Referendum on Scottish Independence

Andrew Bowie Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2017 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger.

These two petitions are largely about democracy. One calls for another referendum to be held, and the other is against another Scottish referendum. That is fair enough; that is what democracy and opinions are all about. However, I take umbrage at the pejorative language in the no petition, which states:

“We in Scotland are fed up of persecution by the SNP leader”.

I noticed some Tory Members nodding in agreement when that was mentioned earlier, but to me that is frankly outrageous language. Persecution is what happened in world war two. Persecution is what happened to dissenters in the Soviet Union. Persecution is certainly not happening by a democratically elected Scottish Government—a Government that have the highest vote share of any in western Europe.

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

Did the hon. Gentleman also take issue with the pejorative language in the yes petition, which states:

“We are not bigoted. We are not racist”—

so that, by inference, those who support not having a second referendum are?

[Alan Brown]

The hon. Gentleman can make that inference. I would not make that argument. I probably would not have used that phrase myself.

[Andrew Bowie]

That is what it is saying.

[Alan Brown]

The hon. Gentleman is making that inference; I am not.

We keep hearing today about divisive referendums, and to me that is one side seeking to delegitimise the whole process of another vote. If we are talking about division, I say to my neighbour, the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant), that I thought it was truly shameful to bring in the memory of those who served in the armed forces as an argument for not holding another referendum. I have friends who serve in the armed forces, and they are pro-Scottish independence. That is not them disrespecting their colleagues that they serve beside, and the debate should not stoop to that level.

It is clear that many people do not want another referendum. Equally, many people did not want a referendum in 2014, yet it still resulted in the biggest vote ever held in Scotland. It engaged people who had never been interested in politics before, and it was a model of democracy—we cannot forget that. Sixteen and 17-year-olds were given the vote; EU citizens were allowed to vote. It was a vote based on residence, not nationality, and had the UK Government followed that example in the European referendum vote, we would not have the Brexit shambles that we have now.

There should be nothing to fear about undergoing another democratic exercise. We respected the 2014 vote; but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) pointed out earlier, everyone is well aware that a key campaigning tactic of Better Together was saying that the only way to stay in the EU was to vote no. How significant that was in the final vote, we cannot say for certain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Brown]

He said that it was his view. As we all know, in the democratic process, even elected Governments cannot bind the hands of a future Government. Certainly a personal statement by the former First Minister cannot possibly dictate the future.

[Andrew Bowie]

The hon. Gentleman calls it Alex Salmond’s view, but those are the exact same words that Nicola Sturgeon used on 15 October. She said that it was a once-in-a-generation, and possibly once-in-a-lifetime, event. The First Minister and the Deputy First Minister—the two leaders of the yes campaign—have both said that it is a once-in-a-generation, once-in-a-lifetime event, and he is saying that people in Scotland should take that as their own personal opinions?

[Alan Brown]

I think that the key word there is “possibly”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Roger, for calling me to speak despite the fact that I have not stood up since you walked into the room. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

When I was preparing for the debate, I looked for some inspiration and I stumbled on these words, penned by one Alex Salmond:

“we renewed our joint commitment under the Edinburgh Agreement to work constructively and positively to implement the will of the people”.

Those are the words Alex Salmond did not say on the morning of 19 September 2014, taken from the speech he had prepared to give if Scotland had voted yes. What a pity he was not so keen to renew that commitment following the actual result.

It might be useful for us to remind ourselves of the exact wording of the Edinburgh agreement. It is referenced a lot, and has been referenced this evening:

“The governments are agreed that the referendum should…deliver a fair test and a decisive expression of the views of people in Scotland and a result that everyone will respect”.

The agreement was signed by David Cameron, Alex Salmond, Michael Moore and Nicola Sturgeon, and I would argue that it was a pretty unambiguous statement. But the then Deputy First Minister, whose signature graced the document, obviously felt it did not go far enough, which is presumably why, on 15 October 2013, she appeared on the “Daily Politics” show and declared that the referendum was a

“once in a generation event, possibly once in a lifetime for Scotland”.

We fast forward to 13 March this year—it is hard to believe it was still this year—when the same Nicola Sturgeon, now First Minister of Scotland, announced her intention to hold a second referendum on independence. We all know the arguments surrounding that, we have heard them here today: that a second referendum was warranted because everything had changed, that the Brexit referendum result was dragging Scotland out of the European Union against its will, and that the Scottish people were told in 2014 that, in voting no, they were guaranteeing Scotland’s place in the European Union. The Scottish people went to the polls in 2014 in the full knowledge that a referendum on our membership of the EU was a real possibility—David Cameron had announced it in his Bloomberg speech of January 2013. I know the Scottish National party does not like to hear this, but despite that, despite a much more favourable economic outlook for Scotland in 2014 and despite an unpopular Conservative Government that had more pandas than MPs in Scotland—despite all that and more—the Scottish people voted to stay a part of our United Kingdom.

No poll, before or after the referendum on our membership of the European Union, has shown support for independence to be at more than 50%. No has consistently been in the lead. Indeed, the average lead for no in the last 30 polls has been by more than eight points. So it is no surprise that in the wake of the First Minister’s announcement, 221,000 individuals signed a petition opposing a second independence referendum. Now I know that is but a fraction of the half a million votes lost by the SNP in the general election, but it is still a sizeable amount and compares very favourably with the 38,000 who signed the petition in favour of another referendum.

I could go on about the economic case for staying in the UK. I could point to research showing that most remain voters, me included, are angry that their votes are being used by the SNP as the basis for a second referendum, as proxy votes for separation, but I will not, because the people of West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, Gordon, Aberdeen South, Banff and Buchan, Angus, Moray, East Renfrewshire, Ochil and South Perthshire, Stirling, Dumfries and Galloway, Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale and Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock and the people of the 11 other seats taken by Labour and the Liberal Democrats have spoken loud and clear. Indeed, 62.5% of votes cast in Scotland in the recent general election were for the Unionist parties, with only 36.9% voting for separatism. The people of Scotland are abundantly clear; they do not want a second referendum.

I thought, perhaps naively, that the message had got through, for the mood music has indeed changed of late. There was little mention of independence at the Scottish National party conference, there was not a word in the Scottish Government’s programme for government, and last week, for the first time in probably about six years, we got through an entire First Minister’s questions without the constitution being mentioned once—and it was not just because we did not mentioned it. It was all going so well. The rebrand was almost complete, the wool almost down across our eyes, but we can always rely, like a bad rouble, on Comrade Salmond. This morning, he let the cat well and truly out of the bag. This morning the mask slipped. This morning, in an interview with Business Insider, Alex Salmond said that the First Minister is prepared to call a second referendum and that it could take place within a very short timescale after Brexit.

So there we have it. It never really went away, and it never will go away. Independence is the SNP’s raison d’être. I respect that position; it is a perfectly laudable and respectable position to hold. But we have had a referendum, we had what was supposed to be a once-in-a-lifetime referendum, and the Scottish people voted to remain equal partners in our family of nations. It is up to every single one of us to represent the settled will of the Scottish people and, as Alex Salmond did not say on the morning of 19 September, to respect the result of that fair and decisive vote.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lesley Laird]

I thank you, Sir Roger, for your intervention and advice.

The irony of all of these issues is that the SNP wants Scotland in Europe but not in Britain, while the Conservatives want Scotland in Britain but not in Europe. They are two sides of the same tarnished coin, and people are fast waking up to that. They can see the gap between political rhetoric and the reality of politician’ actions. They feel that democracy is too far removed to make a difference to their lives, whether it is Westminster or Holyrood. They are fed up with constantly being defined as either for or against independence, or for or against Brexit. The people of Scotland want politicians to move past binary divisions and to focus on our common problems. They want solutions for the declining educational standards and teacher shortages that we have seen under the SNP in the past decade. The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Jack) spoke earlier about process, which has not necessarily been put to good effect when we consider the state of the processes of the health service and of education, economics and planning. Of course, there is the situation in which we find ourselves with the police and the fire service. I hope the Minister will ensure that that issue is on the Budget agenda next week.

People want to see poverty levels decrease, not increase. The numbers of children living in poverty in Scotland have risen, up by 40,000 in the past year alone. People want austerity to end and the economy to grow, and with it their wages. Those are the problems that we need urgently to address. Only a Labour Government are equipped to address them. Do not just take my word for it; look at the record of past Labour Governments. It was a Labour Government that created the NHS and the welfare state; a Labour Government that invested record amounts in the NHS and introduced tax credits for families struggling on low incomes; a Labour Government that introduced the minimum wage and raised millions out of poverty; and it was a Labour Government that delivered the Scottish Parliament. The next Labour Government will build on that proud record. A Labour Government in Westminster would pay major dividends for the Scottish Government, whoever they might be.

Our investment in public services and the economy would mean that Scotland benefited to the tune of an additional £3.1 billion by 2021-22. Our pledge to protect the triple lock on state pensions would protect the incomes of more than 1 million Scottish pensioners. Our pledge to ban zero-hours contracts would alleviate the stress and uncertainty felt by tens of thousands of Scottish workers.

[Andrew Bowie]

On a point of order, Sir Roger. I am not sure this is a point of order, but there is only one way to find out. I do not know whether we have moved on to the territory of a party political broadcast, rather than dealing with the matter at hand: the two petitions we are supposed to be debating this afternoon.

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

The hon. Gentleman is extremely perceptive: it is not a point of order.