Scotland’s Place in the UK

Fiona O'Donnell Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate. Scotland has a proud and distinct history within the UK, and the UK is a union state rather than a unitary state. John P Mackintosh, former MP for Berwick and East Lothian, was a great thinker and proponent of devolution. He said:

“People in Scotland want a degree of government for themselves. It is not beyond the wit of man to devise the institution to meet those demands.”

Those words are now engraved about the Donald Dewar Room in Holyrood. Unfortunately, it was beyond the wit of the SNP to be a part of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, where men and women across Scotland’s civic society joined together to devise the Scottish Parliament, which now provides Scottish accountability for Scotland to make distinctive decisions on a wide range of policy.

For those of us in the Labour movement, devolution is about so much more than political accountability. I, along with 74% of voters, said yes in September 1997. I had seen how our councils in Scotland had battled to protect our people from the worst excesses of Thatcher’s Government. Her plan, and we now know it was her plan to close the pits and escalate the dispute, devastated my constituency. I wanted greater protection from any future Tory Government. Just yesterday in the Scottish Parliament, we have seen how that can happen. Despite John Swinney saying that he did not want to let Westminster off the hook and Nicola Sturgeon preferring a scrap with Westminster to scrapping the bedroom tax, thanks to the efforts of Jackie Baillie, Iain Gray and the Govan Law Centre, people in my constituency and across Scotland are now protected from this inhumane measure. I also want to give credit to my own local housing association, which has found a legal way to protect its tenants. This is the success and the power of devolution. This is the reality of having the best of both worlds.

I have known since my early years that I was not a nationalist. I remember a conversation on the Fort William primary school minibus. A nationalist girl took out a sweetie paper, tore it in half, and explained to me that this was what happened to Scotland’s wealth. I acknowledge that the nationalist argument has moved on from sweetie papers, but what it cannot challenge today—no matter how many White Papers it publishes, however much it uses our civil service for its political ends and however much it seeks to silence those who even dare to ask questions of its case—is the fact that Scotland, as part of the UK, is better placed to do good here at home and around the world.

In a packed Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh this week, the hon. Member for Bradford West (George Galloway) spoke about the difference that Scottish MPs made in this place in stopping military intervention in Syria. In the recent report from the Select Committee on International Development, we can also see the good that we do. I urge the voters in Scotland: do not tear my country apart and do not tear my family apart.