Scotland: General Election and Constitutional Future

Jacob Young Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tommy Sheppard]

I have an embarrassment of riches. I give way first to the hon. Member for Redcar (Jacob Young).

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is recalling all these different examples of when people have discussed the claim of right; does he remember when the leader of his party said of the 2014 referendum that it was a “once-in-a-generation” referendum?

[Tommy Sheppard]

All good things come to those who wait, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I will be dealing with the “once in a generation” tagline later in my speech.

On referendums and whether they should take place, the question will arise as to who should make the decision. If we believe in the will of the Scottish people to choose their own destiny, then the answer can only be that the people of Scotland should decide whether to have another referendum. I accept that there needs to be a debate about how we gauge their opinion and what democratic mechanism is used for them to express their view. Well, democratic societies will quite often do that by using the electoral process and the process of voting, and in 2016 that is exactly what happened. My party did not go into the election in 2016 saying, “There must be another referendum and, 18 months forward, we disrespect the decision that was taken.” We went to the polls saying: “It looks like things are beginning to happen in the UK that will change the whole nature of the options available to people, and there may be circumstances in which it would be legitimate and proper to go forward and reconsider the question again in a second referendum.” That was the mandate that we were given by the people of Scotland in 2016.

That was six weeks before the Brexit vote in the UK, and no one could have anticipated what would unfold in the years after the May 2016 general election in Scotland. People in England voted by a small majority to leave the European Union and people in Scotland voted, by a much larger majority, to stay in the European Union. Overall, the vote was such that there was a narrow majority to leave, and the British Government began the tortuous process of extricating the United Kingdom from the European Union. That process was made all the more difficult and painful by the Government’s decision not to try to accommodate any of the wishes of the people on the losing side of the argument and to seek the maximum possible dissociation from the European Union. That is what happened, and we remember the agonising twists and turns in that process.

As 2018 moved into 2019 and we watched the process unfold, two things became clear. First, the opinion of the people of Scotland in the matter was to be completely disregarded. Unlike in other parts of the United Kingdom where there was an attempt to try to make the decision that was being implemented fit the aspirations of people who lived there, there was no such attempt in Scotland.

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[Ian Murray]

I am sorry that I did not quite hear the hon. Gentleman—the intervention king—so I apologise, but he is right. I think the reason why the polls have moved is that the SNP has arrogantly assumed that the Scottish people want independence, so people have started to ask the big questions, to which no answers have been forthcoming. People realise, with the vaccine roll-out and the covid support, that we are much better and much stronger as a nation working with our partners and friends as part of the family of four nations of the UK.

[Jacob Young]

The Member from Edinburgh said that the independence referendum will be on page 1 of the SNP’s manifesto and that “no independence referendum” will be on page 1 of the Conservative manifesto. What is Labour’s position on a referendum and on what page will it be in its manifesto?

[Ian Murray]

It will not be in our manifesto because our manifesto will be a covid recovery plan for the nation.

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[Ian Murray]

The answer to the question is no.

On interest rates—[Interruption.] The Conservatives do this all the time. They deliberately misinterpret the Scottish Labour party’s policy in order to feather their own electoral nest. That is why they are putting the Union at risk and why they are a bigger threat to the UK than any nationalist.

Let me turn to the interest rate question. For as long as we do not have our own currency, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who is in the Chamber, thinks that we will still have a monetary and interest rate policy, but his own SNP Minister for Energy, Paul Wheelhouse MSP, said that, without a central bank or lender of last resort, we would have to take whatever interest rates were set. Can any SNP Member intervene and tell us who is right—the hon. Member for Glasgow East or the Scottish Government Minister?

That leads us to exchange rates. Let us try another one. The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said that

“when we do have our own currency it has to be pegged against the pound sterling”,

but the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) suggests that will not be the case because we would need to meet the exchange rate mechanism rules to enter the EU. Again, what is it? Is it that we would have to take our own exchange rate mechanism to qualify for the EU, or would we be pegged to sterling? Maybe the answer is none of the above. Could it be the euro, as the hon. Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) said, or maybe Bitcoin, as the former SNP Member for East Lothian, George Kerevan, said—or, worse yet, our flexible friend? Will we all use our credit cards as if we were on holiday, as the SNP MSP Emma Harper suggested in a TV debate, when she said that we did not need a currency at all because we all used plastic anyway?

The position of SNP parliamentarians on these matters would be hilarious, were it not so serious. They want to take us out of the UK, regardless of the economic and social chaos that this would cause. This is about people’s jobs, mortgages and livelihoods. It is about our communities.

If SNP Members insist on focusing on separation instead of on how we get people back to work, how we lift families and children out of poverty, how we restart and properly value our NHS and how we lead a national effort to recover from this pandemic, they should at least be straight with the Scottish people about how separation will affect their jobs, livelihoods, health, education and opportunities for the future. They refuse to put forward the details of the separation proposition because the answers to these big questions are either unpalatable to the public or they actually do not know the answers.

[Jacob Young]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Murray]

I will carry on, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, because I have taken longer than I expected to.

Let us go back to the question that was debated earlier: when would that referendum be held? The hon. Member for Edinburgh East said—let us check Hansard—that no one is saying it would be this year—no one except the First Minister when she set out an 11-point plan to potentially deliver even an illegal referendum this year.

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[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

It will come as no surprise to many in this House that I am a proud Unionist, just like the vast majority of Scottish people in their most recent independence referendum.

I support our Union because we are better together. One of the amazing things that brings us together is how our towns and cities reflect one another. In Redcar and Cleveland, we produce more than 50% of the UK’s commercially viable hydrogen. We are home to the UK’s first hydrogen hub, linking us firmly to Northern Ireland and Wrightbus, producing the UK’s hydrogen bus fleet. Redcar and Cleveland is steel town. Although we sadly lost our blast furnace in 2015, we manufacture steel at British Steel in Lackenby, linking us firmly to the steel industry in south Wales, a lot of whose steel is still exported from Teesside. Redcar and Cleveland is home to a large petrochemical footprint—where I used to work. We transported ethylene molecules up and down the Wilton to Grangemouth ethylene pipeline, firmly linking Scotland’s petrochemical and oil and gas sectors to ours.

Our Union is better together, and it is time for the SNP to own up. It does not want independence. If it did, it would not want to join the EU. It just wants to break up our United Kingdom and will stop at nothing to achieve that. The latest polls are clear that the people of Scotland are turning away from independence, yet the SNP is desperately clinging to its sinking ship. It claims to represent Scotland, yet at every opportunity it ignores the voice of its own people when it does not fit the SNP’s narrative. We are now nearly seven years on from the 2014 referendum and the SNP still does not accept the result; just like the Labour on Brexit, it is constantly trying to overturn the will of the people. The SNP likes to tell us that a vote for the SNP is a vote for independence, but they know that that is not the reality. They prefer to shout as loudly as possible about independence so that they do not have to face the realities of their failures in leadership day after day.

While support for independence falls, the SNP shambles unravels. Scottish people can see for themselves the kind of Scottish Administration they have had for the past 14 years: one that is unfit to lead and unfit to listen, while they are breaking their necks in their obsession with the separation from our United Kingdom. If the SNP cared about Scotland, they would focus on improving education, not on separation. If they cared about Scotland, they would focus on cutting NHS waiting times, not on separation. If they cared about Scotland, they would focus on tackling rising crime and drug abuse, not on separation. The reality is that they do not care about Scotland—they just hate Britain. The SNP wants out of Britain and in the EU. The Liberals want to be in Britain, but in the EU. The Labour party will not tell us its view on either. Only the Conservatives are focused on a brighter future for Scotland as part of our proud United Kingdom.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

The last Back-Bench contribution in this debate will be from David Linden.