great pleasure and privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar), and an absolute barnstorm of a speech—excellent. This has been a good debate. I wish to extend a hand and a bit of friendship across the Chamber, as I was particularly taken by the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), who did at least accept interventions and deal with debate, unlike the Secretary of State who called for a sensible and serious debate, but would not actually debate.
Something interesting happened in this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is to be particularly congratulated, because in one speech he got six unopposed motions through this Parliament. On 2 July 1266, the treaty of Perth joined the Hebrides and the Isle of Man to Scotland. After that speech, perhaps we can add the statutes of Perth from 2 November 2022, in which my hon. Friend passed six motions in his speech, the first being the magnificent achievement of having all parties—perhaps not the Lib Dems—agree that an independent Scotland would be a successful independent country.
We must consider where we were are today and our starting point and, as Robert Burns said:
“To see ourselves as others see us!”
Last week, The Atlantic magazine, a 165-year-old publication from Washington DC, had an article about the UK, which Scotland is in. The title of that interesting article was, “How the UK Became One of the Poorest Countries in Western Europe”, and it contained an avalanche of facts and statistics, some of which should be put in front of the House. It states:
“Behind the lurid headlines, however, is a deeper story of decades-long economic dysfunction that holds lessons for the future.”
It says that the UK is “a wealthy nation” that gave capitalism to the industrialised world,
“But strictly by the numbers, Britain is pretty poor for a rich place. UK living standards…have fallen significantly behind those of Western Europe. By some measures, in fact, real wages in the UK are lower than they were 15 years ago, and will likely be even lower next year.”
To see ourselves as others see us. It continues:
“Under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, markets were deregulated, unions were smashed, and the financial sector emerged as a jewel of the British economy. Thatcher’s injection of neoliberalism had many complicated knock-on effects…When the global financial crisis hit in 2008, it hit hard, smashing the engine of Britain’s economic ascent. Wary of rising deficits, the British Government pursued a policy of austerity—"
the folly of George Osborne—
“fretting about debt rather than productivity or aggregate demand. The results were disastrous.”
I could go on, and I commend the article to anybody who wants to read exactly what is being said about the UK by that influential American publication. It is so unlike what is going on in Ireland and the other countries we have mentioned—such as Scandinavia and the Nordic countries—that are ahead of us in the human development index.
The final excerpt I will read states:
“Take out Greater London—the prosperity of which depends to an uncomfortable degree on a willingness to provide services to oligarchs from the Middle East and the former Soviet Union—and the UK is one of the poorest countries in Western Europe.”
We live in a state that basically governs for London and nowhere else, and demands that the rest of us should be grateful. There is no meaningful engagement with other parts of the UK.
Last week, the University of Parma in Italy published a report on my constituency entitled, “Migrants as actors of Scottish rural depopulation”. In its extensive study, it called for two things. One was to remove English language skills as an entry condition, which is a barrier to people coming to work, and to make them instead an integration goal. As we have seen in the Hebrides, people who come do learn English—some even learn words of Gaelic. It is amazing what happens on the ground outside the fantastical thinking of the Home Office. The other was dealing with an occupation list that shows up regional needs. That can be done in Switzerland, and we could do it in the UK.
If we lived in a proper union, the Home Office would not be a far-away home counties office and we would not need to beseech and send letters to it, deal with the revolving door of Immigration Ministers, or send delegations there. Instead, the Home Office would come to us to find out the problems and to try to deal with them. The fact is that the Home Office and the UK Government are not interested.
As we know, migrants are important. A small stat in the report showed that the 3% of migrants whom we were lucky to have come to Na h-Eileanan an Iar contributed 7% of our island births. Our islands’ future depends on them, our culture depends on them and our lives on the islands depend on them, but the Home Office is not interested.
Scotland in the UK will experience a population decrease, with the fall expected to be 2%. Some might think that a unique Scottish problem, but it is not. When we see the difficulties around us, we understand why the UK is failing. Over the next 30 years, the population of our neighbours in Ireland will increase by 20%, in Iceland by 32%, in Norway by 13%, and in Denmark by 10%. That illustrates how, no matter what they say about the statistics, the UK is failing Scotland, and rural Scotland in particular. The best example is the Faroe Islands—the most geographically isolated of all places—whose population will grow by 6% over the same period. Something needs to be done. We need our population to grow. The only thing that will make a material difference is for us to take control of matters in the same sensible way as Iceland, Norway and Denmark. It is reprehensible of the Labour party to go shoulder to shoulder with Better Together and to denude and degrade the rural populations of Scotland. Put simply, it does not care at all.
Whenever we say where Scotland needs to go and what we are going to do, a number of people ask how we will finance it. They never point out that the UK has not paid its own way for 70 to 80 years. In fact, of all the moneys borrowed in that time, it has paid back only 1.7% of them. The UK has been failing. In nine of the 11 years under Margaret Thatcher—one of the people who misleads and beguiles the Tory party—she ran a deficit. Had it not been for the subsidy of Scottish oil, she would probably have run a deficit in all 11 of those years, but she had the bonus of 8% of her tax revenue—one pound in every 12—coming from Scotland’s natural resources. Unlike Norway, where the money was saved for the good of the people, she and her party squandered that.
The Supreme Court will very soon decide what will happen in Scotland. It is likely to decide that the Scotland Act 1998 does not provide the powers for the Scottish Parliament to hold a referendum. That will leave us with a choice. Whether it be a referendum or an election, we will have a ballot box event to decide Scottish independence. We could wait for a Westminster election, have a Holyrood election or engineer an election at Holyrood with one simple question on Scottish independence and get ourselves safe and away from the economic extremists in the United Kingdom Parliament and Government. That is a debate for us internally, and it is a debate for Scots. I hope that we have that debate and that we decide rationally and collectively choose together.
It is likely that the Supreme Court will say that the powers do not exist to have a referendum under the Scotland Act. We will have ways and options after that, and the people here who object to Scotland deciding and who think that Scotland does not have a right to self-determination will be sorry and disappointed. We will have our say. The people of Scotland can speak, and they will speak.
Democracy is not a one-term event. Democracy demands that, after the events of 2016 when Scotland was taken out of the EU against its will, Scotland shall speak and Scotland shall decide. None of us can say no to the people. Nobody can say to a nation, “You will go this far and no further,” because if Scotland wants to go further, Scotland will, and it will go to independence.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
That was another long seven minutes. Christine Jardine, please show Mr MacNeil how it is done.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
If my maths is correct, about five Members still want to speak. The winding-up speeches will begin no later than 20 to 7, so Members can do the maths on how many minutes they have. Anne McLaughlin, do you intend to speak?
