Referendum on Scottish Independence Debate
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Kirstene Hair
Main Page: Kirstene Hair (Conservative - Angus)Department Debates - View all Kirstene Hair's debates with the Scotland Office
Referendum on Scottish Independence
Kirstene Hair Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Martyn Day
Would the hon. Gentleman like to intervene? No. I will continue. The SNP was elected in 2016 with a clear mandate from a vote in the Scottish Parliament that was re-endorsed by the Westminster election.
Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that losing 500,000 votes in the recent election is quite a clear indication that the people of Scotland did not want another independence referendum and wanted his party to take it off the table?
Martyn Day
It is worth pointing out—I will speak slowly for diction purposes, lest I am misheard—that in my previous career I was a banker, and that it is a simple piece of arithmetic that 35 is a majority of the Scottish seats. It trumps 13 plus four plus seven.
Alan Brown
I think the hon. Lady is conflating her confused position, where the Lib Dems are arguing no to a Scottish referendum but yes to another referendum on the EU. The people that engaged in those surveys actually understood what the question was: would they like to see a future Scottish referendum? They said that they would rather see that once they have understood the impact of the UK leaving the EU, as that will then give them an alternative option.
Kirstene Hair
Since September 2014, there have been more than 70 polls taken across Scotland that have consistently said that the Scottish people do not want independence and do not want to have another referendum. After all these elections that the Scottish National party has suffered severely from, what is it going to take before it listens to the people of Scotland, who it supposedly represents?
Alan Brown
In 2016 the SNP at Holyrood stood on a manifesto that reserved the right to hold a referendum. It won and got the highest vote share of any Government in western Europe.