Currency in Scotland after 2014

Baroness Clark of Kilwinning Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

Thank you very much for calling me to speak, Mrs Riordan. It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. I expected more Members to put their names forward to speak in this debate, and I would have liked to have seen more Members from the Scottish National party. I know that they have complained about lack of time, but this is the third debate on Scottish issues in the last week in which the SNP has not put many speakers forward. I have been in this place since 2005—[Interruption.]

[Mrs Linda Riordan (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Katy Clark]

I am very grateful to you, Mrs Riordan. As I was saying, I have been a Member since 2005 and I am very aware that, frankly, it is often far easier for a member of one of the minority parties to be called to speak than someone from one of the larger parties, because of the way that the rules in this place operate.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

On a point of order, Mrs Riordan, I am very sorry to interrupt the flow of the debate, but it would be helpful if you could clarify something. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has made serious allegations about the conduct of this debate. Could you clarify whether any hon. Members from the SNP asked to speak in it? Have they been prevented from speaking in it? Have they ever even requested a debate on the issue of the currency in Scotland?

[Mrs Linda Riordan (in the Chair)]

That is not a point of order. I call Katy Clark to speak.

[Katy Clark]

Thank you, Mrs Riordan. As I say, I agree with the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie): I would have liked a longer, more detailed debate. I hope that this is just one of a series of debates in this House on these kinds of issues.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Lady is a fair and reasonable woman, and she has accepted that we have very little time to address the other side of the argument. This really important debate must, of course, be heard in the House of Commons; will she work with us to try to ensure that when we debate these issues in future, we get a more equitable division of the time, so that both cases are made?

[Katy Clark]

I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that perhaps the first step would be for his colleagues to put in requests to speak.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that yesterday, we had a six-hour-and-four-minute Opposition day debate, promoted by the Scottish National party and Plaid Cymru, in which all these issues could have been aired?

[Katy Clark]

Indeed, and we had a debate last Thursday on Scotland’s place in the Union. Those were the kind of events that we should use to explore these issues.

There is a great deal of debate on the subject in Scotland, but the decision taken there in September will have massive implications for the whole United Kingdom. I regret that in the two and a half years that we have been having this debate in Scotland, the quality of debate has not been higher. I hope that getting more people involved in the discussion, and getting more information and facts on the table, will improve the debate’s quality. I hope that today the UK Government will give their perspective on some of the questions, because that is part of what is required to continue the debate, which should be taking place here, in the Scottish Parliament, and communities up and down Scotland.

One of the most important decisions that an independent Scotland would take, if we voted for independence in September, would be on the currency, so I strongly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) on his choice of subject for debate, but currency is only one of the many economic issues that will be central to people’s decision making. To be honest, I never believed that I would see a referendum on Scottish independence in my political lifetime. It was not something that many people in Scotland argued for, historically. It is really only as a result of the electoral success of the Scottish National party—we can perhaps discuss the reasons for that on another occasion—that we are in this position. I also honestly do not believe that colleagues from the Scottish National party in this room ever believed that they would have a referendum on independence in their political lifetime.

Many people in Scotland are in the same position: when we go from door to door and speak to people, many genuinely have not finally made their mind up on the issue—particularly, I think, because of the economic turbulence that we have been living through in the past few years. It will not be simply an emotional choice that people make in September. Historically, many people who are sympathetic to independence have made that choice on emotional grounds, and grounds to do with identity and culture, but in the coming months, economic issues will be central to people’s decision-making processes.

I welcome the debate and some of the statements that have come forward in the past few weeks from people at UK level. I am a member of the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills; we had the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills before us last week, and he gave some of his views on the issue. We still need to get a lot more information to make decisions.

I have always looked at things from an economic point of view, and considered decisions on the basis of how I think we can improve the democratic accountability of our economy. I have always considered how we can take economic decisions that are more central to how we run our economy in the interests of ordinary people, rather than elites. That will be central as we go forward.

[Mrs Linda Riordan (in the Chair)]

Order.