Oral Answers to Questions

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[David Mundell]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. It is interesting that as we enter the Scottish Parliament election period, the Scottish National party appears to have forgotten its proclamation about the arc of prosperity and Scotland’s wish to join the economies of Ireland and Iceland. The First Minister, Alex Salmond, also appears to have forgotten saying in the 2007 campaign:

“We are pledging a light-touch regulation suitable to a Scottish financial sector with its outstanding reputation for probity, as opposed to one like that in the UK, which absorbs huge amounts of management time in ‘gold-plated’ regulation.”

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

That response shows that what has characterised the Scottish election campaign is that positivity wins over negativity. Will the right hon. Gentleman at least acknowledge and recognise that the failure of those so-called Scottish banks was down to UK regulation?

[David Mundell]

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was listening to my last response. His leader, Alex Salmond, previously described the UK regulation as “gold-plated” and, at the previous Scottish elections, offered the voters “light-touch regulation”. This is the same Alex Salmond who said that the banking crisis was down to “spivs and speculators”.