Scotland’s Place in the UK

Debate between Gerald Howarth and Jim McGovern

Thursday 6th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the powerful contribution made by the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann). I am sure that I speak on behalf of the whole House when I congratulate him on the addition to his family.

Much of the debate has been on the forthcoming referendum and has centred on the economic issues, which are a bit clinical. Bob Dudley’s warning that BP would question future investment in a foreign country called Scotland will surely not be the last such intervention. The Business Secretary’s statement that the Royal Bank of Scotland would move its headquarters to the place where it is regulated will doubtless be followed by others. The Governor of the Bank of England has warned of the consequences of secession. It would not be in Alex Salmond’s gift to decide whether an independent Scotland could keep the pound, a case that was strongly and brilliantly made by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr Tyrie), so I will not repeat it.

Defence is another critical area. The defence industry in Scotland employs 12,600 people, many in the Clyde shipyards and in Rosyth, where the largest warships ever built in this kingdom, the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, are being assembled. Under Article 346 of the European treaty, the British Government are not required to put out to tender across the EU any contract for defence equipment. In a separate Scotland, all that would be lost.

[Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that since the second world war, the MOD has never placed a contract for any defence ship anywhere other than in the UK. If Scotland is no longer part of the UK, obviously it will not get those contracts.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and it is terribly important that the people of Scotland understand the significance of defence in this debate. I am grateful to him for his contribution.

There is also the strategic risk to the rest of the United Kingdom if the defence of our northern borders were to be entrusted to a foreign country, not to mention the ludicrous situation regarding the UK’s critical nuclear deterrent, which would have to be removed from Scotland at massive expense and huge danger to the whole of the current United Kingdom.

But these are all matters of the head; like my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) I want to address matters of the heart. My father was born in Lancashire, but my mother was a Douglas, the daughter of a Scottish Border farmer, himself a Border Reiver. I am a product of the Union and I am intensely proud of it. I do care about Scotland, even if I do not have a Scottish accent. My closest relatives have farmed that magnificent rolling border country for centuries, and are doing so today as we debate this issue. My uncles, together with MOD representatives from the Northumberland side, defined the border between England and Scotland along the Cheviot in the 1950s. My uncle played flanker for Hawick, two of my cousins played for Jedforest, and my second cousin, the late W. I. D. Elliot, was hailed by The Daily Telegraph as the greatest post-war Scottish rugby player, with 29 caps for Scotland. This is no foreign country; this is where a large part of my soul resides. When I cross the border back into Scotland, I think of the words of Sir Walter Scott:

“Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!”

I trace my roots to nowhere else but the soil of this United Kingdom and the Scottish Borders is where half my soul resides.

Let us be in no doubt, as the noble Baroness Liddell said during an excellent debate led by my noble Friend Lord Lang of Monkton in another place last week—sadly, not properly covered, of course, by our newspapers—the SNP has filed for divorce. It wants to end 300 years of a mighty and successful partnership, a partnership to which Scotland has contributed a huge amount: the market economist Adam Smith; Alexander Graham Bell who gave us the telephone; John Logie Baird, inventor of the television; Alexander Fleming who discovered penicillin, James Wilson from Hawick who founded the Standard Chartered bank for which I worked; Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding who famously commanded RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain—all Scots who enriched this kingdom—and today, Sir Alex Ferguson, possibly the greatest football manager of all time, J.K. Rowling, Sir Chris Hoy, Andy Murray and the rest.

That one man’s personal vanity should drive the campaign to put asunder that which has endured for centuries amounts to constitutional vandalism. We have worked together, played together and fought for freedom together. My uncles fought in the second world war to retain the freedoms of these islands. If this divorce were to happen, Scotland’s influence would be virtually zero.