Education and Adoption Bill

Alan Brown Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech in this debate. As usual, the previous maiden speeches have been of the highest quality and are a hard act to follow, although I feel obliged to point out that Scotland is a nation, not a region.

As someone who has lived in my constituency for my entire life, it is a real honour to represent Kilmarnock and Loudoun, and to be here to speak on behalf of my constituents.

Too often when we get elected, we do not pay tribute enough to the thousands of volunteers who work tirelessly on our campaigns, so I would like to put my thanks on record to the people who helped me to get here. This is particularly poignant for me because sadly, my campaign manager, John Mackay, died a couple of weeks ago; his funeral is this Friday. Such was the effort he made for the SNP that he was given a lifelong achievement award back in 2007, but even so, he was still working hard for the party until he passed away. When I asked John to be my campaign manager, he initially said no, but such was the mark of the man that he came back to me the next day and said, “Alan, I’ll give it one more go.” So thanks to John, and obviously, his last campaign was a successful one.

As the new SNP MP for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, I pay tribute to my predecessor, Cathy Jamieson, who worked hard for her constituents. Although only a one-term MP here, she represented part of the area at the Scottish Parliament, so she has worked at a parliamentary level since 1999. She also acted as a Government Minister, serving at the highest level in Scottish politics, and I wish her well for the future.

Let me describe my constituency for the House. Kilmarnock and Loudoun is a mix of rural and urban and it has a proud history, with vibrant and resilient communities. The fantastic rolling countryside means that in my constituency people can go for great walks, ride on great cycle tracks and paths, ski all year round at a dry ski slope, participate in motor sports, or fish—but you cannae go hunting. People can also try their hands at the only gowf club in the world, so there is lots to see and do in my constituency, and I urge hon. Members to pay it a visit.

Moving on to people and places in my constituency, as the UK moves to remember the 200th anniversary of Waterloo, I advise the House that one of the two French standards captured at the battle was captured by Ensign Ewart from Kilmarnock, and that another hero of that escapade was Hugh Hutchison, who came from the village of Galston.

Kilmarnock Academy is one of the few schools in the UK to provide two Nobel prize winners—Lord Boyd Orr from Kilmaurs, and Sir Alexander Fleming from the village of Darvel, who discovered penicillin. The first gas street lights in Britain were provided in the village of Muirkirk, which also pioneered tarmacadam roads. The village of Crosshouse provided a three-time Labour Prime Minister in Australia. We have Dunlop, which is home to the famous Dunlop cheese; Stewarton, where David Dale was born and grew up; the village of Fenwick, with the oldest known co-operative society; and Catrine, which is one of the original mill towns in Scotland and had one of the original cotton mills. We also have the villages of Sorn, Lugar, Logan, Gatehead and Knockentiber, which have been closely associated with the coal mining industry, in line with many other communities in my constituency.

If I may, I will make the obligatory football reference. My constituency has the oldest professional team in Scotland, Kilmarnock FC. Killie FC are currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of their historic league championship win, as the only non-city team in Scotland to win the league championship. Sticking with football, recently I was at the Scottish junior cup final, where I witnessed Auchinleck Talbot win the cup for a record 11th time. Last year, Hurlford United won the cup as well, so there is a good football pedigree in my constituency.

The constituency is also Burns country. The bard moved to Mauchline, where he met his wife, Jean Armour. Kilmarnock gave us the Kilmarnock edition of Burns’s early works, and that is what set him on his way. Probably not so well known to the House is that a minister from the village of Newmilns—my original home village—persuaded Burns not to emigrate to the West Indies. Thanks to my constituency and that combination of events, we are able to enjoy Burns, and I would like to quote one of his greatest phrases:

“That Man to Man, the world o’er,

Shall brothers be for a’that.”

For me, that is all about equality, but we can see how that does not chime with what is happening in this House at the moment. Equality is not cutting £12 billion from the poorest in our society. It is not doing what happened last week, when a vote in this House deemed that some people in this country are not equal and should not be able to vote. I think that is an outrage. Where is equality, when we have the House of Lords next door? There is a democratic deficit and I cannot believe that the Tories want to address that by cutting the number of elected representatives rather than the number of unelected representatives. Where is equality when we have people depending on food banks? We have heard today that there is a clear link between sanctions and food banks, despite what the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions said earlier.

Equality should be underpinning this debate on education. As we heard earlier, education should be a right, not a privilege. We should not put a glass ceiling on aspiration through financial constraints. That is why in Scotland the Scottish Government continue to support the poorest in society to make sure that they have access to education.