Scotland: Further Independence Referendum
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(5 months, 1 week ago)
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Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
I am going to begin where I left off on 1 February this year when I moved my Scotland (Self-Determination) Bill. It is important to establish how far this Government and the party of opposition have moved from the principle of equity of all peoples of this alleged Union of equals, and ultimately against the democratic will of the people of Scotland. In this place in 1889, the equality of UK partner countries was asserted by none other than William Ewart Gladstone MP, when he said that
“if I am to suppose a case in which Scotland unanimously, or by a clearly preponderating voice, were to make the demand on the United Parliament to be treated, not only on the same principle, but in the same manner as Ireland, I could not deny the title of Scotland to urge such a claim.”—[Official Report, 9 April 1889; Vol. 335, c. 101-102.]
That principle of equity was at the heart of my private Member’s Bill, and was again articulated in amendment (j) to the recent King’s Speech, tabled in my name. Each was consistent with the motion passed by this House that endorsed the principles of the 1989 claim of right, which acknowledged
“the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs”.
However inured this House has since become to the aspirations of the people of Scotland to live in a normal independent country, support for independence is holding steady at around 50% without a single leaflet being dropped through a letterbox. That number is rising steadily, and will continue to climb. The independence genie is not for going back into the bottle.
Of course, that growing support requires a mechanism through which to express its effect and place beyond doubt the will of the people. My Scotland (Self-Determination) Bill is explicit about the conditions necessary to bring that mechanism into play, and is clear that the power to legislate for a referendum requires a democratic mandate from the Scottish public. Since 2014, that criterion has been met in successive general elections to the Scottish Parliament, most recently in 2021, when a majority of MSPs were elected on a manifesto commitment to deliver an independence referendum. This evening, I intend to set out how that must now happen, and how it can be put beyond the wiles of intransigent London-led parties for good.
One of the most invigorating aspects of the 2014 independence referendum campaign was the explosion of interest and engagement in all aspects of policy, and the healthy workplace, coffee house and pub debates across Scotland. Back then, as a movement, we were unafraid to have differences of opinion and to propose various solutions to decades-old problems. Most importantly, we spoke truth to the distortions of the Unionist Better Together “no” campaign. That appetite for truth and facts is something we must rediscover. Our movement must demand that if we are to make progress towards independence.
The first issue we must come to terms with is that another section 30 independence referendum is not going to happen for the foreseeable future. As a consequence of the Scottish Lord Advocate’s folly in arguing a poorly crafted question, the UK Supreme Court made it clear that in the absence of an equitable mechanism for self-determination across these islands—such as the one I have proposed—any referendum on Scottish independence is a matter reserved to London.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)
In some ways, the Supreme Court’s judgment was perhaps helpful. It said in paragraph 81—this is the reason the Court stopped the referendum—that even if the referendum did not have any legal powers, because the UK Government had not signed up to it, the ballot box would carry authority, which would force the UK Government to recognise that authority and therefore cause a change to the Union. By stopping the referendum, the Supreme Court has now opened another avenue for Scotland, which we will maybe touch on later. That, of course, is using elections.
Neale Hanvey
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and that is a key element of my contribution to this debate.
Put plainly, a section 30 order to temporarily transfer those powers to the Scottish Parliament is entirely in the gift of Westminster. That underscores the unavoidable truth that our Parliament is in reality part of the fabric of the British state and is increasingly being squeezed under the heel of Whitehall. Securing mandates to ask for a referendum on independence only to be rebuffed is now the equivalent of Monty Python’s parrot that has ceased to be. It is as stone dead as a mandate can be. The Tories have become increasingly bolder in this regard, and while they persist with their assertion that this is a voluntary Union, they refuse to set out the means of withdrawing consent. This Government have also made it clear that they will plunder Scotland as a cash cow until the wind stops blowing. Westminster plans to rob our resources at its leisure. There is no way, even if the First Minister were to ask, that the Prime Minster would agree to an independence referendum in his final months in office.
In a Westminster Hall debate on this subject, the Minister responding this evening claimed that
“the benefits of being part of the United Kingdom have never been more apparent.”
Where is the benefit for the one in three households in Scotland living in fuel poverty? Where are the benefits for the north-east of Scotland when the Acorn carbon capture and storage project still waits for a go-ahead from the UK Government? The Minister proclaimed that Scotland has
“one of the most powerful devolved Parliaments in the world.”—[Official Report, 30 November 2022; Vol. 723, c. 384WH.]
But Scotland remains powerless to stop the plunder.
Neale Hanvey
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I would be the last person to speak for the SNP Government in Scotland. I refer back to my party leader’s excellent tenure as First Minister, and the meaningful difference he made to the lives of the people of Scotland.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
This comparison with a devolved Scotland in the United Kingdom is as silly as comparing the performance of Northern Ireland and Stormont in the United Kingdom with Dublin and an independent Ireland. Ireland has a €10 billion surplus this year, rising to €20 billion next year. The UK, with a deficit of around £170 billion, is unable to build small hospitals on small Hebridean islands, whereas Ireland is funding nurses over the border.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. I am not sure who the hon. Gentleman was intervening on there.
Neale Hanvey
Mr Deputy Speaker, I am equally—[Interruption.] Yes, my hon. Friend has put the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) in his place.
Anyway, the Treasury is happy to siphon off £11 billion in tax receipts from oil and gas this year alone, and we are sending south 124 billion kWh of energy, which is enough to power Scotland’s needs fifteen times over. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) set out in a Westminster Hall debate this morning, with this Union it is all pooling and absolutely no sharing. I ask the Minister: where is the evidence of a share of Scotland’s energy bounty?
As for an incoming UK Labour Government, now bedecked in Union Jackery—the Tories will like this bit—the Leader of the Opposition has made it clear that his priority is continuity with Tory economic and social policy, and he intends to continue London’s plunder of Scottish assets. Do not be confused: it was British Labour that first hid the truth of the McCrone report from the people of Scotland—a truth kept secret by successive Labour and Tory Administrations for 30 years. Neither party has protected our economy or our communities, so why should we trust any of them now?
They each may persist with the claim they have
“no selfish strategic or economic interest”
in the north of Ireland, but we know the opposite is true of Scotland, where the strategy is wholly economic and top-to-tail selfish.
Neale Hanvey
The hon. Gentleman hit the nail on the head when he said that we will absolutely not agree on anything he said.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
In answer to that point, the Republic of Ireland is costing the UK nothing after leaving, therefore if Scotland goes it will save you a fortune—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. Stop intervening on Mr Hanvey to intervene on the person who intervened on Mr Hanvey.
Neale Hanvey
You can’t knock his enthusiasm, Mr Deputy Speaker. Neither the Labour nor the Conservative parties have protected our economy, and any fantasy that pleas for more devolution will be accommodated by Labour are pie in the sky. North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll recently accused the Labour Opposition of censoring, diluting, and striking down key recommendations contained in a report by former Prime Minister and MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, Gordon Brown, on the constitution and further devolution across the UK. Those forlorn attempts to prevent the “Break-up of Britain” by refusing to devolve power away from London will serve only to boost the case for Scottish independence. Mr Brown’s attempt to reframe the debate to one of
“change within Britain versus change by leaving Britain”
has been utterly dismantled by his party leader and increased the urgency for independence. All that leads us to the position where Scotland urgently needs a robust strategy that not only deals with the facts of the day, but overcomes that central Westminster hurdle of the denial of a democratic process.
The Alba party, and our Scotland United colleague, the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), believe that every single Scottish and UK general election must now be used to secure majority support for independence negotiations to commence. That could, and should, include the triggering of an early Holyrood election.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Member has hit the nail on the head. The referendum door is slammed shut, and there are three ways that the SNP Government at Holyrood could trigger a plebiscite on Scottish independence. Of course, the resignation of the First Minister was very awkward and difficult, but a majority of two thirds of MSPs can vote, or by using section 31A of the Scotland Act 1998 the two-thirds majority can be altered to a simple majority. That was not communicated properly in light of the Supreme Court, and those who did not communicate it properly should have set the record straight or at least apologised. I think they should set the record straight so that MPs, MSPs and the wider public clearly understand that point.
Neale Hanvey
I thank my hon. Friend for that important piece of information. It underscores that there is need for much more robust and firm action from the Scottish independence movement, to push forward the case for independence. As I said recently, independence will not fall into our laps. It is something that we have to pursue with vigour and absolute determination.
That approach reinstates the position of the national movement prior to devolution. As with all democratic expressions, the threshold would be a simple majority of votes cast for all independence parties—a threshold that was achieved on the last list vote for the Scottish Parliament. That approach is supported by the expert legal opinion I obtained from highly distinguished academic and legal practitioner in international law, Professor Robert McCorquodale. He said that
“the people of Scotland are distinct within the UK and have a right to self-determination.”,
and subsequently that
“the right to self-determination applies to the people of Scotland.”
He went on to state:
As the people of Scotland are a people for the purposes of the right to self-determination, they can exercise it. The choice of the means to exercise it is for the people to decide and not for the state.”
Furthermore, he explained that the UK, as a signatory to multilateral international human rights treaties, has
“expressly accepted that the right to self-determination is a human right”
and
“not just as an international legal principle—which is binding under international law on all states.”
These are not obscure or arcane points of law; they are precise and purposeful.
I understand why the UK Government do not want to hear the facts that Professor McCorquodale set out, but I cannot comprehend why others are steadfast in their refusal even to acknowledge that landmark legal opinion charting the correct lawful and democratic course to self-determination and independence.
The Alba party’s amendment to the recent King’s Speech repeated the democratic principles contained in my Scotland (Self-Determination) Bill for the recognition of the right of the people of Scotland to self-determination by amending the Scotland Act 1998. That would transfer the power to legislate for a Scottish independence referendum to the Scottish Parliament.
Let me deal with the supposed gold standard of a section 30 order. Such an order on its own is not a gold standard; it was the process of negotiation and agreement that led to the signing of the Edinburgh agreement that was the gold standard. Let me be clear that any democratic vote in favour of self-determination is the only standard required, providing that that is the clear and unclouded purpose of any such vote—unless of course the UK Government do not want to recognise democratic elections as legitimate expressions of the will of the people.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Member is making an excellent point. An unscheduled Holyrood election would precisely be in that category. It would make the world stop for a moment and see whether Scotland was to choose independence. That power rests with MSPs at Holyrood if they want to do that.
Neale Hanvey
The hon. Gentleman is making really important and valid observations. Those are the key tactics that we need to adopt.
Whichever UK Prime Minister comes next, while they may have every technical right to stifle, subdue or ignore the Scottish Parliament, the British state has no locus to limit the inalienable human rights of the people of Scotland or the march of our nation. Yet in this Union, that is precisely where Scotland finds its democracy —denied. That flies in the face of commitments given. In Margaret Thatcher’s memoirs, she said of Scotland:
“As a nation, they have an undoubted right to national self-determination”.
John Major, when Prime Minister, said of Scotland that
“no nation could be held irrevocably in a Union against its will”.
The commitments contained in the Smith commission’s agreement, which was signed by all Scotland’s main political parties, said that
“nothing in this report prevents Scotland becoming an independent country in the future should the people of Scotland so choose.”
Scotland will only ever become an independent country as and when the majority of the people of Scotland choose that path, yet that requires a democratic mechanism that is constitutional and satisfies international legal precedent. From Gladstone to Thatcher, no one until now has had the gall to seek to constrain the Scottish people’s democratic right to self-determination. I have made this point many times, but it bears repeating. Democracy is not a single event; it is a continually evolving process that demands opinions be tested and retested regularly.
I anticipate that the Minister will reel off the usual rebuttals and crow about how we have had a referendum, but he should know this. As an option, a referendum has been put beyond reach by Westminster and Whitehall, but Scotland will adapt. Each and every election from hereon in can and will provide a platform on which the people of Scotland can have their say on their consent to this Union. Consistent with Professor McCorquodale’s opinion, that would pave the way to where
“a clear majority of people representing Scotland… indicate their approval”
for independence,
“but it should not be done by the Scottish Parliament, as the latter is within UK domestic law. This could be done, for example, through a convention of elected and diverse representatives from across Scotland with a clear majority in favour.”
Scotland’s separate constitutional tradition is best summed up by Lord Cooper, in the case of MacCormick v. Lord Advocate:
“The principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle which has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law.”
The UK Government face a choice: give serious consideration to bringing forward legislation for an equitable mechanism for self-determination, as exists on the island of Ireland, or face that test at every election in future. In international law according to human rights declarations, the decision on Scotland is the purview of the people of Scotland, not of any London party. In the constitutional tradition of popular sovereignty in our great country, it is the people who remain sovereign, and it will be the people of Scotland who decide.
John Lamont
The hon. Member makes very valid points, but the key point is that support for independence and another independence referendum in Scotland is falling. The voters in Scotland, certainly in my constituency in the Scottish Borders, are getting wise to the failures of the Scottish SNP Government in Edinburgh, and they recognise the benefits of remaining part of a strong United Kingdom. That is because the UK Government and the Scottish Government are working together on so many areas to make our communities better—driving economic growth, supporting the Scottish economy and delivering for Scotland.
I can give some further examples. We can see it through the Scottish Seafood Industry Action Group, where the UK Government regularly engage with the Scottish Government and the Scottish seafood industry to consider a range of important issues, including access to labour, energy costs and export opportunities. We see it through the fiscal framework review, where the UK and Scottish Governments reached a fair and responsible agreement. Both Governments reached a compromise for the benefit of the Scottish economy, while keeping us on track with our fiscal objectives. And we are investing more than £100 million in Scotland’s innovation economy through the strength in places fund and Glasgow innovation accelerator. Our close collaboration with the Scottish Government in this area was further underlined by the agreement signed between UK Research and Innovation and Scottish Enterprise earlier this month, which aims to streamline innovation support for Scottish businesses.
Levelling up is already making a real difference to all regions of Scotland. It is bringing advanced manufacturing jobs to the Glasgow city region, data driven innovation jobs to south-east Scotland, and life sciences jobs to the highlands and north-east Scotland. It is saving the community on Fair Isle with a new ferry, bringing Clydesdale horses back to Pollok Country Park, and revitalising town and city centres from Greenock to Aberdeen, and Cumbernauld to Elgin. It is helping communities to protect and restore their treasured buildings and facilities, whether it is the last pub in Lochranza on Arran, or a permanent home for St David’s brass band in Gorebridge. [Interruption.] The Members on the nationalist Benches shout those initiatives down. This is funding from the United Kingdom Government going into communities the length and breadth of Scotland—something that they seem to strongly oppose. I am disappointed by that and I know the communities they represent will be disappointed by it too.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
Before the Minister gets down to the mugs and glasses that we provide for the cub scouts, along with any other crumbs from the table, let me make this point. He mentioned “two Governments” in Scotland. What inefficiency! Norway, Ireland, Iceland and Denmark have one Government each, and they are outperforming Scotland in the United Kingdom. If Scotland is doing so well in the United Kingdom, why do Norway, Ireland, Iceland and Denmark not want to join the UK? It is because they know that it is not a good place to be. They look at Scotland and Wales and they see places that are doing better, just as they are doing better. If the campaign for Scottish independence is doing as badly as the Minister says, why not hold your referendum now? You’d win, surely, wouldn’t you? But you know full well that when the Scottish people engage, independence will happen!
John Lamont
The hon. Member speaks of “crumbs from the table”, but this is significant investment going into communities across Scotland. Scotland is receiving hundreds of millions of pounds through our levelling-up agenda and a record block grant amounting to more than £40 billion, but SNP Members oppose and fight every bit of the investment that this United Kingdom Government are making there. I am saddened by that, and I know that the residents and communities that the hon. Member and his colleagues represent will also be disappointed by the hostile and negative response to investment that has been used to improve the communities that we represent.
Together, the UK Government’s interventions will drive innovation and long-term economic growth, restore pride in place, and help cities, towns and villages in every part of Scotland to flourish. The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath referred to
“the sovereign right of the Scottish people”
to determine their future, and I suppose that that reference to self-determination gets to the nub of the debate that he has initiated. In 2014, the year of the referendum on Scottish independence, there was consensus between the UK Government and the Scottish Government—both Scotland’s Governments—and there was consensus in civic society in Scotland and consensus across the population of Scotland, which is why both Governments agreed to the referendum. The ultimate act of self-determination, of course, came in September 2014, when, in record numbers, the people of Scotland turned out to vote to remain part of the United Kingdom.
Oral Answers to Questions
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(7 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Mr Jack
I agree with my hon. Friend, and I could not have put it better myself.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Ind)
Is the truth of the Union not that while we see independent Norway and independent Ireland in budget surplus—independent Ireland with a surplus this year of €10 billion, rising to €23 billion in the next three years—the Scottish Government cannot build small hospitals on small Scottish islands? Is the answer not for Scotland to remove the Westminster handcuffs and to get the independence and budget surpluses of Norway and Ireland, so that we can move forward and move away from the Brexit of the Tories and the Labour party?
Mr Jack
They always say independence will sort the problems. Scotland is not building hospitals on the islands because the Scottish Government are squandering the most generous settlement they have had since devolution began.
Winnie Ewing
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Ian Blackford
That is a wonderful story, and knowing the woman as I did, I can say to my hon. Friend that nothing would have given Winnie more pride than knowing he had done that.
I remember that 2015 election with some pride in my own interaction with Winnie at that time. Winnie had sent me a video address that I could use in my own election campaign, and it was not short—it was 30 minutes long. [Hon. Members: “The irony!”] Well, I did say that she was my mentor. Some 29 minutes of that 30-minute address was about Europe, so there is a serious point to this. Winnie studied law in Glasgow, but she also went to study in The Hague. She was a Scottish nationalist—from the age of nine—but she was a European and she was an internationalist. She was so proud of what the European Union had meant for Scotland. She was so proud of the role she had played as a parliamentarian and of the friendships that she had developed with her friends not just from these islands, but right across Europe.
There was the role Winnie Ewing played in the Lomé convention, and in bringing it to Inverness, for goodness’ sake. There was the work she did in establishing the Erasmus programme, which was so inspirational in providing opportunities for our young people. It is therefore not surprising that she would often talk about what the European Union had meant. There are a number of us here from the highlands and islands, and my goodness, how we have benefited from objective 1 status, and the person responsible for that was Winnie Ewing. Think about where we are today—we have to go cap in hand to Westminster for levelling-up money and for what are in effect scraps from the table, as opposed to what was there for us as a right when Scotland and the European Community were working together in partnership. The highlands and islands are full of signs for projects that have been financed by Europe, and that is the legacy of Madame Écosse. Michel Barnier was recently on Skye, and he posted a picture of a path that had been funded by the European Union. What a difference between the spirit of generosity we had from the European Union and what we face in this place.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
I am very grateful to the modest, shy and retiring gentleman, my right hon. Friend, for giving way. Earlier, he mentioned Compton Mackenzie, and I think it is worth remembering that Compton Mackenzie, who was buried in my native island—he was a founder of the SNP in 1934—was actually an Englishman, which says a lot about the SNP, despite what many would say.
I had the great fortune during the general election of 2001 to get to know Winnie very well. I stayed with her at Goodwill in Miltonduff on several occasions, and I spent many an hour, over a coffee perhaps, with her late husband Stewart, and I look back fondly on that. I remember one time going to the Black Isle show—the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) smiles—and we sat down with some farmers. I was the candidate, and I thought, “This meeting with the farmers at the Black Isle show has to go well”, but Winnie sat down and told them, “Well, if we were independent now, guys, you wouldn’t be suffering the problems with BSE, would you?” I thought that “I told you so” start to it would absolutely torpedo our meeting, but it did not, because Winnie Ewing had style and she had the respect of the people, and it was taken that way. They knew the truth of what she was saying and did not take it badly, and the meeting progressed really well.
Of course, we know that Winnie Ewing has left us not just the great political legacy we are standing on, but her own children, two tremendous Scottish National party MSPs, Fergus Ewing and Annabelle Ewing. We extend our condolences to them as well as to Terry, and to her grandchildren.
Ian Blackford
Indeed, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention.
Winnie was elected to the European Parliament in June 1979.
Ian Blackford
Well, not many of us were active in Scottish politics at that time. I was a teenager—let’s be brutal—and in fact, the first election I voted in was that ’79 European election. The general election of 1979 was not our finest hour. It was, if I may say so, a temporary setback for the Scottish National party. We lost some ground and perhaps were not in the best of fettle. In that European election—I remember it well—there were not many expectations that the SNP was going to win any seats in the European Parliament. Indeed, it was forecast that the Liberal Democrats were more likely to take the Highlands and Islands seat. But what a night that was, when Winnie Ewing won the Highlands and Islands for the SNP.
We hear stories about Winnie Ewing’s interaction with the farmers, and the same would have been true if we were talking about fishing people, crofters, those working in the industrial community in Fort William, and so on and so forth. One thing about Winnie was that she worked for her constituents. I remember, when the pulp mill was closing in Fort William, the way that she picked up the phone to every newspaper proprietor up and down the land to try to get business for that pulp and paper mill. The legacy of the work she did, building relationships right across the Highlands and Islands, was that she increased her majority in every election that she fought as a European MP. What a role model she was for us, as someone who believed in our political philosophy, and someone who was ultimately a first-class parliamentarian.
My wife’s family moved into the Hamilton constituency while Winnie was the MP there, and they often talk about the success that she had getting a phone installed for them in the 1960s. Winnie did that casework, and she came to visit them and made sure that she did her job as the local MP.
I say for those on the Government Benches that I am on page 1 of my speech, but I will make some progress over the next while, don’t worry. [Interruption.] I am in my introduction; actually, it is the précis.
Winnie was a trailblazer for those of us who sit on the SNP Benches, but we would do well constantly to remind ourselves of her words from 1974 when, in response to Harold Wilson asking her how she was settling in, she responded:
“I’m not here to settle in. I’m here to settle up”
for Scotland. Let us remind ourselves on these Benches that that is exactly the job that we are expected to do.
When we talk about the memory of those who brought us here, and about what Winnie wanted with Scottish independence, it was not for us, or for past generations that have tilled the soil. It was for those who will follow us and for future generations, so that Scotland can become the country it can be—a prosperous, greener, fairer country that allows our human capital to flourish. That would be an appropriate legacy for Winnie, our dear friend and colleague.
Who was Winnie? She was born and brought up in Glasgow. She attended Glasgow University as well as the Hague Academy of International Law. She was a Scottish nationalist from the young age of nine. A nationalist, but also a European and an internationalist, as I said earlier—perspectives that were to shape much of her political life. Like many who made this journey, she came from a Labour supporting family. Her father George had been a member of the Independent Labour party, and it was only after her father’s death that Winnie learned that he had joined the SNP in July 1967, months before the Hamilton by-election. So many in the Labour party would make that journey towards the SNP—her family made it in the 1970s. It is a pity that no one from the Labour party is here to hear this speech and join the journey that so many in Scotland have already made.
That phrase, “Stop the world, Scotland wants to get on”, encapsulates so much of Winnie’s outlook—that desire for Scotland to achieve its potential; to get on and be the best that we could be. There was no better ambassador for Scotland in Europe than Winnie. She had a focused determination to put Scotland on the map at home and internationally. Although she served with distinction, leaving her mark in Westminster and Europe, that opportunity to serve in the Scottish Parliament brought her particular pleasure.
When Winnie was elected to the Scottish Parliament in 1999, it was a culmination of a drive to restore nationhood to Scotland that had driven her since first being elected to Westminster in 1967. It was a journey of 32 years that brought the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament. How fitting it was that Winnie presided over the opening session of the Scottish Parliament, when she proclaimed that
“the Scottish Parliament, which adjourned on 25 March 1707, is hereby reconvened.”—[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 12 May 1999; c. 5.]
There was that long journey to Scotland establishing a Parliament, and it being opened by the MSP who was so inspirational in driving forward the process of achieving that Parliament was a recognition of the determination and leadership she had shown since that breakthrough in Hamilton in 1967. Scotland had got on.
Winnie was on her own as an MP in her first Parliament, although she was supported by her Plaid Cymru friend, Gwynfor Evans. Those would be challenging times for her, with the open hostility often shown in this place. How different her experiences would be when she returned to this place in 1974 as the Member for Moray and Nairn and ultimately as a member of the SNP’s first 11. In many respects, it was a challenging Parliament. George Reid, sadly now the only surviving member of that group, remarked of a group meeting when Winnie said:
“Look, if we don’t hang together, we’ll hang apart.”
As was often the case with Winnie, it was sage advice, as apt for all of us today as it was then.
After Westminster came Europe, as we have discussed, and the success that Winnie had there. Before she departed Westminster, she happily took up a number of issues. In her maiden speech in 1967, in a debate on the age of majority, she said:
“There are moral and intellectual reasons why it is good sense to make people responsible at the age of 18 if not sooner—and I mean fully responsible in every sense of the word. They are becoming less inclined to follow their parents’ way of thinking and they are more able to earn. They have seen the world on the television screen, and the visual is more compelling than reading. They have a very good understanding of what the world is all about. There is a revival of interest in politics. I am sorry that the Report does not talk about voting at 18, because that is in the minds of everyone who considers this matter, but if we go as far as the Report recommends, then voting at 18 may well be the logical next step.
I am absolutely on the side of youth. I would remind the House that even if we give the vote at 18, the average age at which the first vote is cast is 21, and if we give the vote at 21, then the average age at which it is first cast is 23. Mr. Pitt was a good Prime Minister, so it was said, and he was only 23, so that today presumably he might not even have had a vote and could not have been Prime Minister.”—[Official Report, 20 November 1967; Vol. 754, c. 980.]
I am telling that story because this was a woman who recognised the importance of lowering the voting age at that time in the 1970s. If we then think about our referendum in 2014, the Scottish Parliament legislated to make sure that 16 and 17-year-olds got the vote. I know that Winnie was particularly proud of the fact that our young people—those who were going to be part of Scotland’s story—were given that opportunity.
I will close with some reflections on the referendum day in 2014 and Winnie’s remarks when she was interviewed at her home by Hugh MacDonald—incidentally, he was the son of one of the two men who hoisted her aloft after the Hamilton by-election. Perhaps sensing that our cause would not be won that day, she maintained her optimism that the process of independence was going in only one direction. She said:
“I have never had any doubt that Scotland will be independent. None. This is still hopeful Thursday for the Yes campaign. I am not daft. I know this is on a knife edge, but this cannot be stopped. It is a movement. It is a process.”
My dearly departed friend and colleague was exactly right.
I want to make my closing remarks to my colleagues on the SNP Benches about the responsibility that we have. If we think about what we have endured over the course of the last few years since the financial crisis of 2008, the United Kingdom has been in reverse. We have had a decade of decline in living standards, with our people being held in poverty. Our responsibility is to have the vision, the energy, the drive and the leadership so that we can show people in Scotland that it does not have to be this way.
I will reflect for a moment on a book written by a chap called Anderson at Aberdeen University, in which he graphically shows that Scotland’s population in the United Kingdom on a relative basis has declined in every decade since the 1850s. That is a matter of fact. It is not about blaming anyone else but about what happens within the status quo.
People often talk about the deficit that Scotland has, but an important factor that has to be borne in mind is that that is the deficit within the context of the United Kingdom. In many respects we have missed the opportunity of North sea oil. Where is the legacy of the £350 billion- plus harvested in tax revenues from that resource? It is gone. But, friends, we will not make the same mistake a second time. What Scotland is facing now is an enormous opportunity from green energy, not just in providing energy for us but in providing leadership in the global economy. The Skilling report, which we as a group published last year, demonstrates that Scotland has the potential to increase its green energy output fivefold. Let us think about the opportunities for us if we can capture that supply chain: it is about creating a green industrial future, driving that investment into the Scottish economy, driving up productivity, driving up living standards and delivering the tax receipts that will be necessary to invest in health, education, transport and every other area of social policy in Scotland.
Look at our academic community, look at the excellence and leadership that we have in world-leading universities in Scotland, and think about the opportunity from putting that to work, developing the start-ups and spin-outs of the new industries of the future and not being held back by a United Kingdom that has turned its back on Europe, sent our economy into decline, lost opportunity and struck 4% off our GDP through the foolhardiness of Brexit.
The challenge for us is to say to people, “Yes, there is a better way; there is a way that Winnie Ewing would want us to take.” It is about showing how we would deliver that prosperity, and putting that in the context of the cost of living crisis, where so many of our people are in fuel poverty—my goodness—in a country rich in energy resource. That is the price that we pay for being part of this Union. As we face that election next year, and the opportunity of removing the Tories from power, it is not about removing the Tories in one election; it is about removing the Tories from Scotland for good, because Scotland becomes an independent country. That would be a legacy for Winnie Ewing.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
I am very grateful for this opportunity to pay tribute, on behalf of Plaid Cymru, to the late Winnie Ewing and to send my condolences to the family, particularly Annabelle, who was a very valued Member of this House when I started in 2001. I think she left us in 2005.
Much has already been said about the inspirational contribution Winnie Ewing made to Scottish and European politics. I could add to that, but I just want to note our appreciation in Wales of her contribution, in particular of course her breakthrough election in the Hamilton seat. I was a teenager at the time—you would not think so, being such a young lad—and completely obsessed with politics. Gwynfor Evans had been elected to the Carmarthen seat in 1966, just before Winnie Ewing. We had also had some near misses. As we have some time, and for the interest of the House, I will mention that, in Rhondda West, we came within 1,000 votes of beating the Labour party. They were much more colourful times back then. Our candidate Vic Davies would drive around the valley perched on the back of a big red dragon, which was loaded on to a flatbed lorry, getting his message to the people. It was a complicated message, I have to concede, but he knew how to do it. Then, in Caerphilly, the much missed Phil Williams, who many people here will remember, again came close to beating the Labour candidate.
Perhaps the most interesting one, if I can just go off on a slight tangent and diversion, which would be of interest to Labour Members, were they here, is S. O. Davies, who, in 1970, was the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil. He was allegedly 82 but probably quite a bit older and Labour decided to deselect him, so he decided to stand as an independent. This is a message for the Labour party: he stood as an independent and trounced the very lacklustre trade union official the Labour party had parachuted in. Interestingly, he was then offered the freedom of Merthyr Tydfil but turned it down, saying that the support of the people of Merthyr Tydfil was quite enough for him, thank you very much. They were much more colourful times.
As a young person in 1967 and 1968, the old world seemed to be dying and the new world was being born—not struggling to be born, but being born—before our eyes. As with S. O. Davies, some people from the old world showed us the way a bit. And that is when we had the Hamilton by-election to spur us on. At the time, I do not think one could overestimate the inspirational quality of Winnie Ewing’s victory. Joining Gwynfor Evans, it seemed that the tide was with us. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) said, this place can be very dispiriting. I know how much Gwynfor Evans, as the lone voice of Welsh nationalism, appreciated and welcomed Winnie Ewing’s arrival, which heralded a fruitful partnership between our two parties that has existed ever since.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
Just for the hon. Gentleman’s knowledge, in the many times I spent with Winnie Ewing, she mentioned Gwynfor Evans frequently.
Hywel Williams
I thank my hon. Friend for that point. Some people around me may be able to see this very interesting picture, which is of Winnie Ewing and Gwynfor Evans together at an advanced age sitting in the sunshine on a bench outside Gwynfor’s house chatting and laughing. I think Winnie was slightly disappointed that the glasses were empty. [Laughter.] There has been a very fruitful partnership between our two parties and that was established a long time ago. May that long continue. True to the path that Winnie Ewing and Gwynfor Evans established over 50 years ago, may we, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said, never forget that we are here not to settle down but to settle up. That is an inspirational statement.
I am now of an age when the old saw, “They don’t make them like that any more” begins to ring true; I tend to think that as well. So may I say about Winnie Ewing sincerely, “Thank you,” but also, “They don’t make them like that any more.”
Cost of Living and Brexit
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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David Duguid
That is an excellent point, but it has to be taken wholly in the round with the concerns of our own food and drink producers. It is not just about what we pay to get food on our plate. If our primary food producers do not make enough profit at the farm gate, we will not have any food produced in this country at all.
Decisions taken in the 2022 autumn statement and the 2023 spring Budget have resulted in an increase of more than £1.8 billion in Barnett consequential funding for the Scottish Government. That takes the total UK Government funding for the Scottish Government to £37.1 billion annually by 2024-25.
Under this Conservative UK Government, the economy is improving in a range of different ways. There are a record 33 million people in work in the UK, which is up 382,000 over the past year and by 4 million since the Conservatives came into power in 2010. The employment rate of 76% is near record highs and is up by 0.3 points over the past year and by 5.8 points since 2010. Figures show that the unemployment rate is at 3.8%, which is near its lowest rate since 1974 and down by 4.4 percentage points since 2010.
The benefits of Brexit include removing unnecessary red tape and regulatory burdens, ensuring that rules and regulations work for British businesses and consumers. The first package in a series of deregulation announcements expected this year is expected to save employers more than £1 billion a year in today’s money. Our first post- Brexit trade deals with Australia and New Zealand have already come into effect. The deals will—[Interruption.] Again, SNP Members are grumbling about trade deals. They have never, ever voted for a trade deal, either in this place or in the European Parliament. They are anti-trade, and they make no secret about it. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) said earlier, they voted against our deal with the EU after we left. In effect, they voted for a no-deal Brexit.
David Duguid
I give way to the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
A few moments ago the hon. Gentleman said that border checks are important for food producers. In a sign of there being no joined-up government, does not the Australia trade agreement kick away the stool he was standing on only a couple of minutes ago?
David Duguid
Again, everything needs to be looked at in the round. Our fantastic food and drink producers have export opportunities, and not just with Australia and New Zealand. Our trade deals with Australia and New Zealand are a stepping-stone to—[Interruption.] In fact, I was just about to come to this point. We will become the first European country to join the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership, which is now worth £12 trillion.
David Duguid
I will come back to the hon. Gentleman once I have finished this point. With 500 million people, trade with CPTPP countries will boost our economy by billions and support thousands of jobs in this country. Of course, no discussion of the benefits of leaving the EU could pass without mentioning fishing, but before I do so I will give way again to the hon. Gentleman.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising CPTPP. He will be aware that his own Government’s figures show that Brexit has damaged UK GDP by 5%, but the gain from CPTPP is 0.08%. That is equivalent to going to a horse race with £500, coming back with £8 and telling everybody that you backed a winner—but you have lost, and you have lost big style.
David Duguid
The 5% has gone up from the 4% that was reported previously, but what is not taken into account when those calculations are made is what it would cost for the UK to be in the EU. We are not in the EU any more, but we have a comprehensive trade agreement with the EU.
As I was saying, we have left the common fisheries policy and taken our place as an independent coastal state, which is well established as having been of great benefit to the fishing industry. [Interruption.] I would be delighted to take any argument on that. If SNP Members do not want to believe me, they can believe Elspeth Macdonald, the chief executive of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, which has confirmed that the UK Government and Scottish Government Ministers have a far stronger negotiating position at bilateral negotiations than we ever would have had as one of 28 member states of the EU.
David Duguid
The hon. Lady has spoken on behalf of her constituents, so I am sure she will forgive me for speaking on behalf mine. There are a large number of pelagic and white fish vessels in my constituency, and lobster and other static gear fishing industries are also represented. They experience the same problems with access to exports as anyone else on these islands. I was in the Scotland Office at the time we left the EU and there were initial issues with access to markets. There was new paperwork that everyone had to get used to. Many in the seafood export industry got established and were ready for the new conditions, but many were not. If the hon. Lady would like to intervene again, I would love to know what the SNP Scottish Government did with the £180 million Brexit preparation funding. How much of it was spent on actually helping our Scottish fishermen prepare?
David Duguid
If the hon. Member would like to comment on that, I welcome him to do so.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
How far does the hon. Gentleman think £180 million would go given that the cost of moving product to the European Union from my constituency off the west coast of Scotland has trebled? It was about 30p a kilo, but it is now over £1 a kilo. That is down to the red tape of Brexit. How far would £180 million go to mitigate that? It would not get anywhere near it, and this is costing people a lot.
David Duguid
I apologise, but the most engagement I have with the fishing industry is with that in my own constituency. I am sure that nobody would want to debate that. Remember that it was during the months after we left the EU that covid hit us, and it is covid, above all else, that has had the biggest impact on exports because the whole hospitality sector across the continent—the biggest market for our langoustines, lobster and other shellfish—had shut down.
I want to move on because I know that you want us to be relatively brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. On the motion’s proposal for the formation of a Committee, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), who is no longer in his place, made a very good point that the Education Committee is not included on the list. It might be possible to argue that there is no good reason for it to be included, but as he pointed out, our young people and skills are extremely important for the recovery of this economy. We need the overall economy to recover if we are going to get a hold of our cost of living issues. I was surprised when the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) said that the Education Committee should not be there because education is a devolved issue. I thought that this motion was a motion for this Parliament, which represents the whole United Kingdom, so I found that a strange justification. I agree with the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, and would like to hear what other justifications there may be.
Finally and in conclusion, as everyone will be pleased to hear, I will finish with a few more benefits of having left the EU. I must re-emphasise—we are still trading with the EU. We did not leave without a deal, as was predicted. In fact, as I said earlier and as others have said, at the time of the referendum, SNP Members voted to not have a deal when we left the EU at the end of 2019.
Oral Answers to Questions
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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John Lamont
May I first pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work in championing the seafood sector in Scotland? I look forward to visiting his constituency next month to chair the Scottish Seafood Industry Action Group where I will meet industry representatives. The UK Government’s energy intensive industries compensation scheme supports industries exposed to significant risk of carbon leakage and is targeted at the most electricity-intensive sectors that are competing in international markets. Any industries not included in this scheme can still benefit from the Government’s energy bill relief scheme and the energy bill discount scheme.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
To progress the structure for fisheries in Scotland, surely we have to move on from devolved Scotland to independent Scotland? I am sure the Minister can see that in Ireland there is independent Ireland in the Republic, and devolved Ireland in Northern Ireland. Which does he think is delivering better economically and for fisheries in Ireland: the devolved version or the independent version? Across Europe and across the world, everybody knows the answer—does the Minister?
John Lamont
I am very confident that for all fishing communities across the United Kingdom it is this Government who are delivering best. I am clear that none of the fishing communities in Scotland wishes to go back into the common fisheries policy, which the SNP advocates.
Independence Referendum for Scotland
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Government policy on a further independence referendum for Scotland.
Today is St Andrew’s day, and on this national day there is a particular significance and imperative. Last week, the UK Supreme Court told the Scottish Government that they could not exercise their democratic mandate to hold an independence referendum. But there was something else in that judgment—something that simply cannot be tolerated. There was the suggestion that, somehow, Scotland as a nation does not possess a right to self-determination. In suggesting that, the London Supreme Court overturned what has been the accepted legal, historic and political position that the UK is a voluntary Union.
Scotland’s separate constitutional tradition is perhaps best summed up in the view expressed by Lord Cooper, in the case of MacCormick v. Lord Advocate,
“The principle of the unlimited sovereignty of Parliament is a distinctively English principle, which has no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law.”
The Supreme Court seems to have repudiated that. Last week’s judgment rendered the UK a state of glaring contradiction. There are contradictions in our shared history, and contradictions of equality, politics, and representation.
The UK enthusiastically claims it seeks to preserve democracy the world over, yet moves to block Scotland at each and every turn. Can the Minister imagine the circumstances where, having entered the common market and ratified every subsequent treaty—leading to the European Union—the EU Parliament moved to block his party’s Brexit vote, or set a limit on when and if such a vote could be heard? The notion is, of course, ludicrous, because democracy is not a single event but an evolving and continuous process. That is how civilised people behave, and how freedom of thought and expression are peacefully demonstrated. Those are the foundations of inalienable human rights.
I will consider the contradictions, concluding with a commentary of the Supreme Court’s judgment. We are often told in this place that Scotland must be proud of our shared history as part of the most successful political union ever. I will test that narrative and ask the Minister to consider our shared history through a Scottish prism.
Before the Union, the English Alien Act 1705 threatened economic sanctions if Scotland did not settle the royal succession, or negotiate for a political union. The treaty was met with vociferous opposition both inside and outside Scotland’s parliamentary chamber but, given threats and enticements, a majority of Scottish parliamentarians were persuaded. The people were never consulted.
It so often goes that this is all ancient history and irrelevant to a modern Scotland in a respectful union of equals. Last week’s judgment challenged that previously understood narrative. What of that modern Scotland? In my lifetime, the political complexion of Westminster rule has rarely reflected the polity of Scotland. We have endured repeated Tory Governments that Scotland did not vote for, or Labour Administrations that took us into illegal wars that we wanted no part of.
Socioeconomic policies have destroyed our communities, exploited our resources and worked against the utility of the people of Scotland, contrary to the Articles of Union. The pursuit of such social and economic policies has driven a stake through the heart of once proud communities. As noted in the pleadings of the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), in her prorogation case to the UK Supreme Court, the 1707 parliamentary Union between England and Scotland may have created a new state but it did not create one nation.
Scotland was an independent nation for millennia before its coerced incorporation. It remains a distinct and internationally recognised people and country. No clearer is that evidenced than by the much earlier and continuing Union of the Crowns, where our shared monarch does not accede to a single throne of Britain, but takes the separate crowns of the realms of Scotland and England.
As a member of the EU, the UK possessed and exercised a veto, yet claimed its sovereignty was impeded by membership. Scotland has no such mechanism in this place, and is always subject to the wiles of the policy of its larger neighbour, exemplified by Brexit. How does that constitute access to meaningful political process, as claimed by the UK Supreme Court judgment?
In signing the Atlantic charter of 1941, wartime Prime Minister and hero of the Conservative party, Winston Churchill, brought into being the principle of self-determination of peoples, as now set out in the United Nations charter, in article 1(2), article 73 and article 76. Margaret Thatcher in her memoirs said of Scotland:
“As a nation, they have an undoubted right to national self-determination.”
John Major, when Prime Minister, said of Scotland:
“No nation could be held irrevocably in a Union against its will.”
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman is making a fantastic speech. He started by raising the point about the Supreme Court and self-determination. I found paragraph 88 of the judgment particularly interesting:
“The people in question are entitled to a right to external self-determination because they have been denied the ability to exert internally their right to self-determination.”
The judgment did exactly that; it did limit that right. The reason the judgment did not give the referendum was because, if it happened—even if it had limited legal effect—as it says in paragraph 81, it
“would possess the authority, in a constitution and political culture founded upon democracy”—
and that is all over western Europe. Ultimately, the concession has been made by the Supreme Court that the ballot box rules supreme. Indeed, the ballot box made the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court is a creature of the UK Government, which in turn was made at the ballot box.
Neale Hanvey
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I will consider the blurred boundaries of legal and political, as I move through my speech. In 1989, this place reaffirmed and acknowledged the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs. In May 1997, in an exchange with the right hon. Alex Salmond during the passage of the Bill that became the Referendums (Scotland and Wales) Act 1997, the late Donald Dewar responded that he should be the last to challenge the sovereignty of the people, accepting the right of the Scottish people to a choice, including independence, should that be their wish. None of these senior politicians ever placed a limit on or sought to constrain that democratic right to self-determination. Indeed, in the wake of the 2014 referendum, the Smith commission agreement was signed by all of Scotland’s main political parties and it stated:
“It is agreed that nothing in this report prevents Scotland becoming an independent country in the future should the people of Scotland so choose.”
Of course, the Good Friday agreement sets out a reasoned and internationally considered timescale of every seven years to consider constitutional change. A political generation of seven years is not unreasonable, but Scotland is now a year beyond and no further forward. It is therefore imperative; if there is a consented, legal and democratic route by which the people of Ireland —north and south—can choose their own constitutional future in a border poll every seven years, what is the consented, legal and democratic route by which the people of Scotland’s sovereign right to determine their own constitutional future can be respected? That is a right underpinned by Scots law, which rests on the claim of right that asserts that it is the people who are sovereign.
The Supreme Court’s rejection of the argument that Scotland has the right to self-determination in international law was described last week as “problematic”—very problematic—by Michael Keating, emeritus professor of politics at the University of Aberdeen. He states:
“The way is now open for the UK Government to say that there is no time or way for Scotland to exercise its acknowledged right of self-determination”.
He has quite rightly pointed out that in invoking the Canadian court’s ruling on Quebec, the UK Supreme Court failed to mention or consider a further aspect of that Canadian judgment—namely, that if Québec or any other province did vote for independence by a clear majority on a clear question, the Government of Canada would be bound to negotiate. That aspect of the Canadian court’s ruling is significant and in essence reflects a situation where legality meets politics.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman is making a great speech, and I am grateful to him for giving way again. The Holyrood Standing Orders perhaps possess a way, and the Supreme Court has, unwittingly perhaps, opened up every election from now on for people to speak at the ballot box. Under rule 11.10 of the Standing Orders for Holyrood, “Selection of the First Minister”, paragraph 5 mentions what happens when there is one candidate, paragraph 7 when there are two candidates, and paragraph 8 when there are more than two candidates. That, with a combination of no-confidence votes, surely leaves the way open, if it was chosen, for Scotland to determine its own future—if Holyrood decides to do that.
Scottish Referendum Legislation: Supreme Court Decision
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Scotland joining the Union predates the Scotland Act 1998 and it was the 1998 Act that the Supreme Court judged on today. The 1998 Act will not and cannot stop Scotland being an independent country. I am sure that the Secretary of State believes in the right of independence for Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Ukraine, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia and many others, so does he believe the same for Scotland? If Scotland votes for independence at an election ballot box, will he respect the democracy of that event?
Scottish Independence and the Scottish Economy
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Ian Blackford
Mr Speaker, if anybody is letting themselves down, it is the hon. Gentleman, because the Scottish Parliament has done its best to mitigate the effects of Tory austerity, thank goodness. We can applaud what the Scottish Government have done with child payments—introduced at £10, increased to £20 and now up at £25—but we cannot stop the damaging effect of austerity on our country, because the bulk of economic power lies in Westminster. The hon. Gentleman and his Labour colleagues may indeed support the Scottish Parliament—our Parliament—which does its best to protect the people from what happens in this place in Westminster and, of course, from the damaging effects of Brexit that mean our businesses cannot fulfil their potential. The hon. Gentleman ought to look in the mirror.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
The reality is that the split in terms of values is between the red Tories and the blue Tories here. The hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) should be aware that in Ireland, which became independent, the poorest 5% are 63% richer than the poorest 5% in the UK. If ever there was a lesson about being independent, that is it.
Ian Blackford
My hon. Friend is quite correct. When we look around the world, we see small countries thriving. Small countries tend to do better than larger ones. There are no economies of scale for large countries, and it is Westminster, the UK, that is holding Scotland back.
Let me return to the economic situation we face today: the pound is still down against the dollar and euro, mortgage rates are at their highest since the financial crash, and inflation is still at a 40-year high. History shows that those in the Tory party always act fast to rid themselves of their own political problems, but they always fail to take responsibility for the crises they create. They are failing to take responsibility for the cost of living crisis they created and the failing UK state they have presided over for the past 12 years.
It would be wrong to believe that the events causing deep damage over the last few weeks are somewhat isolated incidents. It does not take a genius to know that the timeline for every bit of turmoil in this place over the last few years stems from one place and one place only: the utter disaster of Brexit. Six years on, it has been a disaster by every significant measure. Brexit broke Britain.
Only yesterday, Scotland’s The Herald newspaper revealed that the value of Scottish exports has dropped by more than 13% in two years, costing £2.2 billion, with Brexit entirely to blame. That is what Brexit has done to the Scottish economy and Scottish trade. That has been the impact of what the Tories have brought to us. However, faced with these Brexit facts, it is a disgrace that Westminster’s only response is to say one of two things: “Suck it up,” or, “Shut up.” I assure the Brexit fanatics that we intend to do neither.
The reality of Brexit is biting everywhere. Last week I visited the Nevis Bakery in my constituency. The owner, Archie Paterson, explained to me that they currently employ 30 people, and that they could easily double that tomorrow, expanding their production line, expanding their premises and growing the local economy. But just one thing is stopping them, and it is Brexit. Brexit means they have no access to labour. The balance of workers used to be 80% EU skilled bakers, and that has declined to only 20%. They cannot get the staff, so they cannot expand. It is the same story for businesses across the highlands and right across Scotland: denied economic opportunity; denied the opportunity to grow our economy; denied the opportunity to prosper and deliver the taxation receipts. All that has been delivered by the Brexit Scotland never voted for.
Ian Blackford
I respectfully say to the hon. Gentleman that he should go away and read the treaties, because they are very clear; we are all aware of what is contained in them. Crucially, to join the euro, countries have to join the exchange rate mechanism for two years, which is voluntary. Countries cannot be forced into the euro. Our position is clear: we will deliver a fiscal programme that will deliver jobs for Scotland, create the circumstances for investment and drive up living standards—that is what we want with independence. We will make sure that we have the answer to the currency situation that delivers for our people.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
Perhaps the hon. Member for Bosworth (Dr Evans) is misled by headlines in The Times newspaper and should apprise himself better of what is actually happening in Europe. On 1 July 2013, Croatia joined the European Union and Croatia is not in the euro. There are about six or seven other countries in the European Union that are not in the euro. A country can join the euro if it wants over its own timescale—it can be hundreds of years if it wants—but it does what it wants and what it thinks is sensible for itself, and that is why it has independence.
Mr Jack
That simply is not democracy, because the hon. Member is not respecting the result of the referendum in 2014. As we heard from the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, there was confusion and, in that referendum, the Scottish National party was proposing that Scotland leave the EU. We have just heard a whole speech on how desperate the SNP is to get back into the EU, yet in 2014 the proposal made was that Scotland would leave—
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 make no apology for the fact that I have always been pro low taxes. That remains my position today.
For all that the motion for today’s debate purports to focus on the economy, we should be clear that it is, in reality, about allowing the SNP to talk about the one issue that matters to it: separation and seeking to break up the UK. This is simply not the time to be talking about another independence referendum. We share these islands, and we share a rich, shared history.
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.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) and the SNP on bringing this debate to the Chamber. I also pass on my thoughts and best wishes to the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant), who signed the motion. He is not with us today because he has lost his father, so our best wishes go to him. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
When I learned of and read the motion, I got quite excited, because I thought that I might finally agree with one of my SNP colleagues’ motions. It starts off, rightly, by highlighting the disastrous impacts of this Tory-created economic crisis, but I am sorry to say that it ends in a rather familiar way, with their one-size-fits-all and only answer to any question: independence. I will come to that later, but let me go through the first part of the motion.
To start with the Secretary of State’s contribution, I did not hear an apology for what the Government have just done to the UK economy. The Conservatives once claimed to be the party of economic competence, but they have now created absolute chaos. Let there be no doubt that the Conservatives have crashed the British economy. Their now junked mini-Budget—well, partially junked, because they have kept the scrapping of bankers’ bonuses—which was mini only in its connection with reality, has exacerbated an already burgeoning crisis. That crisis was born from catastrophic decisions made over the past 12 years, including when the current PM was Chancellor.
As the motion outlines, the pound is at a record low, mortgage rates are through the roof and inflation continues to spiral out of control. I know that for many on the Conservative Benches, those are just indicators—numbers on a screen—but they show an economy tanking as a result of their incompetence. This is not just about numbers; it is about the quality of life of millions of people up and down the country. It is about the unimaginable stress caused to families, who were already stumped by how they would make ends meet. They find their mortgage rates shooting up and energy prices rocketing, and they are staring at their supermarket receipts, wondering at how few items they got for such a high cost.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Member makes some great points about the catastrophe we are involved in due to being in the UK. On that basis, would he prefer an independent Scotland with a Labour or an SNP Government, or a Scotland inside the UK with a Tory Government? Which is it?
Ian Murray
I prefer Scotland in the UK with a Labour Government. What an absolutely ridiculous and pointless intervention from a ridiculous and pointless Member of Parliament. [Interruption.] Is that unparliamentary, Mr Deputy Speaker? Okay, I apologise. [Interruption.] I just said I apologise.
A family came to my surgery last week to say that their fixed-rate mortgage of 1.79% was expiring. Given the increases in interest rates, they were expecting to pay and had budgeted for 3.5%, but they were quoted more than 6.5% and they simply cannot afford it. What was it all for? To give unfunded tax cuts to the richest. Make no mistake: the Tories crashed the economy from Downing Street and it will be paid for by ordinary people, either through their pay packets or through austerity.
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.
Ian Murray
I am glad that the hon. Member has accepted it, from whichever seat he is now sitting in.
As I was saying, what has happened will be paid for by ordinary people either through their pay packets or through austerity, because the Government U-turns and change of Prime Minister cannot undo what has been done to Britain’s reputation. Our institutions have been undermined, our standing on the world stage has been diminished, and our credibility as a place to invest has been damaged. The devastation will last for years, maybe decades. As the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said in his opening speech—I will quote him as accurately as I can—that comes with “massive, massive costs”. But one of the other massive costs would be the break-up of the United Kingdom, because there is no doubt that this Conservative Government are as big a threat to the Union as any nationalist sitting by my side here.
Who have the Conservative party turned to to put out the fire? The arsonist himself. Let us not forget that even before this abject disaster, the now Prime Minister, as Chancellor, delivered the highest tax burden on working people in 70 years, the highest inflation in 40 years and the highest of any G7 country, the largest fall in living standards since records began in the 1970s, continued low growth and stagnant wages.
We have a Prime Minister who increased the tax for everyone else while he did not think his family should pay it; a Prime Minister who, while every single person in this country suffered under lockdown, was fined for partying in Downing Street; a Prime Minister who left a loophole in the windfall tax so that billions of pounds that could have been put into public services to help people with their energy bills were left on the table; a Prime Minister who lost tens of billions of pounds to covid fraud and shrugged his shoulders; a Prime Minister who was so weak in dealing with the cost of living crisis that he thought that the best and only response was to increase everyone’s national insurance; a Prime Minister who was, as a Member of Parliament, more of a US resident than a UK citizen; a Prime Minister who always puts his party first and the country second; and a Prime Minister without a mandate to govern. As the Leader of the Opposition so aptly put it, in the only competitive election in which the Prime Minister has stood, he was trounced by someone who was in turn beaten by a lettuce.
Ian Murray
The big difference will be having a stable economy. The big difference will be growth. The big difference will be a laser-like focus on child poverty. The big difference will be trade. The big difference will be making this country work. The big difference will be repairing our relationship internationally, including with our EU partners. Those are the big differences. We will have a constitutional settlement fit for the 2020s, instead of ripping Scotland out of the United Kingdom with all the problems that that may cause.
If my attack on the Conservative party has upset SNP Members, wait until they hear the next few pages of my speech. While I am speaking of having no plan, let me turn to the second part of the SNP’s motion, which I certainly disagree with: the prospectus for independence. The much-anticipated paper appeared a few Mondays ago, after years or even decades of no credible economic answers from the yes movement. Unfortunately, even with all these papers, the wait continues.
Let me turn to a few of the big themes. They may seem a little like déjà vu in this House, but we still have no answers. The first, and probably the most obvious and important, is currency. SNP Members have had more views on the currency of an independent Scotland than I have had fish suppers—and I can tell you I have had a few, Mr Deputy Speaker. Their latest wheeze was revealed last week. Immediately after having voted to leave the United Kingdom—in their hypothetical scenario—an independent Scotland would take back control with a radically different economic approach and keep the pound. So the Bank of England and the UK Treasury would still set the fiscal rules; all that would change is that we would have no say whatever over them.
The economic levers that SNP Members continually bleat about would be left in Westminster. Would that just be temporary, though? They say yes, because they would introduce a separate Scottish currency, the Scottish pound. We might ask how long that would take, but they do not tell us. At first, people would pay their mortgage in the same currency in which they borrowed it, but at some point during the lifetime of their mortgage, the currency would probably switch to one that does not currently exist. One thing I know from discussions with my own mortgage provider is that if people borrow in pounds, they will pay back in pounds, regardless of the value of any new currency.
The SNP chair of the Sustainable Growth Commission—a commission that has now been junked and barely mentioned—has said:
“The risk would be that the currency would come into being and then quickly devalue…That would have an effect on people’s income”.
Just listen to that sentence. After the mini-Budget, we know all too well what happens when a currency devalues so quickly. According to the eminent economist Professor MacDonald of Glasgow University, that devaluation could be as much as 30% on day one. That is a 30% reduction in income overnight, but everyone’s borrowing would stay in pounds.
If SNP Members will not listen to economists or experts, perhaps they will listen to someone they know better: the First Minister herself, who said that using the pound is in the long-term interests of Scotland. She said that for years. It has now been junked.
A new country and a new currency would also mean a central bank, but not one like any other central bank that exists in the economies of the world. At first, for an indeterminate period, it would be a central bank operating with another country’s currency. The First Minister claimed at the launch and the press conference that the central bank would be a lender of last resort and would stand by things like the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, which guarantees up to £85,000 in someone’s bank account if a bank goes into liquidation or disappears. So we would have a central bank as a lender of last resort, standing by things like the Financial Services Compensation Scheme in someone else’s currency, but with absolutely no control over monetary policy.
The Scottish Government paper says that a greater emphasis would be placed on fiscal policy to ensure the strength of the economy. Surely that is shorthand for greater austerity. I will come back to that issue later.
Ian Murray
Let me just finish this point, because it is really important and perhaps the hon. Gentleman will be able to answer it. According to the paper, when the new currency is established after an indeterminate period, the planned reserves will total just $14 billion—a fraction of what similar small nations require. In the Scottish Government’s first paper, they drew comparisons with lots of other small European countries, so let us compare some currency reserves. Denmark’s currency reserve is equivalent to $82 billion, Norway’s to $84 billion and Sweden’s to $62 billion, and those are all established currencies with a track record and a borrowing record. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can tell us how that makes the case for borrowing to create massive reserves.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman has just pointed out the reserves of independent countries, so he can obviously tell us the reserves of Scotland, if it is doing so well in the Union. If Scotland becomes independent, will Labour Members come forward with policies, or will they pretend they are like the Tories and refuse to play? Will he try to get into the House of Lords, or will he want to be a politician in Scotland after independence? What is his position? Under devolution, five parties come forward and present their views to the public. I imagine that that will be the same after independence—or are Labour and the Tories saying, “We’re taking our ball home—we can’t play any more”?
Ian Murray
Mr Deputy Speaker, honestly! We want a sensible debate, but according to the hon. Gentleman I am taking my ball home and going to the House of Lords. I suspect that the reason he is so animated is that his seat might become a Labour seat at the next general election. Let me tell him my prospectus for Scotland: my prospectus is that Scotland stays in the United Kingdom with a UK Labour Government. That is my policy. He seems to forget that this is his motion, not mine: I am replying to an SNP Opposition day debate on a motion tabled by SNP Members in their own terms.
I was talking about the reserves of other countries. The SNP’s approach to creating Scotland’s reserves, which would be a fraction of those of other countries, is to borrow. The SNP’s proposition for independence is to continue to use the pound while setting up its own central bank, being a Scottish lender of last resort and borrowing tens of billions of pounds to create reserves for a new currency. The very foundation of the new state would be built on unfunded, unforecasted borrowing. It is like someone trying to build up their savings by using a credit card. We know it is bonkers, because the UK Government have just demonstrated how bonkers it is, and SNP Members know it.
Ian Murray
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman up to a point, but I wish he would not refer to the UK Government’s largesse or Westminster’s largesse. It is this Conservative Government’s largesse, and if we want to turn the UK around and keep the UK together, we have to replace this rotten lot with a UK Labour Government.
The right hon. Gentleman is right, however: the list of failures of Scottish Government policy is the length of your arm, and I would be here until 7 o’clock this evening if I went through them all. That includes the failures in my own constituency, where it is impossible to get a GP appointment. The Health Secretary tells me there is no problem, although NHS Lothian has said that health services and GP services in my constituency are failing—and I quote that directly from one of its reports.
Let me now turn to the subject of the European Union, because we have heard a lot about that. I remind the House—including my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield, who made some great points about the EU—that when the Division bell rang on our efforts to find a way through a deal with the European Union, we would have won on the customs union had the SNP not abstained. And let us not forget that when the Division bell rang on 12 December, after the general election, when the offer on the trade and co-operation agreement was “take it or leave it”, SNP Members voted for no deal. That is their record here: they talk a good game, but they do not deliver when they should be delivering.
Much like the experience of some Conservative Members in recent years, the response from Brussels has not fitted the preconceived fantasy. At the aforementioned press conference, the First Minister rejected the idea that Scotland would join the euro, saying it was
“not the right option for Scotland”.
Nonetheless, she added, Scotland would have no problem with joining the European Union. That is awkward, is it not, because the EU does not seem to agree. The law does not seem to agree. Officials have insisted, and the treaties state, that any country wishing to join the EU would legally have to commit to the euro. I wonder whether any SNP Members can shed any light on the Scottish Government’s position—but let me answer my own question, because I am more likely to get the answer than I would be if the SNP answered it.
The paper says that an independent Scotland would use the pound for an undetermined period, then borrow tens of billions—which may be an inadequate amount—to support a new currency, only to have to legally commit to joining the euro at some point in the future. The SNP has more currency positions in this paper than we have had Prime Ministers since the summer. If the mini-Budget has demonstrated anything, it is that the markets take a dim view of fantasy economics. What an economic catastrophe for Scottish people’s mortgages, borrowing, pensions and wages!
Before SNP Members start jumping up and down, as they have already, saying that some EU countries do not use the euro, let me repeat that every new member of the European Union must legally commit to joining the euro. That is written in an international treaty, which is international law. But here comes the conundrum for the SNP. The paper that has been presented by the First Minister does several things; are she and the SNP saying (a) that they are not willing to abide by the EU rules on the euro? They have already said that they would not join the exchange rate mechanism. They would play their games: they would say they would do it, and would not. Is that the policy, or is it (b)? If it is not joining the euro, they are essentially saying that a separate Scotland would sit outside the rest of the UK and the EU with a different currency.
Ian Murray
That position is surely not in the best interests of Scotland—but I hear someone shout, from a sedentary position, “Got it in one.” So SNP Members want to create a border with our biggest trading partner, and to create a currency border with what they say will become their biggest trading partner, and Scotland will be sitting with a separate currency, a different currency, outwith both. What they are doing—and this is key to the whole argument—is cherry-picking EU rules, which sounds more like Farage “cakeism” than a credible proposition for any country. They want to take all the good things but none of the bad, and they have no way of squaring that circle.
Ian Murray
I said I would give way to my neighbouring colleague, the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), but she is no longer here—
Ian Murray
She has given up; she has no answers to these questions either.
It is little wonder that the Institute for Fiscal Studies—much quoted by the First Minister in the last few weeks, and rightly, because of the mess this Government have made of the UK economy—has also slammed the SNP’s position. The IFS said:
“It is highly likely an independent Scotland would need to make bigger cuts to public spending or bigger increases to tax in the first decade following independence ”.
The IFS was right about the mini-Budget—indeed, everyone quotes it, including the First Minister—and it is right about this proposition as well. If SNP Members will not listen to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, why will they not listen to their own people on their own side? Robin McAlpine of the Common Weal foundation has been quoted already today, and he is somebody the SNP used to quote vociferously in here. He campaigned for independence alongside the First Minister—and alongside many Members who are now sitting here—in 2014.
David Duguid
I have previously debated this issue with SNP Members. Every Member is elected to this House by a plurality of their constituents, but the majority of voters across the whole of Scotland did not vote for the SNP. [Interruption.] SNP Members are indignant in their incredulity. They may have more Members in this House, but that is not how referendums work. The referendum they dearly want would be based on a majority of voters across the whole of Scotland. I will not debate that point, as it is not the subject of this debate.
In response to the challenges faced by the whole country, this UK Government have taken action to support domestic and business customers, particularly the most vulnerable and the hardest hit. The energy price guarantee is expected to save a typical household in Great Britain at least £700 a year. The energy bill relief scheme will protect businesses and other non-domestic energy users, including charities and public sector organisations, by providing a discount on wholesale gas and electricity prices of roughly a third of what they would have paid without the intervention. That is on top of the energy bill support scheme announced earlier this year, which provides at least £400 to every household with a domestic electricity supply. There is also a further £9 billion of targeted support to the most vulnerable households, including pensioners.
There is a £650 cost of living payment to every household on means-tested benefits, paid out to more than 8 million households in two instalments—one in July and one in the autumn—which works out at roughly a third of all households in Great Britain. There is a £300 cost of living payment to the approximately 8 million pensioner households in receipt of the winter fuel payment, and a £150 cost of living payment to the nearly 6 million people in receipt of disability payments.
David Duguid
Before I give way, I remind the hon. Gentleman that these measures were taken by the UK Government.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman talks of the pressures and challenges. He will be aware that mortgages are, on average, two percentage points cheaper in Ireland, that Irish pensions are higher and that the poorest 5% of people in Ireland are 63% better off than the poorest 5% in the UK. Does he think Ireland would want to rejoin the UK, or does he think Ireland is happy with its independence?
David Duguid
I am not here to speak on behalf of the people of the Republic of Ireland or, indeed, the people of Scotland, unlike the hon. Gentleman. I am here to speak on behalf of my constituents in Banff and Buchan, who I continue to argue have benefited greatly from being part of the United Kingdom.
David Duguid
If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I will continue listing the many benefits of being in this United Kingdom for the people of Scotland and everyone else.
The household support fund, which was launched at the 2021 autumn Budget, provided £500 million from October 2021 to March 2022. It was extended by the 2022 spring statement for the period from April to October this year, and the latest extension will cover the period from October 2022 to March 2023, bringing the total amount provided to £1.5 billion since October 2021. This is a devolved area of policy, but it has generated Barnett consequentials for the Scottish Government of £41 million in the last financial year and a further £82 million in the current financial year. As hon. Members have described, it is for the Scottish Government to decide how to fund mechanisms in Scotland as they see fit.
That £1.5 billion package is in addition to the more than £22 billion of UK Government support announced previously, including the £9.1 billion energy support package announced in February 2022, which had £296 million in Barnett consequentials for the Scottish Government as a result of the council tax rebate payment and the discretionary funding for local authorities in England.
The reduction in the universal credit taper rate and the increase in the work allowance announced in the 2021 autumn Budget meant an extra £1,000 to those on the lowest incomes. An increase in the national insurance primary threshold to £12,570, making it the same as the threshold for income tax from July 2022, and a lowering of the earnings limit were also announced in the 2022 spring statement. A fuel duty freeze was announced in the 2021 autumn Budget, and a 5p cut to fuel duty was announced at this year’s spring statement.
David Duguid
I was going to talk about the reversal of the health and social care levy, which will save 2.3 million people in Scotland an average of £285 in 2023-24. I will return to the question of tax coming in, payments going out and the terms of the Union dividend.
I will continue with the list, which is not exhaustive. I am listing just some of the highlights of what this UK Government have provided to everyone in this United Kingdom. The national living wage has been increased by the largest-ever cash amount, meaning that 2 million full-time workers will be £1,000 a year better off. Another benefit of Scotland being in the UK is that the rest of the UK accounts for £52 billion-worth of Scotland’s exports, which is three times larger than the amount going to the EU. Half a million Scottish jobs are supported by trade with the rest of the UK.
The Union dividend, for those who are not aware, is the combined value of higher public spending and lower tax revenues in Scotland. In 2021-22, the Union dividend reached a record high of £12 billion, which works out, as the Secretary of State said, at £2,184 per person, up from £1,925 per person the previous year. This includes Scotland’s geographical share of North sea revenues, and it is comprised of £1,963 of higher expenditure per person plus £221 in lower revenues generated per person in Scotland.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman is talking about identifiable spending, which is a bit like the two of us going for a pizza, throwing away a third of it and then saying, “You got slightly more of the two thirds.” There is loads of non-identifiable spending in London—there is Crossrail, there are MPs’ expenses here in the evening, and whatever else—and we are not seeing Barnett consequentials for that. When we talk about this expenditure, he is telling only part of the story, and it is a misleading part of the story. If he wants to tell the real story, he must talk about the whole lot, and those figures are hidden.
David Duguid
I think I heard an invitation to join the hon. Gentleman for a pizza one night.
David Duguid
I would be happy to take the hon. Gentleman up on that, where we can discuss this further. [Hon. Members: “You’ll be left with the bill!”] Quite possibly. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point that it is a complex issue but, as has been highlighted by the shadow Secretary of State, the Scottish Government’s own figures point out the Union dividend. They recently published a paper on the economy for an independent Scotland. I am not going to get into the detail but, as has been mentioned, it contains vague claims about how a new Scottish pound would be created, despite the central bank being in a different country. More recently, we have had confirmation from the EU that not only would rejoining the EU not be as straightforward as the SNP would have us believe, but it certainly would not be able to rejoin without committing to join the euro.
Finally, on the subject of that paper, let me read out the following quote from the Institute for Fiscal Studies:
“it skirts around what achieving sustainability would likely require in the first decade of an independent Scotland: bigger tax rises or spending cuts than the UK government will have to pursue…Scotland’s public finances are therefore expected to weaken relative to the rest of the UK… Experience from recent weeks suggests the markets may not look favourably on fiscal plans built on the uncertain hope of a substantial future boost to growth.”
These are challenging times, but the breaking up of our 300-year-old Union of nations is not the answer to those challenges. The Scottish people want both of their Governments—both of our Governments—to work together on delivering economic stability and quality public services, rather than pursuing a cynical, divisive second independence referendum. But rather than working collaboratively with the UK Government, the SNP continues to waste taxpayers’ money—the £250 million on ferries is just one well-known issue, and I could go on, but I am not going to take up any more of Members’ time—undermining the quality of vital public services and holding Scotland back, while constantly using the calls for an independence referendum as a distraction.
I know that happened during my time as a Minister, and I am sure that the new Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), who will be responding to the debate, will continue, along with the Secretary of State, to seek to work productively and collaboratively with the Scottish Government as we work to deliver economic stability and improve vital public services for the Scottish people. That collaboration in the national interest is what the people of Scotland desperately want, not a damaging, divisive and distracting independence referendum.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
My hon. Friend makes a fantastic point. He just listed nations in the top 10 of the UN human development index. Here we are as Scots MPs in the UK, and the UK is at No. 18—and we are told that we are a poor part of that No. 18. Those who have left, such as Ireland, are 10 places higher. Of the countries he has mentioned, Iceland and Norway are at Nos. 2 and 3. He makes the case brilliantly.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who takes these issues seriously.
I have been a bit encouraged. Here is one that I am pretty certain Members from other parties will definitely agree to. I think we have to be honest about certain things and acknowledge that there will also, obviously, be difficulties. However, I think independence will be positive for Scotland; like our near-neighbours, we could be an incredible nation if we were in charge of our own affairs.
Let us see whether other Members agree—I am almost certain they will—that there would be issues at the starting point of Scottish independence because of the deficit we have as part of the United Kingdom. We can all agree with that: no objection from the Conservative Benches to that. Can we also agree that the way to resolve the deficit, as has been demonstrated by colleagues, is to remove the conditions that create it? Can we agree to that?
What we want is to have the full range of economic powers that will allow us to properly address the issue and to remove ourselves from the very institutions that give us the deficit as a result of being part of the United Kingdom. Can we agree to that? Other hon. Members are silent; I do not think they are agreeing—they are just humouring me now.
Robin Millar
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but he plays with the difference between a referendum and electoral representation in a House that runs a first-past-the-post scheme. I am happy for those arguments to be played out in a place where greater minds than mine can exercise themselves on that.
Robin Millar
I wish to make a little progress.
Having said that serious plans deserve serious question and scrutiny, I was disappointed to discover that the SNP Administration’s recent economic plan for separation fell short of what I would consider serious consideration. The paper contains no modelling, no projections and no hard analysis of the implications of independence—criticisms that were laid by many against this Government in recent weeks.
Two key arguments in that document for separation put forward by the SNP are a reversal of so-called austerity and EU membership. I will consider both points briefly. On austerity and state spending, an independent Scotland would have, as we have heard, a high public sector deficit. In fact, it would be among the highest in Europe, with state spending exceeding tax receipts by 12%, and yet the SNP contends that spending is not high enough. Indeed, the Scottish Government announced real-term cuts of 8% to local government, the police, prisons, universities and rural affairs after the Institute of Fiscal Studies warned that they faced a £3.5 billion overspend. That is crucial in understanding what the implications would be for an independent Scotland.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
The hon. Gentleman seems to say that if a country, a state or a Union has a 12% deficit, it cannot be independent—that should be news to the UK. I have a couple of questions for him. Does he accept that this is a political Union, and is there a democratic way out? When we left the trading bloc of the European Union, we had a right to choose. Surely that right exists in relation to this Union, too.
The hon. Gentleman says that Westminster can block a referendum, but if the Scottish Parliament were to hold an election—he mentioned elections earlier—on the sole question of independence, would he, as a democrat, recognise that, or would he seek to find a way to worm his way out of the straightforward recognition of the will of the Scottish people?
Robin Millar
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his questions. I missed his earlier invitation for pizza. I would gladly discuss those points over a pizza, but I will not get drawn into that tangle now—it is an important tangle and these are important questions. However, I offer this observation. For me, this is not a transactional, contractual relationship between two parties. The relationship that the United Kingdom had with the EU was of that sort. The relationship that we enjoy as part of this Union is a covenant, an intertwining of a relationship over centuries. It goes beyond a simple piece of paper. In fact, one of the great deceits of the past couple of decades has been the mistranslation of, and confusion over, Union and devolution. A deep and complex relationship has been misinterpreted as a contractual relationship, which is the basis of devolution.
Robin Millar
Indeed it does. The internal market we enjoy by virtue of being a United Kingdom is of huge importance to every farmer in every part of this United Kingdom. There is more I could say on that, but I will keep to the thrust of this debate.
I must agree with the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray): there is no plan. The SNP’s plan is no plan at all. It falls short on how key public services will continue to be funded and to operate. Further, it does not address the two biggest shocks to our economy in the past two years—a covid pandemic and a war in eastern Europe. The UK Government have responded to both by virtue of the strength of the United Kingdom economy, for the benefit of all parts of the United Kingdom. There is no provision, however, in the plans of the SNP and the Scottish Government for a response to such emergencies and no demonstration of the resilience necessary to cope with the global storms we must weather.
The plan fails to give those whose livelihoods depend on the UK an idea of how they would be able to provide for their families. It fails to offer anything to communities that would be split by a new border. In short, more than matters of the heart or even of the head, and more than the hard-nosed transactions of an economy, the plan fails in its moral duty to the people of Scotland.
That moral duty is real. The fate of Ukrainian refugees is a concern to us all, and we know that the people of Scotland and the Scottish Parliament extended a warm welcome to many of them. However, that warm welcome has been poorly served. We know that those people are being housed in temporary accommodation on ships, and that the space they are allocated on them is less than the amount a prisoner in a Scottish prison can expect by law to enjoy.
Robin Millar
I take the hon. Lady’s point in the spirit in which it was intended, but perhaps she or another Member could answer whether it is true that Ukrainian refugees have had to be housed on ships in Scotland because there has not been the accommodation they were promised. They have received a warm welcome across the UK—I have no doubt that, or about the ambition behind it—but my point is the reality of public services in meeting that ambition. That is the thrust of this debate. It is a debate about independence and the economy, and about how we meet the reality of providing for those on who depend on us.
I will make one more point on the question of moral duty. Ireland has been mentioned a number of times as an example. Ireland secured its independence in 1922, but as one of his first actions the Irish Minister for Finance, Ernest Blythe, cut the pay of civil servants and reduced Government spending from £42 million in 1923 to £28 million by 1926. That is a one-third cut in Government spending in the years immediately following independence. These are real questions about the consequences of a transition to an independent nation but, again, on these practical points of a plan for independence, the document presented is silent.
I will finish on this point—
Robin Millar
No, I have taken several interventions. The planning of a new country is a serious undertaking, but we have yet to see a serious plan.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
No, I have just started, so I hope the hon. Gentleman will let me go on for a wee bit.
In 2017, the Prime Minister said that
“it seems hard to block”
a second independence referendum for Scotland. Let me also repeat the words of another Tory Prime Minister, whom I repeat time and time again for the historical record. The former right hon. Member for Finchley said that if the Tory party
“sometimes seems English to some Scots that is because the Union is inevitably dominated by England by reason of its greater population.”
Now, that is just a simple fact, and the former right hon. Member for Finchley was correct.
They then went on to say:
“The Scots, being a historic nation”—
I am sure that you and I agree at least on that, Madam Deputy Speaker, although I will not ask your opinion from the Chair—
“with a proud past, will inevitably resent some expressions of this fact from time to time. As a nation, they have an undoubted right to national self-determination.”
We are a nation. We are not a region. We are not some subsection of some great state in the Soviet Union. We are a nation of historic lineage going back into time immemorial that people all over the world call home. They continued by saying that
“thus far, they have exercised that right by joining and remaining in the Union.”
They go on to say, and this is worth repeating time and again:
“Should they determine on independence, no English party or politician would stand in their way, however much we might regret their departure.”
That, I think, is a clear constitutional position.
Members will be relieved that I do not intend to go over many of the excellent points already made by my colleagues—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) is welcome to interject at some point if he wishes. Let us go to the economic case for independence, because that is the crux of the matter. This may go back to some of the questions raised by Government Members, because I cannot help but feel that things are often framed very much in the wrong way. If things were perfect for the Scottish economy, or for the UK economy—I mean the United Kingdom of Great Britain and also Northern Ireland, which does not get much mention from some on the Government Benches—there would not be so many SNP MPs here making the case for independence today. Our aim is not to tweak the economy here or there or hope for some marginal improvements for Scotland; Scottish independence is a political project—a political choice for the people of Scotland, should they make it—that seeks to change the underlying economic conditions in order to improve the lives of everyone not only in my constituency but across the length and breadth of Scotland.
While at one time that idea may have seemed utopian, the events of the last few weeks and months—actually, the last few years—have turned the chronic problems of the UK economy into an acute polycrisis of stagnant wages and productivity and plummeting competitiveness precipitated by the disastrous consequences of a Brexit that Scotland did not vote for.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
My hon. Friend is right: this is not about utopia; it is based in reality, because we have an example in front of us. One hundred years ago, the poorest part of the United Kingdom was Ireland. It became independent and shed the six counties that had the majority of the industry. One hundred years later, Ireland’s GDP per capita is well ahead of the UK’s. Such a thing can happen only when a country can make its own political choices, rather than them being abdicated to people for whom that country does not vote and who do not care about that country.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
I totally agree with my hon. Friend. That is the premise for independence. An independent country would seek trade deals and agreements with those countries with which it seeks to boost trade. It would seek to boost productivity, improve competitiveness, and get rid of the idea of stagnant wages, because that is the basis of the UK economy.
Turning again to Brexit, in the past year alone—not since 2016, but in the past year—my constituents in West Dunbartonshire, which is one local authority area, have lost £32.5 million in exports because of Brexit. On top of the cost of living crisis, that comes to £869.97 per household. In my part of the world, that is a lot of money when people are trying to pay their electricity or gas bill, even though Scotland produces more gas than we need. It is an absolutely failed economic model.
Our current economic model is quite simple: we get a fiscal transfer every year from the Treasury, and in exchange we accept—and have accepted—that macro-economic policy will continue to be made with London and the south-east of England in mind. My constituents receive—this may go back to some of the questions from Government Members—slightly higher per capita public spending in return for what is essentially a guarantee that their wages and the Scottish economy will grow at a slower rate than they do here in London and the south-east of England.
In the past, that felt like a fair exchange. We were told that the engine of the UK economy would power up more quickly after recessions and recover more quickly from blows than the peripheral areas. That meant that the fiscal transfer could continue. No one seemed to notice the divergence over time, which led to the situation that was memorably compared by the economist Duncan Weldon: the UK economy basically consisted of the Republic of Singapore surrounded by a series of Portugals —no disrespect; I love Portugal—with a high-wage, high-productivity engine that could support the sluggish economies of its hinterland.
That divergence has led to the incredible reality of northern English regions and constituencies now being poorer than the former communist parts of east Germany, with other states that did not have an open economy until 30 years ago, such as Poland, Slovenia and Estonia, not far behind. The change of the economic crisis from chronic to acute can be put down to Brexit and 12 years of Tory misrule, but I have to say to my friends on the Labour Benches that the seeds for two decades of stagnant productivity and wage growth were sown during their period in office with their total inability to challenge the UK’s macroeconomic orthodoxy.
I am mindful of the comments of my former colleague, Andrew Wilson, who was a Member of the Scottish Parliament and has written a lot on these issues. He calls the UK an “aeroplane with one engine”. In good times, we are unlikely to notice any turbulence, but that cannot be guaranteed forever. When the engine begins to run more slowly than its competitors, as we are seeing now, there is a knock-on effect for everyone, including those in Scotland.
Simply, people across these islands are getting poorer, while those across the Sheuch in Ireland are getting wealthier all the time, as my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar said. Let us not forget that Ireland, as an independent sovereign state, used the pound from 1922 to 1928 and was then pegged to the pound for 50 years. People should not just say that the fiscal position cannot happen; we need to be conscious about history and the reality on the ground. The people of Scotland recognise that.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
My hon. Friend raises an interesting and important point. Ireland was pegged to the pound for all those years, which probably held it back and was a mistake. It was unpegged when the UK went cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund for a bailout in the 1970s, and Ireland then—combined with joining the European Union, incidentally on the same day that Scotland joined—took off.
Martin Docherty-Hughes
Indeed. The underlying economic case for this Union, the British Union—not the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland—that we get slightly higher public spending in exchange for worse wages and growth begins to fall apart when average incomes in the UK decline relative to those of its neighbours.
As it is appropriate to ask Scottish National party Members to lay out the economic case for independence, it is also appropriate to ask questions of the Conservative Government and of the Labour Opposition, who seem unwilling to diverge from the Government on matters of macroeconomics. I would love to hear from the Front-Bench teams what they would say to people from West Dunbartonshire when they ask what the cost is to them over a working life of having lower wages than their peers in similar parts of northern Europe. Similarly, they ask about the economic value attributed to combining those lower wages with fewer years of healthy working life lived.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I am pleased that the Scottish National party has decided to bring this debate to the Chamber. It is important that the case for an independent Scotland is re-examined. The points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) will have been heard loudly both in Scotland and across the United Kingdom.
This is a matter of great interest to my constituents in Chesterfield. It is a fact that people across England feel very passionately and strongly that the United Kingdom is better together, and that the success of Scotland and the success of England is assured by our being together in the United Kingdom. We gratefully remember the many contributions made by Scots to the United Kingdom in a whole variety of different ways. The successful Union we have had over hundreds of years has led to Britain being the successful country that it is.
It was precisely because it matters to me and my constituents that, during 2014, I went up to Scotland and spent a considerable amount of time campaigning in the independence referendum, speaking to people in an array of constituencies.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
I hear the hon. Gentleman’s confession that he went up to Scotland for the 2014 referendum. Did he, on any doorsteps in Scotland, say to the people that voting to stay in the UK would guarantee their place in the European Union, or was he a Brexiteer by that point?
Allan Dorans
The people of Scotland have paid into their pensions all of their working lives and will continue to be paid by the Scottish Government after independence.
Scotland has a clear and unprecedented political mandate to be an independent country, as witnessed at the ballot box. This is shown by the number of SNP Members elected to the Westminster Parliament, to the Scottish Parliament and in the Scottish local authority elections.
In the 2019 general election, the SNP won 49 of the 59 available Scottish parliamentary seats in Westminster. This is a clear and indisputable mandate for Scottish independence. Since the elections for the Scottish Parliament in May 2021, the SNP holds 64 of the 129 seats available, with the Conservatives achieving only 31 and Labour 22. That is an outstanding achievement with a voting system designed to prevent a significant majority by any one political party.
In the Scottish local elections held earlier this year, the SNP won 453 of the 1,227 seats available across the 32 local authority areas. Again, this was more than any other single party. It must be emphasised that the SNP MPs, MSPs and councillors won the highest number of seats of any party in every one of these elections and were all elected on a clear manifesto commitment to Scottish independence. In short, Scotland has a clear political mandate to be independent and to hold a referendum on independence, and it intends to do so on 19 October 2023.
Scotland has what it takes to be a modern, forward-looking, successful, welcoming independent country in the European Union, not tied to a Government in London whom they did not vote for and whose decisions and policies are not in the interests of the people of Scotland. We will always have a social and cultural relationship with our neighbours in England, but what we seek to change is the political relationship where decisions that affect the people of Scotland are best made by the people of Scotland. Decisions involving immigration, the economy, the environment, defence and foreign policy should be best suited to the wishes and needs of the people of Scotland.
Some of the unique benefits introduced since the reintroduction of the Scottish Parliament, which are the envy of our neighbours in the British Isles and throughout the world, include enhanced childcare provision, free prescriptions and sanitary products, free bus travel for those over 60, disabled people and those under 22, the Scottish child payment—described as game-changing—and additional support for care experienced young people. They also include free university tuition based on the ability to learn rather than the ability to pay, which has enabled people to obtain university education, and many other outstanding initiatives that demonstrate that Scotland is leading the world as a more equal, caring and compassionate country.
Scotland has a long history of contributing to the modern world. Winston Churchill commented, “Of all the small nations on this Earth, perhaps only the Ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind.” It was reported only last weekend in The Guardian that the University of St Andrews was assessed as the top university in the United Kingdom, beating Oxford and Cambridge. Scotland also had a further four universities in the top 18 in the United Kingdom.
Most important to the country is our people. They are innovative, inventive people, who have contributed to developing all aspects of the modern world, including the previously mentioned Robert Burns, Adam Smith, David Hume, Alexander Fleming, David Livingstone, Sir Sean Connery, Sir Alex Ferguson, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, J. M. Barrie—
Allan Dorans
Thank you—James Watt, Andy Murray, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sir Chris Hoy and many more, and outstanding politicians including Keir Hardie, John Smith and, of course, Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) memorably said in the European Parliament in 2019, prior to our having Brexit forced upon us, that
“if we in Scotland are removed from our family of nations against our will—against our clearly democratically expressed view—independence will be our only route back…I am asking you to leave a light on so that we can find our way home.”
There is much support in the European Union, which indicates that Scotland will be warmly welcomed back into the European Union as a free and politically independent country.
Scotland has its own unique identity, history and culture and a diverse modern economy, with an abundance of renewable energy resources, a world-class food and drink industry, a booming tourism sector and advanced manufacturing, financial and business services. We are at the cutting edge of the industries of the future, such as life sciences, which are the envy of countries across the world.
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.
Migration and Scotland
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
We have a problem in Scotland, as I think everyone has recognised. [Interruption.] We have many problems in Scotland, most of them emanating from Holyrood, but that is for another day.
As a country, we are simply not attracting enough people to Scotland to live, work or invest. According to the Office for National Statistics, between 2016 and 2018 Scotland attracted, on average, only 8% of immigrants to the UK, fewer than the north-west of England, Yorkshire and the Humber, the west midlands, the east of England, the south-east, London and the south-west.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Would the hon. Gentleman concede that one of the problems is that when migrant workers are attracted to come to live in our communities, there are pen pushers at the Home Office who prevent them from coming? I am thinking particularly of the fishing communities on the west coast that are looking for non-European economic area labour. Year upon year, one person in Westminster says no even though the communities say yes.
Andrew Bowie
It might surprise the House to hear that I agree with the hon. Member, although not to the extent of describing some of the hard-working civil servants in the Home Office as pen pushers. They are doing a valuable job, but I think we have to look more imaginatively at how we attract labour to the sectors that are crying out for them, and particularly to the fisheries on the west coast of Scotland, which he ably represents in this House.
Compared with what we were previously, we are now a country of in-migration. We have a growing population in Scotland, but if Scotland’s economy is to continue to grow, there is a concern that, even with freedom of movement, we are not attracting enough people to make up for what will soon become a declining population through a simple lack of natural growth, with deaths already outnumbering births. Last year, there were already 7,000 more deaths than births in Scotland, and the problem is even more stark in rural communities.
There is not a country in the world where the Scots have not left their mark. By virtue of our being part of a larger United Kingdom, the door was open to Scots to travel the world and to build, engineer and prosper in every corner of the globe. That is a fact that, as Scots, we are incredibly proud of.
Andrew Bowie
No, I do not think there is any reason why a UK-wide system could not address those issues. In fact, on the very issue of attracting talent to the fisheries sector, I have written to the Home Secretary to ask if we could develop similar processes to the one we have for seasonal agricultural labour for those who want to engage in the fisheries sector. There is absolutely no reason why we could not find a solution within the wider UK framework.
Just as Scotland has been failing to attract many immigrants to settle in Scotland while we were a member of the EU, so the number of seasonal workers willing to travel to Scotland to perform seasonal labour has been in decline for some years. Castleton Farm, for example, in my constituency—best jam, bar none, you will ever taste—saw a 15% shortage of seasonal labour last summer, leading to an estimated loss of over 100 tonnes of produce. And that was while we remained in the EU. In the same way as we must look at why Scotland is not attracting enough immigrants to stay in Scotland, we must also ask why Scottish farming is not attracting enough labour.
Part of the reason, of course, is that there is a labour shortage across Europe. Belgian, German and Irish farmers are increasingly sourcing their seasonal labour from outside the EU, chiefly from countries such as Ukraine. Non-EU seasonal labour is evidently part of the solution in Scotland, just as it is in agriculture in the remaining 27 states. Much of the decline in available European labour is down to the rapid and, of course, welcome progress that many eastern European countries have made in developing their own domestic economies.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his earlier kind words, but can I put the political point to him that Ireland can look further and act on its wishes because it has the independence to do so? Unfortunately, Scotland does not have the independence to make the decisions that Ireland can make to get labour from Ukraine when it needs it.
Andrew Bowie
The hon. Gentleman obviously makes a very good point. However, as I said in answer to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid), there is no reason why we cannot address those issues as part of a wider UK immigration system.
Those who want to travel to work in agriculture have other options apart from Scotland, and Scottish farmers have been in direct competition for available labour with French and German farmers for some time, as well as with farmers from across the rest of the UK. I was pleased to see that the Government have pledged to extend the pilot of the seasonal agricultural workers scheme to 10,000 workers a year, up from the current limit of 2,500—thanks to the lobbying and hard work of Scottish Conservative Members of Parliament, I might say. That is a step in the right direction, but I hope it is a signal of intent and the beginning of a direction of travel. I also hope it will be delivered in a timely fashion. It is critical that farmers have time to plan for next summer.
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Gentleman is correct about that. As a member of the all-party group on hospitality, I agree very much that that sector needs to have people coming in here to do those jobs and that we value them as well, because they bring not only their skills to our restaurants and catering services, but their food, which we enjoy. We should thank them, rather than making them feel unwelcome.
Let me move on to people in the care sector and the issues they face. A couple came to see me on 16 December 2015, having worked in care homes and been very much valued there. They were then at the point of working in their care home voluntarily because the Home Office had rescinded their right to work. They had a son they are putting through school. They came to see me at my surgery on 13 January to say that finally, after five years, they had been granted their status. They were looking forward to going back to work in the care home, because that care home had kept the faith that they would eventually get the chance to work and be paid for it. During that period of many years they were hosted by volunteers from Positive Action in Housing, and they were supported by the British Red Cross, their solicitors McGlashan MacKay and a range of services that provided them with food for free, with food banks and with other things. They had to come to my office to get school uniforms for their growing son. During that time they were destitute. What does that say to that family? They want to come here and work hard, they are in a valuable role, but the Home Office says, “No, actually, we don’t need you.” We know that we do. We know that we need people in the care sector, yet a couple who have dedicated their lives to caring are being told that they cannot do that. So I have no confidence in the UK Government to make the required changes that will allow constituents such as these to manage their lives, to be a success and to feel welcome in this country.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
I echo the point made by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) about this being a well thought out speech. I also echo his point about hotels and my hon. Friend’s point about the care sector. At the heart of this debate is surely the one-size-fits-all approach the UK Government take. They do not do what Switzerland or Canada do; they think that Whitehall and Westminster know best, but in the west highlands we have needs, and Glasgow has needs. We need to have a decentralised policy—not one that suits the headline writers of the Daily Mail, but one that suits Scotland.
Alison Thewliss
My hon. Friend is absolutely right on that. In many ways, his constituency could not be any more different from mine, but the needs are not being catered for by the Home Office in any way.
We have been expecting an announcement from the Government on what the new post-Brexit immigration policy will look like, and there has been a lot of speculation that we will have an Australian-style points-based system. However, there has been no acknowledgement that Australia’s system allows for a degree of autonomy for territories to decide their own criteria on migration, with the ability to adjust their policy to their own diverse needs. There has been no acknowledgement, either, that the Australian system is much more generous than the one we have here just now, or that in her first speech after she demitted office as Prime Minister the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) got up and said pretty much to the Home Office, “Good luck. We looked at it.” So I wish the Minister all the best of luck in trying to establish a system that does not have the evidence to back it up.
We on the SNP Benches have long called for a separate immigration policy for Scotland, and we have long been told by the UK Government that that would not work. We do not believe them on that, as on so many other things, because research from the Fraser of Allander Institute and the David Hume Institute has shown not only that it would work but that it is vital if Scotland is to meet the demographic challenges of the future. It is not good enough for the UK Government to take this one-size-fits-all approach when there are pressing concerns in Scotland. If they will not take action to address this issue, perhaps they should allow the people of Scotland to decide for themselves who they want to be in charge.
If you will indulge me and allow it, Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish to highlight a couple of cases from my recent casework. The Scottish Government said as part of their Budget last week that they are going to look to set up some means of addressing the issue of “no recourse to public funds”. This relates to what the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean said about people not being allowed to access the benefits system in any way. I had a woman who had been coming to my surgeries for many years. She was No. 3 on my books after the election in 2015. She was working hard in a low-paid role and doing everything that she could but, because she had no recourse to public funds, she was just about managing the rent and her electricity, but she could not buy Christmas presents or school uniforms or put food on the table. That is not fair: she is doing everything that she can, yet because of “no recourse to public funds” she cannot do anything about it. The Home Office is sneaky on this, because every time somebody tries to find a workaround for “no recourse to public funds”, the Home Office promptly shuts it down. The Scottish Government want to help. The Scottish Government do not want people to face destitution. It is immoral and wrong for the UK Home Office to decide that it wants to make people destitute and to make people struggle so hard that they want to leave this country in poverty.
I also wish to mention the case of a particular constituent who came to me. I do not want to mention names because the case is quite sensitive, but this man is a local imam and his wife had complications giving birth, lost 17 litres of blood and was given a transfusion during a horrific ordeal in her pregnancy. They applied for the imam’s mother to come over to support her after the birth, because she was in desperate need and, because of parental leave issues, he had to go back to work. The Home Office refused that reasonable visitor’s visa. There is a lack of compassion that runs through the Home Office and prevents people from getting visitors’ visas on very reasonable grounds. Week in, week out, I see people who are desperate, broken and sad. They are people who want to show off Scotland and their new home. Members have talked about not being welcoming enough; the visitor visa system, which refuses people for no reason whatsoever other than the fact that they come from a country where people are brown, is a system that cannot stand and must stop. [Interruption.] The hon. Member shakes his head; he can come and sit in my surgery. [Interruption.] He is looking about. You know who you are. The Minister, the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross), shakes his head; he can come and sit in my surgery and he can listen to the people who come to my surgeries from particular countries who get refused visitor visas time and time again.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss). Although I did not agree with everything that she said—she will not be surprised by that—whenever she speaks in this place, her sincerity and the affection that she has for her constituents and the work that she does on their behalf shine through every word that she says.
While I am feeling in a magnanimous mood, may I also congratulate—for what it is worth, coming from me—the hon. Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), who is new to the Front Bench and gave a compelling speech that was professionally delivered? Of course, it paled in comparison with the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Miriam Cates), which the House was very interested to hear—although she is not that interested to hear what I have to say about her speech; she has left her place. There we are. That is the benefit of making a maiden speech.
A number of Members on the Opposition Benches have referenced the Migration Advisory Committee. I have to say that, if I had my way, I would abolish it—in the same way that I would either abolish or ignore the organisation Migration Watch. Neither of them is anywhere on pace when it comes to the needs that our country, as a united country, faces when it comes to migration. In a post-EU membership age, it is perfectly proper that our immigration policies, to meet all quarters of the United Kingdom, are forged in this place by Ministers, scrutinised by this House and approved, and then they can change. There should be receptiveness and fluidity within whatever system we alight on to meet the needs of our country.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
I could perhaps double underline what the hon. Gentleman said about the Migration Advisory Committee, which opines on all various levels of skill. We have challenged the MAC: if it thinks that skilled workers who are going to work on fishing boats are not that skilled, would one of the people on the MAC care to go out on a fishing boat and show us how unskilled the job is? We have yet to see one of them, after a number of years of asking.
Simon Hoare
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I welcome wholeheartedly what appears to be the mood music coming out of No. 10 from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister: scant regard is going to be paid to the MAC’s advice on a salary threshold. It is entirely immoral to put a value on a person principally predicated on what they earn. There are millions of people in this country who do vital work— Members across the House have referenced them—whether it is in agriculture, hospitality, social care, or the national health service. Some of those jobs will be skilled, and some of them will not be skilled, but they are absolutely vital. I always think to myself that the skilled Nobel prize winner, or the great scientist coming up with some whizzy thing, needs the person in the despatch department to pack it up and send it out, and make sure that the factory or the laboratory is clean. A functioning economy is a network: it is a spider’s web of different skills at different pay grades, of different people all making a contribution.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. He is being very generous. I have a point to add to the excellent point that he made about salaries. Again, there is a centralisation of thinking. We know that average salaries are not the same across Scotland—I am talking here about Na h-Eileanan an Iar, as well as other places. They differ again, depending on whether the policy is set in London, Manchester, or Birmingham. The idea that salaries are uniform across the United Kingdom is clearly a nutty one. I am glad to hear that it is going.
Simon Hoare
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is not just the regional and county variations, but the spending power of that salary. A salary of £20,000 earned in North Dorset is going to get someone far more than they would get if they were living in north Westminster or north Harrow—[Interruption.] Or Chelmsford, says my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford). The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to make that point. I think my figures are correct, but the average annual take-home salary is now £24,500. In North Dorset, it is £18,500. There are huge variations and it is just 122 miles from this place to the edge of my constituency.
I would understand the motivation behind this motion if it looked as if the Government were going to be moving to some sort of draconian Trumpian suite of immigration policies. I would suggest from all that I hear and listen to that nothing could be further from the truth. I am convinced that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has the most liberal of instincts and global of outlooks when it comes to immigration. One need only look to the time when he was Mayor of London to see a practical example of that, rather that its being a merely theoretical proposition.
I do not see the need or desirability for, and I am unconvinced by the deliverable workability of, this separate approach to immigration. I accept that the motion advocates an add-on rather than an instead-of—I get that, I understand that—but given that all the noises coming from Downing Street, both No. 10 and No. 11, are that we want to have a suite of immigration policies that is rapidly responsive to economic needs, whether that is in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England or North Dorset, I would suggest to SNP Members that at this stage in the proceedings there is nothing to worry about. There are concerns, of course. We will want to make sure that those policies are delivered on, but I do not think we need to worry about them just yet.
With the indulgence of SNP Members, whose motion this is, may I make a general point? In 2015, when many of us came into the House at the same time, I spoke on Second Reading of the Scotland Bill from almost this position on this Bench. The circumstances were similar. The SNP had done fantastically well in that general election and Members had a spring in their step. Those of us who are Unionists need to reflect on those results and calibrate a persuasive narrative to underpin, revitalise and reaffirm the benefits we see in the maintenance of the United Kingdom. To be a Unionist is not to be anti-Scottish. To be anti-separatist is not to have a grudge against the Scottish people. It is not to try to slam all of the doors to Scottish aspiration merely because we think that separation is wrong.
I am very pleased, and honoured in fact, to call very many Members on those Benches my friends. When I talk to constituents in North Dorset, they often ask what it is like with the SNP—
Simon Hoare
I do not always say that, but what I do say is that they should not judge politics on what can often be those fractious discourses taking place on the Floor. We will have an argument here, and temperatures get a bit heated and blood pressure goes up, but outside in the Members’ Lobby, the Dining Room, the Tea Room or wherever we might happen to be, I will not say that everything is friendship and honeymoon music, but it is a lot better—[Interruption.] It’s not far off, the hon. Gentleman says. But it is a whole lot better than this Chamber often allows people to think.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
On sunshine and honeymoon music, will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Simon Hoare
I do not know which the hon. Gentleman is offering me, and I am rather worried to give way, but in the interests of curiosity, which I know killed the cat, I will of course do so.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
Talking of sunshine and honeymoon music, I was listening to the hon. Gentleman’s passionate plea on the case for Unionism, but when he looks over the past century and sees the Republic of Ireland as the independent state that it is, does he not think that Scotland could do just as well or a little better if it could make its own decisions as Ireland can, both on immigration and on a raft of other issues, rather than having them being made by a Government from a party that we have not voted for since 1955?
Simon Hoare
As far as I am concerned, it is not about whether Scotland could or could not do the job. There is an advanced and deep political skillset, a developed civic society, academia and all the rest of it. [Interruption.] I am not going to be the first SNP Member for Dorset—don’t worry. It is a tempting offer, but I am going to have to decline. But in theory, could this be done? Of course. I am a Welshman. Could Wales go it alone? In theory, yes. But just because something is feasible does not necessarily make it desirable. Just because science can does not necessarily mean that science has to.
Deep within my DNA is a belief that the four quarters of the United Kingdom—through acts of history, politics, religion, shared interest, language, war and defensive values—are better, stronger and a more potent force for good in the world standing together. I do not say that to be offensive to Scottish Members, or to offend residents and fellow citizens of Scotland; it is just deep within my DNA.
I hope that the House will not find it too schmaltzy or amusing if I say that a number of Government Members often feel put off, or inhibited from, treading into the choppy and potentially dangerous waters of these debates and exchanges in this place, and we do so sometimes with a feeling of foreboding. I cannot speak for my colleagues, but actually—this may be the word that generates some titters, I do not know—as a Unionist, and having explained why I am a Unionist, I get personally upset when some SNP Members, for reasons best known to themselves, seek to portray my Unionism as being anti-Scottish. I would never portray their proud nationalism as being anti-English, anti-Welsh or anti-British. It is simply a different set of values that take us to a particular judgment.
It is possible to be vehemently pro something without being anti, per se, the alternative that is on offer. Whether it is migration, or the dust and sands that settle in this post-EU membership world, let us at least say to all our constituents—in the north of Scotland, the north of Dorset or wherever they may be—that we can engage in these debates in a vigorous, respectful and friendly way. Let us ensure that our motivations as Government Members are not portrayable as the narrow bigotry of some caricature of little England. That belies our motivations and our beliefs, and it has a negative impact on this place. If our constituents expect anything from us, particularly after the last three years, they are expecting all of us to put our shoulders to the wheel to try to raise the quality, tone and temper of our political discourse as we engage in our passionate arguments.
Referendum on Scottish Independence
Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I am slightly disappointed, as are many hon. Members, by the introduction we heard from the member of the Petitions Committee. I did not hear one argument for our not having a second independence referendum. Given the balanced way that the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) could have made his case, I should have thought that he might have spent at least 55% of his opening speech on that argument.
Here is the bombshell: 2 million is larger than 1.6 million, and 55% of the Scottish people voted to remain part of the United Kingdom. I have no truck with the SNP as regards its continuing to agitate for a second referendum—that is why it exists—but I would hope it would realise the impact that has, not only on the Scottish economy but Scotland as a country. When people went to the polls and made their democratic choice to stay part of the United Kingdom, that should be respected, and for a number of reasons. First, it is democratic, but secondly, we were promised by the proponents of an independent Scotland that the referendum would be “once in a generation” or, indeed, “once in a lifetime”. When proponents said that and people went to the polls and put their cross in the box, whether yes or no, they should have been able to trust what people had said. I will not come on to what many Conservative Members did during the Brexit referendum, but people should be able to trust what people are saying during referendums and take that forward on their own basis.
I come at the debate from a slightly different perspective from people who have spoken already, and that is the perspective of jobs, livelihoods and prosperity in my constituency. Some 66% of my constituents voted to remain part of the United Kingdom, which is something I promised to respect—as did many other hon. Members here—not just at the 2015 general election but also the 2017 election; it was very much the question on the doorsteps in ’15 and ’17. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk says that the SNP won the 2017 election, but he should be marginally more humble about that result and not take the Scottish people for granted. If the SNP won the election, as he claims so emphatically, why is it not holding a second independence referendum if it feels it has that mandate?
There is a lesson in here for the Scottish people. Regardless of the First Minister, the entirety of the Yes campaign or the SNP—I appreciate that there are nuanced differences between those groups—if a second referendum is put on to the back burner, or even if the First Minister stands up and says we will have no talk of a second independence referendum, what will bring it back on to the front burner? People voting SNP in other elections. We have heard this afternoon that that is where the SNP sees the mandate as coming from, so a second referendum will never properly be on the back burner while the SNP continues to agitate for it.
Let us look at the economic case in terms of jobs and livelihoods. Scotland lags behind the rest of the United Kingdom in growth, jobs and the sustainability of the economy, and investment is not as high in Scotland as across the rest of the United Kingdom. That economic case for a second independence referendum is completely shot. Constituents come to me all the time and say, “We’re three years on from the independence referendum, and five to six years on from the start of this process, and we still don’t know the answers to the fundamental questions. What happens to our pensions? What currency will we use? What will our lender of last resort be?”—and, and this is a crucial one, because it is a key argument of the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk—“Will we or will we not be part of the European Union?”
I still do not know the Scottish Government’s position on the European Union. They know they have to play to a number of people who voted yes to independence and voted to leave the European Union. They know they have to play to that base, in terms of whether Scotland will go back into the European Union—[Interruption.] If somebody from the SNP wants to intervene and tell me whether it is the Scottish National party’s position to go back in as full members of the European Union, I am happy to give way.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
One of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues who I was on the radio with said that if Scotland voted no in 2014, it was a vote to stay in the European Union. Where does that promise stand now?
Ian Murray
There has been a democratic vote, and a democratic petition on how it went has been put to the Petitions Committee, and I wish we were analysing that.
I will finish, because I want to leave other hon. Members time to speak. It is quite clear in my own constituency that 3,622 people took the time and effort to sign a petition to say that they do not want a second independence referendum, because of all the issues around the economy, culture and taking Scotland forward. They have made that decision already. Only 500 people in my constituency voted for a second independence referendum. We must listen to the public and hear what they are saying. For the sake of the Scottish economy and for the future livelihoods and prosperity of my constituents, let us say no to a second referendum and take it off the table permanently.
Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I will be very brief.
The Edinburgh agreement was signed in October 2012 following discussions with representatives of five political parties. The Scottish Government were enabled to set the question, “Should Scotland be an independent country?” and to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds. There followed on 18 September 2014 what I would describe as a fair and transparent referendum, but I will add a wee caveat. As a number of hon. Members have said, it was not sweetness and light. It was not a perfect transition. There were brutal verbal attacks. I will not go into the trolls on the internet.
In my home town of Ayr, which I love passionately, in the 14 to 16 weeks prior to the referendum—I will choose my words carefully—I was accused by yes supporters of being an Anglophile, a traitor and born out of wedlock, or words to that effect. It was the most brutal period in politics of my life, but it was a fair and transparent referendum. It was held in Scotland for Scottish people. There was an 84.6% turnout; I do not think there has been a greater turnout before or since. The people of Scotland responded well.
Angus Brendan MacNeil
I am an Anglophile. What is derogatory about being called an Anglophile?
Bill Grant
Nothing, but it came with associated words that I will not use in this Chamber. The hon. Gentleman would have to ask that person what he thought I was. It was delivered to me, and I took from it that I was a supporter of the English and was not a patriotic Scot.
Bill Grant
The hon. Gentleman should direct that to the person who said it. I was the recipient of it, so I cannot answer that one. I will use his colleague’s get-out-of-jail-free card.
The turnout was 84.6%. Scotland should be proud of the turnout and proud of the result, which was for no. More than 2 million people voted no and to remain in the United Kingdom.
The SNP has a love-in with Europe. There is a comparison to Catalonian independence, with closed polling stations, stolen ballot boxes and brutality in the streets. That is the Europe the SNP wishes to be part of. I do not want to be part of it. That is how a part of Spain looking for independence was dealt with, and we can be proud that the democratic outcome in the United Kingdom was honourable and wonderful.