Scotland: General Election and Constitutional Future

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

I have some sympathy with the SNP; it must have been difficult to decide what to debate today, given some recent developments. So it is pleasing to know that they have gone with the greatest hits. I always look forward to the SNP debates because, whatever the subject, the answer is always the same—separatism. Speakers on the Conservative Benches raise education, trade, businesses, currency and the fact that a once-in-a-generation referendum on separation happened in 2014. Then the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who is an outstanding orator and politician, stands up, ignores all the points raised, flaps his arms in outrage, quotes a few opinion polls and concludes that separatism is the only answer. It is a sort of modern-day Henry VIII strategy.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you know that I am from good Scottish mining stock, and the Union is personal to me because it runs through my blood. Like millions of others, including millions of Scots, I am looking forward to seeing my family again and to giving them a hug. However, at a time when the population wants to focus on coming together, the SNP wants to focus on tearing us apart.

The hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) set out her objections and the fact that there are so many relevant things that we could be discussing today—the road map out of covid; the challenges that covid has created; the success of our world-leading Great British vaccine programme; our furlough scheme, and the fact that it has saved millions of jobs; the opportunity to create a better, greener future together—but they have all been put aside. Instead, we are discussing two issues on which we have already had referendums.

I have sat through many contributions from SNP Members in this Chamber. Unfortunately for them, they are becoming the biggest barrier to what they want to achieve. The truth is that the SNP has less faith in the great people of Scotland than I do. It is increasingly out of touch with the wishes of the Scottish people. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) just set out in an outstanding speech, the SNP is failing on so many important issues. The Scotland that I know is intelligent, tolerant and proud. It is a vital member of this Great British family, and its people want us to focus on recovering from covid and building a better future together. The politics of separatism is not the answer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Clarkson (Heywood and Middleton) (Con)]

For a few days now, we have been playing a guessing game in the Parliamentary Private Secretaries’ WhatsApp group about the possible subject of this debate. The running joke, of course, was that, whatever it was—fisheries, education or colonising the moon—it was actually going to be about separatism. So imagine our surprise when SNP Members just dropped the pretence and brought forward this debate. It is the sort of transparency and honesty that their colleagues in Holyrood can only dream of and then promptly forget again.

As a card-carrying member of the Conservative and Unionist party, it will come as no shock to Members that I am not in favour of smashing up a successful 300-year-old Union based on petty spite and grievance, but it does give me the opportunity to point out that there is a special Union connection today—St Patrick’s day—as St Patrick was a Welshman. That is proof that we have been doing this for quite a while now.

Like a lot of people in this Chamber, I campaigned in the 2014 referendum. I did not personally have a vote, but I felt that I should get involved because it was my country that the Scottish National party was trying to smash up. I would hope that, if one of their populist cousins such as the UK Independence party or the British National party came to power here, people would come down from north of the border to support the Unionist majority in our fight against that particular brand of divisiveness; that is what families do.

My seat of Heywood and Middleton is in the north-west of England, and in a very real sense we are the Union region. We are the only region to be represented by MPs from all four of the home nations. We border Scotland and Wales, as well as four other English regions, and they make us who we are; they enrich us. Apart from the strategic placement of the Pennines to keep the Yorkist hordes at bay, we do not want any borders with them.

The SNP does not have a mandate for another divisive referendum; it is barely getting on with the day job that it was elected to do. It is spending all its time avoiding democratic accountability as MSPs and airing its dirty laundry in public. Unless people specifically went out in 2016 in the hope that their children’s hospitals would be closed and their schools would slide down the PISA rankings, it is very hard for SNP Members to justify the claim that they are delivering what people voted for. It looks increasingly like another diversion tactic to move the focus away from yet another botched policy or another sex scandal swept under the First Minister’s living room carpet.

[Mark Fletcher]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. A few times, he has alluded to the fact that, irrespective of the question, when it comes to the SNP the answer is always separatism. Does he agree that the SNP increasingly resembles some sort of Nigel Farage tribute act?