Scotland: General Election and Constitutional Future

Debate between Edward Leigh and Tommy Sheppard

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tommy Sheppard]

All good things come to those who wait, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I will be dealing with the “once in a generation” tagline later in my speech.

On referendums and whether they should take place, the question will arise as to who should make the decision. If we believe in the will of the Scottish people to choose their own destiny, then the answer can only be that the people of Scotland should decide whether to have another referendum. I accept that there needs to be a debate about how we gauge their opinion and what democratic mechanism is used for them to express their view. Well, democratic societies will quite often do that by using the electoral process and the process of voting, and in 2016 that is exactly what happened. My party did not go into the election in 2016 saying, “There must be another referendum and, 18 months forward, we disrespect the decision that was taken.” We went to the polls saying: “It looks like things are beginning to happen in the UK that will change the whole nature of the options available to people, and there may be circumstances in which it would be legitimate and proper to go forward and reconsider the question again in a second referendum.” That was the mandate that we were given by the people of Scotland in 2016.

That was six weeks before the Brexit vote in the UK, and no one could have anticipated what would unfold in the years after the May 2016 general election in Scotland. People in England voted by a small majority to leave the European Union and people in Scotland voted, by a much larger majority, to stay in the European Union. Overall, the vote was such that there was a narrow majority to leave, and the British Government began the tortuous process of extricating the United Kingdom from the European Union. That process was made all the more difficult and painful by the Government’s decision not to try to accommodate any of the wishes of the people on the losing side of the argument and to seek the maximum possible dissociation from the European Union. That is what happened, and we remember the agonising twists and turns in that process.

As 2018 moved into 2019 and we watched the process unfold, two things became clear. First, the opinion of the people of Scotland in the matter was to be completely disregarded. Unlike in other parts of the United Kingdom where there was an attempt to try to make the decision that was being implemented fit the aspirations of people who lived there, there was no such attempt in Scotland.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

But the fact remains that Brexit has happened, so an independent Scotland would have to apply to rejoin the EU. Leaving aside whether it would be wise for Scotland to replace union with a country that is right next door to it with one with a body that is hundreds of miles away, why does the hon. Gentleman think that Spain, with its problems of Catalonia, would ever facilitate Scotland rejoining the EU?

[Tommy Sheppard]

That is not the subject of today’s debate, but it only takes a cursory reading of statements from European premiers to see that their mood has completely changed and they would welcome, many of them with open arms, a self-governing Scotland into the European Union. But we are getting ahead of ourselves, because we have not yet had the ability to take that decision.

As the Brexit process unfolded, two things became clear. One was that Scotland’s views were to be completely disregarded, but even more worryingly, we saw the British Government begin to put in place mechanisms to replace the jurisdiction of the European Union that would centralise political power in this country and reduce the capacity and competence of the devolved Administrations in Holyrood and, indeed, Cardiff.

By the end of 2019 it became clear that those two things were creating a fundamentally different terrain on which the future of the United Kingdom and the future of Scotland should be judged. It was the determination of the Scottish Parliament by resolution at that time that the conditions set in the mandate of 2016 had been met and that that mandate should now be discharged. Therefore, the Scottish Parliament voted and applied to the British Government for a section 30 order to begin the process of having a further referendum. The response by the Prime Minister was fast and furious, and he dismissed it out of hand.

We were about to get into an argument about that when the world literally turned upside down and a small microbe brought humanity almost to its knees. As covid-19 raced across the globe, and as our economy and society ground to a halt, the Scottish Government—rightly, in my view—decided to shelve any preparations or plans for a further referendum until that matter was dealt with. Had the pandemic not happened, we might well be having a very different discussion today. But we are where we are, and we are 51 days away from the Scottish general election, at which the existing mandate will expire. At that election, my party and others will be seeking a new, fresh mandate from the Scottish people to assert their right to choose whether they wish to remain in a post-Brexit Britain, or whether Scotland’s fortunes are better served by having a choice and becoming a self-governing independent European country. That is what will be at stake in the 2021 election.

Unlike 2016, the mandate we seek will not be conditional, have qualifications or be reliant on things that may or may not happen. It will be unconditional and without qualification, and it will be front and centre on page 1 of our manifesto. I think it is a racing certainty—Government Members can tell me if I am wrong—that the inverse proposition will be front and centre of the Conservative manifesto as well. We can be sure of one thing, which is that there will be a full and frank debate about this question, and a vote will be taken on 6 May 2021.