Claim of Right for Scotland

David Linden Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Patricia Gibson]

What I accept is that the people who voted for the Scottish National party want to have the debate and want to have the choice, and that matters. It is our job to persuade them over the line.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who comes into this debate with a degree of interest in it, may not be aware that there are now three Scottish Tory Members sitting in this House: the Minister, the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), and the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont). Can my hon. Friend say whether their majority has gone up or down on the basis of their message saying no to indyref2?

[Patricia Gibson]

I do not wish to intrude on private grief, but I cannot help noticing that each of the three Tory MPs from Scotland rushed as though their behinds were on fire to leave Holyrood—Scotland’s Parliament—to come to this House, and I have to question why that might be.

If not winning over 50% of the popular vote is the only tool in the Government’s arsenal to deny the people of Scotland the right to choose their own future, then where is the democratic mandate for this Government to press ahead with their version of a damaging Brexit—a Brexit born out of a very narrow referendum result, with the Electoral Commission itself saying that the referendum was characterised by law-breaking, cheating and dishonesty? In last year’s general election, the Tories won 43.6% of the vote. If we follow the UK Government’s logic on indyref2, this Tory Government most certainly do not have a mandate for their version of Brexit either. Therein is crystallised the unsustainability of the Tory Government’s position. This might be a surprise to some Conservative Members, but the Government’s position is so unsustainable that even some Front-Bench Tory MPs are admitting it secretly, off the record. If the Government continue to hold on to the unsustainable position that Scotland should be denied its claim of right to exercise its democratic will to determine its own future, this will, and can only, deepen the current constitutional crisis. There is no doubt that England’s and Scotland’s elected representatives have quite different and diverging constitutional mandates, but be in no doubt—each mandate is as valid as the other.

Let me turn to the tired and frankly insulting mantra trotted out too often by Conservative Members: that the people of Scotland voted no to independence in 2014. They did; there is no denying that. It appears that, according to the beleaguered and very absent Secretary of State for Scotland, it matters not how the people of Scotland voted in the past five elections or how they may vote in future elections, because he has decided that independence for Scotland can be put to the people of Scotland only once in a generation, regardless of any democratic choice they may choose to make—summarised as, “You’ll have had your democracy, then.” This is quite frankly absurd and silly talk, and insulting to the people of Scotland.

The Secretary of State for Scotland has revealed that he either knows nothing of, or does not subscribe to, the claim of right for Scotland, or has clearly not read the report from the Smith commission—which is odd for a Secretary of State for Scotland. I wish I could say I am surprised about that. I hope that the Minister standing in for the beleaguered Secretary of State for Scotland tonight does not, when he gets to his feet, insult the House or the intelligence of the people of Scotland by repeating this once-in-a-generation nonsense. I draw his attention—he really ought to listen to this because it is important—to the final report from the Smith commission, and more specifically to paragraph 18 of chapter 2, which clearly states:

“It is agreed that nothing in this report prevents Scotland becoming an independent country in the future should the people of Scotland so choose.”

That seems pretty clear to me. No wonder the former Secretary of State for Scotland, the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale, is blushing.

The unanimous verdict of the Smith commission was an implicit agreement that a second referendum vote was and is constitutionally valid. It is inconceivable that that would have been included in the final published report if the members of the Smith commission, a bare two months after the first vote, thought that the matter had been kicked into the long grass for a generation. Democracy is not an event. It is a growing, living, evolving, organic thing, and an expiration date cannot be put on it by this or any other Government.

Let us not forget that the appetite for a second independence referendum is easy to understand. The people of Scotland voted no to independence in 2014 because they were fed lies, mistruths and fear. They were told that, in order to remain in the EU, they would need to vote no. They were told that if they voted yes, they would lose their pensions. I do not have time to go through all the broken promises and lies. But this time, when the independence referendum comes—and come it will—Scotland will make a different choice. The people of Scotland will see through the snake oil salesmen and the spivs who perpetrated those lies the last time round. The people of Scotland will say to Conservative Members, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?”

I urge the Minister to remember the words of former Tory Prime Minister John Major:

“no nation could be held irrevocably in a Union against its will.”

The myth of a union of equals has been hopelessly exposed, and the people of Scotland realise that Scotland’s future must be as an independent nation. I urge this Government to do the right thing and respect democracy. Every day of denial only feeds the fire of independence and the case for a referendum on this issue, the momentum for which cannot be stayed.

I understand that this Government—whose Benches are empty—fear an independent Scotland building a more fair, more equal, more compassionate, more outward-looking country on their doorstep, but that is really a matter for them. No Westminster Government has the right to choose Scotland’s path, and how dare it even try! This Government must prepare themselves for what is coming, because their arrogance, intransigence and contempt for democracy show that the UK is fatally disunited and is about to lose Scotland. A sovereign people will not be silenced. We will not go quietly. The clock is ticking. This Union’s time is up, and well this Government know it.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Douglas Ross)]

It is always a pleasure to debate issues of importance to Scotland, and it is a huge privilege for me to do so from the Dispatch Box. While I acknowledge the efforts of the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) to secure the debate, the claim of right for Scotland did not come up much during the recent general election campaign that I fought in Moray. It was not the first issue out of people’s lips when they were seeking to elect their representatives to this place. They did not say that they wanted to have a debate on constitutional matters led yet again by the SNP.

[David Linden]

Will the Minister give way?

[Douglas Ross]

I will allow the hon. Gentleman to intervene in a moment.

When I spoke to people in Moray on doorsteps, in hustings and at street stalls during the election campaign, they were interested in the fact that the Scottish economy is growing slower than the UK economy. They were interested in the fact that Scotland’s national health service has been underfunded and understaffed by the SNP Scottish Government—a Government who increased spending in the NHS in Scotland by 13.1% between 2012-13 and 2017-18, compared with increased spending of 17% in England by the UK Conservative Government. That shows the difference being made in Scotland when the SNP does not prioritise services that local people rely on. [Interruption.] The SNP has been clear just recently about how Parliament should respect all Members. Indeed, one of its MSPs said over the weekend that heckling and shouting was a form of discrimination. I hope that those on the SNP Benches consider those words when trying to shout down a Minister who is trying to respond to the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Ross]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) because he tried to come in first.

[David Linden]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, and he knows that he and I get on fairly well. I want to come back not on the back-fighting between the SNP and the Conservatives, but on his point about the claim of right for Scotland, which he said was not contentious during the course of the election in Moray, where of course his vote fell quite significantly. On the claim of right, he was not one of the Members in this House who opposed it—in fact, if I recall correctly, and I took part in the debate that night, no Member opposed that—so if it was not a contentious issue then, why is it a contentious issue for the Minister tonight?

[Douglas Ross]

I think if the hon. Gentleman reads the Official Report of this debate he will see that I did not say it was not contentious; I said it was not the pertinent issue. [Interruption.] Perhaps it was across Scotland, but certainly in Moray it was not the top issue that people were campaigning on and urging their politicians to raise if they were elected to this place. I think it is only right that we look at the key issues that people were discussing at the general election, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman would agree that, even in his own seat in Glasgow, the claim of right was not the issue that people were queueing up to discuss.