Oral Answers to Questions
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Kemi Badenoch
The shadow Minister has written many letters to me over the past four months, and I have replied to them. It is simply untrue to say that she has not received a reply. She knows the work we are doing is progressing the recommendations throughout government. The oral statement tomorrow will give ample time for me to fully address and explain all the work the Government have been doing and what the evidence has shown us. I encourage her to attend the oral statement tomorrow, because there is very much that she could learn on this topic.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
EU Exit: Negotiations and the Joint Committee
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend makes three very important points. The first thing is that UK producers are doing a fantastic job in increasing production in a sustainable way. Championing the quality of UK produce is something that we should all do and recognise, whether it is Orkney cheddar or Welsh lamb, that the UK flag is a symbol that connects quality not just to our consumers but worldwide. The second point that he makes, which is absolutely right, is that the common agricultural policy has been harmful, and our escape from it will ensure both that our farmers can prosper and that our environment can improve. His third point is that we should be confident not just that we can sell more excellent produce here in the UK but that, as we emerge into the world as a global free-trading nation, new opportunities to sell our excellent produce are available to our farmers, and he is absolutely right to be optimistic.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Minister has acknowledged the issue of the free flow of medicines into this country. Will he respond to the urgent appeal today from the pharmaceuticals industry to find a deal, and will he accept the approaches from the European Union and do everything in his power to ensure that my constituents, like those across the country who need medicines such as insulin, will have the deal that ensures that they can rely upon it?
Covid-19 Update
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
Yes. I am aware of the feelings in the midlands and, indeed, around the country. I can tell the people of Meriden that we want to get them out of any kind of restrictions as fast as we possibly can.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) [V]
Prime Minister, we are all disappointed and distressed that we are back where we were in March in many ways. The Prime Minister says that he wants to keep the economy going, but for many businesses and individuals, particularly the clinically vulnerable, that will be impossible. Will the Prime Minister and Chancellor end this chop and change, knee-jerk reaction approach that we have seen in recent days and extend the job retention scheme and furlough until next June so that businesses and individuals can have certainty and clarity about the support they will get, which will enable them to plan their way through this crisis?
The Prime Minister
I understand the point that the hon. Lady makes, but she will also understand that the schemes that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has announced go on until next spring. We should not forget that the original furlough scheme has yet to elapse.
EU Exit: End of Transition Period
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The road haulage industry has been talked about a lot, and its workers have kept food on supermarket shelves and medicines in our pharmacies through the recent crisis. The statement says the Government have put aside £80 million for customs agents. How many agents do we have at the moment? How many will we need on 1 January? How many will this training provide on 1 January to ensure that the haulage industry can keep operating?
Michael Gove
The hon. Lady is right. The haulage industry has been doing a fantastic job. I make no criticism of the industry or of individual hauliers—quite the opposite. Most of the work required will be required by the companies that are exporting rather than by the haulage industry, and it is they who will either hire customs intermediaries to do the work for them or, as my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) pointed out, do that work in house. So some of the work is being done in house, some by major players and some by companies such as Kuehne+Nagel, which is expert in the area. The market is moving; the response we have had from some is that, particularly in the past couple of weeks, there has been significantly greater call for their services, and they are recruiting, but the £80 million we have has not been entirely drawn down yet, and we keep the amount we are providing under review to ensure that if more is needed, more can be provided.
United Kingdom Internal Market Bill
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Richard Thomson
I rise to support my party’s amendments because I firmly believe that seeking the consent of devolved Ministers represents the absolute bare minimum to respect the devolution settlement in the provisions before us.
Although I am not new to politics, I am comparatively new to this place, and my views on politics and self-government for Scotland were forged in the 1980s and the devolution debates of the early 1990s, well before Scotland had a Parliament of its own. When I speak to young Scots of voting age now, very few of them have any memory of there not being a Scottish Government and Parliament. The idea that there ever would not have been seems alien and absurd—almost as absurd to them as it seemed to me that those institutions did not exist back in the 1990s.
Although I was supportive of devolution at that time, the arguments that I and others made at that time in favour of independence referred to devolution and its potential weaknesses. Those arguments did not find favour at that time. They were that devolution was going to create a subordinate Parliament to Westminster, that without a written constitution, its powers and status could not be guaranteed, and that power devolved is power retained—all those arguments, whatever their essential truth and accuracy, were lost in the assurances given at the time about permanence and respect.
The fact that those arguments about permanence and respect were made by politicians of the standing and character of Donald Dewar no doubt helped enormously. For the past 21 years, by and large, that is exactly how it has been. Disputes over money and policy aside, both Parliaments have co-existed. As Holyrood’s stature has grown, and Ministers have begun to act with the stature befitting a Government, rather than a regional subordinate Executive, so too has Scottish confidence grown. I think it is that, rather than any concern about the integrity of the UK internal market, that seems to be driving a large part of the motivation behind this part of the Bill.
A number of speakers have talked about the current settlement. One thing that the current settlement does give is clarity: if a matter is not explicitly reserved under schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998, it is devolved. Unionists who proclaim the parliamentary sovereignty of this place should know that that is because this place legislated for that. Throughout devolution, the Sewel convention has operated, meaning that this Parliament will not ordinarily legislate in areas of devolved competence without the express consent of the Parliaments. It is precisely to protect that principle of consent that my party is putting forward this amendment today, to ensure that under that principle of consent, no action in respect of these powers will be taken without the agreement of the relevant devolved Ministers.
Turning to clauses 46 and 47, I think of the ancient proverb that one should beware Greeks bearing gifts. Scots, through long years of experience, have come to be suspicious of Westminster politicians pledging similar gifts. Scottish voters have long been wary of that. The proposed powers are so wide-ranging, covering promoting economic development, infrastructure, cultural activity, sport, education and training activities, that their motivation is quite clear. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), who was in earlier, gave the game away: this is nothing more sophisticated than sticking a great big flag on the side of something and saying, “We paid for that.”
There is no money element to these proposals, but I have to say that if they actually represented additional money, we might be having quite a different debate. However, I know from bitter experience that all that will happen is that the Scottish Government’s funding will inevitably find itself top-sliced—a bit like the Scotland Office having to pay for press officers or private polling—and it will be presented as the return of Scottish taxpayers’ money and UK borrowing, and as being somehow down to the largesse of the Treasury and we should all be grateful for it.
The ability that these measures will give UK Ministers of the Crown to bypass devolution and Scottish Ministers —who are also Ministers of the Crown—and to bypass the democratically elected Government of Scotland to make policy and allocate resources in devolved areas, whether that is in line with the priorities of those elected to lead in those devolved areas or not, represents the biggest single attack on devolution imaginable, short of the abolition of those institutions themselves.
Let us take infrastructure as an example. I find it hard to understand the argument that the Bill could improve that situation. Scottish Governments of all political stripes across many years—decades, indeed—have a record of ambitious investment, whether delivered or planned for the future. The magnificent Queensferry crossing was mentioned earlier. We also have the Aberdeen to Inverness rail improvements, involving more than £200 million of improvements that benefit my constituents to a remarkable extent. We have the central belt rail electrification. We have the Aberdeen bypass, and the Balmedie to Tipperty dualling. We also have the completion, after 50 years, of the central Scotland motorway network.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman has just given us a list of projects that he is putting great big flags on the side of and claiming credit for, when actually the Aberdeen bypass was signed off by the previous Administration. It had been planned for a very long time.
Richard Thomson
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention, because it might have been signed off, but it was signed off in such a way that mired it in protracted legal disputes for years—[Interruption.] I am glad she finds that funny, but that was what delayed it more than anything else. It is only thanks to the diligence of the present Scottish Government that it got through at all. The dualling of the A96 and the A9, the Borders railway and the future rail decarbonisation are all major big-ticket investments that are happening under the current arrangements, which do not require any tinkering with the devolution settlement.
Christine Jardine
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh, but part of me feels I should begin with an apology, indeed to everyone in the House, because I wonder if, like me, they are beginning to feel a little as if we are in a remake of “Groundhog Day” with this Bill. Yesterday, we heard that in establishing a body within the Competitions and Markets Authority the Government did not respect the devolution settlement. Here we are today looking at the replacement for European structural funding, if we ever get to see what the suggestion is, and we are debating the fact that it does not respect the devolution settlement. I am at a loss as to whether the Government are somehow doing this deliberately; surely they cannot be completely unaware of the issue. I know they are certainly aware of devolution because, like my colleagues on the SNP Benches, they did not support devolution 20 years ago, whereas my colleagues on the Labour Benches did support devolution, along with us Liberal Democrats. It is sad that here we are, 20 years later, debating devolution all over again. I ask the Government, as I did yesterday, to recognise that this constant lack of respect for the devolution settlement simply promotes the nationalist narrative.
In leaving the European Union, we lost all the regulations and standards on food production and manufacture that applied across the continent. I recognise and am in absolutely no doubt about the need to replace them across the UK. For some time, I was prepared to listen to the Government’s arguments when they were negotiating with the devolved nations—in good faith on both parts, I believe—in respect of the frameworks and powers to replace them. However, the wheels appeared to fall off that particular wagon when the occupancy of No. 10 changed.
I have to join Government Members in laughing when SNP Members point a metaphorical accusatory finger and yell, “Centralisation.” Those of us who actually live in Scotland and have to endure the SNP Government’s incompetence know that when it comes to keeping control of the purse strings centrally, they are the control freaks par excellence of British Governments—
Christine Jardine
If I were to be told now that the aim of the Bill was to ensure that any money going to Scotland was to be spent in the manner for which it was originally intended, I would take that into account, because we all know that once cash disappears into the coffers of the SNP Government at Holyrood and is in SNP control, there is no guarantee that it will be spent where it was originally intended. That is my concern with stopping the UK Government spending money in Scotland.
I am amused by the SNP stance. For SNP Members to give us a whole list of things on which the UK Government should spend money in Scotland—a list that, like the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), I support very much of—but then to say that they do not want the UK Government to spend money in Scotland strikes me as absolutely ridiculous. Where, indeed, would people who live in Shetland and the Shetland Islands Council be if the UK Government had not had money to spend in Shetland when people there found themselves in need of financial support? To say that the UK Government cannot spend money on UK citizens, which is what we are—and many of us are proud of that—is utterly nonsensical.
Alison Thewliss
The hon. Lady misrepresents our position. Nobody is saying that we do not want the UK Government to spend money—we do not believe they are going to spend money, but that is a different issue. We should have the frameworks in place to make sure that it is done in consultation and collaboration with the democratically elected Government and Parliament in Scotland. That is not what the Bill says.
Christine Jardine
Yes, I agree that there should be collaboration—that is where the Bill does not respect the devolution settlement—but the curious thing about the hon. Lady’s comment is that I seem to remember it was an SNP Government who did away with the body that allowed councils in Scotland to apply for transport infrastructure funding. If councils were also to be denied the ability to apply to the UK Government for transport infrastructure funding without going through the Scottish Government, what guarantee is there that they would get it? We need in Scotland the ability for the UK Government to spend money on projects—to use the coffers of the UK Government.
Christine Jardine
No, I will not, if the hon. Lady does not mind.
We need that option, rather than just having the list given by the hon. Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) of projects with great big saltires on them and proclaiming that they were done by the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government are not the only funding body in Scotland.
Let me return to the point. In many ways the Bill does not respect the devolution settlement, and that is a great disappointment to many of us. I appeal to the Government, in going forward with this Bill, to look seriously at whether they can take on board amendments that would improve the collaboration, involve Ministers of the devolved nations, involve the elected representatives of parts of the country and ensure that we respect the devolution settlement, and, moreover, that we protect it and perhaps enhance it. That might prevent us from having to have this debate again and again and again in this place.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Michael Gove
No promise is being reneged on; a power surge is occurring. Scores of new powers are going to the Scottish Parliament and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) pointed out yesterday, no Scottish National party MP, MSP, councillor or activist can point to a single power currently exercised by the Scottish Parliament that is being taken away. There is no power grab; there is simply an example of SNP myth-making, which this internal market Bill finally puts to bed.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Minister without Portfolio (Amanda Milling)
The Government prioritise the environment at every step, investing in sustainable infrastructure to fuel economic growth and to create green jobs.
Contracting authorities are already required to consider social, economic and environmental impacts of their procurement. This year we will take a step further, implementing a new social value model so that those impacts are monitored in Government procurement and our high standards are maintained through effective contract management.
Christine Jardine
I was thinking particularly of economic sustainability, which also affects the private sector, not least the Scottish whisky industry, which has suffered a 65% downturn in trade to the United States, 30% of which is because of the tariffs. Can we have some clarity from the Government on how they will protect that and make it sustainable in this trade war?
Amanda Milling
I am sure we are all aware, as many people have spoken in this House about it, of the importance of the Scottish whisky industry. I am sure we will continue to have discussions on the matter.
Oral Answers to Questions
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Iain Stewart
Yes, absolutely, and I should add that my hon. Friend has been an excellent champion of the Borderlands deal. We are making good progress with it, including the consideration of individual projects such as the dairy innovation centre. We hope to be able to agree the terms of a full deal later this year. I should also mention that I am meeting the Campaign for Borders Rail team later this month to discuss that project, and I would greatly welcome his thoughts on that.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Iain Stewart)
The Government have been working closely with the devolved Administrations throughout the covid-19 pandemic to ensure a coherent UK-wide approach. The Government will shortly announce further details on regulations, including a full list of countries and territories from which arriving passengers will be exempted from the self-isolation requirements.
Christine Jardine
Edinburgh Airport is not just one of the largest employers in my constituency when taken together with all the cargo handlers and the shops on site, but a linchpin of Edinburgh’s economy and Scotland’s economy. During this crisis, 80% of its staff have been furloughed, and it has gone from having 40,000 passengers pass through it on an average day to fewer than 200, and on some days none. Although I am deeply concerned about the airport, the airlines and the directly related jobs, they also feed into the tourism industry, which is worth an estimated £10.5 billion a year to Scotland. With the loss of the Edinburgh Festival, the Royal Highland Show, the incomplete Six Nations this year, and now the loss of tourism, potentially every job in Edinburgh is under threat. Will this Government use their—
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady raises a very important point about the self-employed. As she knows, we have provided very considerable support as part of the overall package of £120 billion—I think we have given £22 billion altogether through the furlough scheme for employed and self-employed people. Her further suggestion for a universal basic income is one that we have looked at. The best way forward for our country is to get the disease under control in the way that we are doing; get our people back into work; build, build, build; and take this country forward.
Electoral Reform
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to welcome the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) to her place as her party’s spokesperson on these issues. I look forward to working with her in that role, and as such, I thank her for raising these important issues in this Adjournment debate. I will take the time available to me to address as many of the issues she raised as I can. She clearly spent most of her time focusing on the method of counting votes in the first-past-the-post system, so that is what I will focus on in my remarks.
If I may, I will just set the scene with a few additional things that we are also focusing on in this Parliament that we think are important in stewarding our electoral system and our democracy. I certainly think that how people cast their vote goes to the heart of our democracy, and it is from that that the Government made an absolute priority in our manifesto, and through much of the action I take when I have the privilege to speak from this Dispatch Box, of protecting and upholding our democracy and our elections by means of electoral integrity. We are taking forward a programme of work that seeks to make our elections secure but also fit for the modern age. Importantly, one of those points is the need to bring our electoral laws up to date for the digital age, which I think the hon. Lady and I both agree is a necessary move. I want to help citizens to make informed decisions by increasing transparency in online political campaigning, and with that I also seek to make sure that rules on campaign donations and spending are effective.
I really look forward to working with the hon. Lady on the forthcoming policy of putting imprints on digital electoral material, which I think will help to strengthen trust and will help people to be informed about who is behind a campaign, so that they can choose and decide. She will be aware of my intention to introduce further measures to reduce fraud in elections, including by introducing identification requirements to vote and by tackling postal vote harvesting and potential proxy fraud.
The hon. Lady already mentioned updated and equal parliamentary boundaries, so I will not dwell on that—we will have plenty of time to do that in Committee sessions in the next while—but it is linked to tonight’s subject matter. It is important, because every voter needs to know that their vote carries equal weight, no matter where it is cast in the UK. I start at this point, because it came up in the debate last week on Second Reading. There is simply a difference of view here. She would say that, for example, an STV system or a PR system would be better than a fixed-term—[Interruption.] I have too many acronyms with F, T and P in them; I meant to say first past the post. She will support one; I will support the other. However, that said, it is possible for us both to agree that, whichever system is used, voters’ voices ought to have the greatest possible equality within that system. From the perspective of first past the post I argue that, within that system, we should ensure that every vote has a chance for its voice to carry equal weight wherever it is cast.
Let me turn more specifically to the first-past-the-post electoral system. I understand the points raised by the hon. Member for North East Fife. She gave a good run down of the principal arguments that are often given against the first-past-the-post system, and I suspect that underlines the point for other hon. Members—we are kept company tonight by a few, including, no less, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) who attends every Adjournment debate. As he, and others, will know, this debate is not perhaps new, so I will run through some of the principal arguments in favour of first past the post, to balance the discussion.
For me, the first point is always the constituency link. There is something important to be said about the politics of place, and it is harder to achieve that in some designs for a proportional representation system. The politics of place are important. For example, the hon. Member for North East Fife speaks for Fife; I speak for Norwich. The hon. Member for Strangford speaks for Strangford, and my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) speaks for parts of Walsall. All those places have different needs that can be well represented by a Member who speaks when grounded in those communities.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
As a Scottish MP, like the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), I have experience of both systems. We both share constituencies with MSPs who are connected to the constituency. We have a separate top-up list. I do not think it fair always to depict proportional representation as removing the connection with the constituency. Sometimes, it is just as strong.
Chloe Smith
The hon. Lady is right. From the facts I cannot argue with that point, and I would not seek to. My point about the politics of place is part of a set of points that, in my view, fit together. My second point, which I think gives voters a better result than the one just described is—
Christine Jardine
One of the acknowledged problems we have in modern democracy is the lack of engagement, particularly of young people. One of the things many of us hear on the doorstep is, “Why would I bother? My vote doesn’t count.” The beauty of proportional representation is that every vote counts, in the sense that people sometimes feel in a seat where there is a large majority for one party that there is no point in them voting as it will not count and they will not be represented. Would the hon. Lady accept that point—that PR gives everyone’s vote some weight?
Chloe Smith
I do understand that point. I personally would use a similar argument to apply to one’s vote getting rather lost in a national system that did not give accountability directly to a representative.
Allow me to pause in responding to the arguments about the voting system and turn to a couple of the other points that the hon. Member for North East Fife made. I will cover three manifesto commitments. First, in the Conservative manifesto, which was chosen and has been given the privilege of being turned into action, we committed to retain the first-past-the-post system. That concludes that section of my remarks.
Turning to votes at 16, and if I may, combining this with the points made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) about how very many young people want to be involved in politics, I am passionately in favour of young people being involved in politics. However, I do think there are many ways to do that—there is not only the question of the voting age; there are lots of ways to engage people in politics. As I have mentioned, the manifesto commitment from this Government was to retain the franchise at 18 years old. That is because of an argument of consistency within the other services and aspects of public citizenship. A person below the age of 18 is treated as a minor, for example, in both the foster care system and the criminal justice system. They cannot attend jury service, buy alcohol or be sent into action in the armed forces, and they cannot own property, gamble and so on. There is a wide range of life decisions for which Parliament has judged that 18 is the right age across the nation.
Ministerial Code
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Michael Gove
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. It is vital that we first acknowledge that the civil service does an outstanding job. If one looks over recent months at, for example, how the Department for Transport dealt with the collapse of Thomas Cook or the response of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency to recent flooding, we see people going above and beyond to serve the public. But all of us can do better in every area. I look forward to working with the Cabinet Secretary and other leaders of the civil service to ensure that we can support the civil service to do even better in the future.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
The allegations of bullying on the part of a Cabinet Minister are incredibly serious. We all saw the breakdown of that relationship at the weekend and that requires an immediate investigation. However, the ministerial code also states that Ministers have
“a duty to give fair consideration and due weight to informed and impartial advice from civil servants”.
There are now reports of an alleged hitlist of senior civil servants whom No. 10 is seeking to replace for political reasons—a list that reportedly included Sir Philip Rutnam. That is clearly incompatible with that duty. Will the Secretary of State confirm whether such a list exists?
Michael Gove
No such list exists. It is the case that having worked with a variety of permanent secretaries and other senior civil servants across Departments, I have personally benefited from their robust—sometimes very robust—advice, and I have always been happy to come to this House to acknowledge when I have been wrong and others have been right.
Debate on the Address
Christine Jardine Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Sir Edward Davey
The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, and I am sorry if I misinterpreted his remarks. We should look at quantitative easing and how it is done, both in this country and elsewhere. There is some concern that the way central banks have done it has not led to a fair distribution of prosperity and that the money has gone into a small number of hands, resulting in increased inequality.
I am slightly worried by something that the right hon. Gentleman said about monetary policy that might imply—he might disagree that this was his implication—that there should be some challenge to the independence of the central bank by the Government of the day. I would not welcome that, although I would certainly welcome a debate on quantitative easing. I look forward to debating with him, so that we get our macroeconomic policy right. Finally, I will just say this. It did appear that the right hon. Gentleman was talking about expansionary fiscal policy and expansionary monetary policy. I wonder if he is worried about the impact of Brexit on our economy.
Like the Leader of the Opposition, I would like to remember one of our late friends, Frank Dobson, who passed away last month. Although we were members of different political parties, I found Frank to be one of the friendliest, most decent and most committed Members of this House I have ever met in my 20 years here. From his opposition to the Iraq war and apartheid to the work he did to rebuild the NHS, Frank leaves a proud record. In his role as the Brian Blessed of the Commons, Frank also leaves several volumes of funny, filthy and totally politically incorrect jokes. Mr Deputy Speaker, I am sure you would like to hear an example, but I fear I must remind the House that our proceedings are being broadcast before the 9 pm watershed.
I pay tribute to the mover and the seconder of the Humble Address. The hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) has a bright career in front of her, particularly in pantomime. I invite her to join me in my annual walk-on part for St Paul’s Players in Chessington. This year, during the general election, I took my family and I had my walk-on part as one of Robin Hood’s merry men. I can tell you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I know where the baddies are in this House and where the Sheriff of Nottingham sits. The hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) made an impressively long speech as a bid for a job ahead of the Prime Minister’s ministerial reshuffle. I wish him luck.
I believe our United Kingdom is one of the greatest examples of international co-operation in world history, so much so that four nations can be as one while being themselves: democratic, open and internationalist, operating under the rule of law and under the uniting presence of Her Majesty. We have been a beacon of political stability in the world. I believe we remain fundamentally a people who are outward-looking, inclusive, compassionate and capable of progressive reform as we recognise and value the lessons of history.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that, while the Scottish National party might trumpet gaining 80% of Scottish seats, the fact is that only 45% of the people of Scotland voted for it? If we had a more proportional representation system, that would have been reflected in the seats there, in the same way as the seats here might have been a little different.