Scotland’s Place in the UK

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Gregg McClymont]

The hon. Gentleman should allow me to develop my argument a little further.

The SNP wants the political Union to end, but the social and economic union to continue. In those circumstances, the referendum will be about the best form of Government across these islands. That point was eloquently made by the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). If economic and social union is to endure, as shown by the SNP’s White Paper, the question becomes one about how Scotland’s political interests are to be represented. The answer that Scots came up with 300, 400 or even 500 years ago was a Union. With John Mair of Haddington in the lead, they came up, in diabolically clever Scottish fashion, with a way to create a partnership between two countries of very unequal size. When we celebrate Robert the Bruce and William Wallace, we are saying that because Scotland entered the Union freely, we created a partnership and were not subordinated.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will not the Scottish Government’s proposals lead to an incredible democratic deficit? At the moment, if people in Scotland do not like what the UK Government do, they can have their say through their MPs. In the new arrangement proposed by the SNP, any negotiations would be intergovernmental, and it would not be up to the people of Scotland but to the Scottish Government to see what could be extracted from negotiations with the UK Government.

[Gregg McClymont]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is a very Scottish way of putting it: the nationalists want us to have our cake and eat it, but that is very difficult. When Alex Salmond claims that by Scotland leaving the political union, England would lose a surly lodger and gain a good neighbour—that is important, because it illuminates the nationalists’ view of the world—my response is very straightforward: how can you be a lodger in your own house? We built this house together, and it is ours as much as anyone else’s. That house has of course been refurbished; it is not unchanging. The biggest constitutional change in this country in 300 years was the creation of the Scottish Parliament. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar does not like to be faced with facts—his speech was a fact-free zone—but the fact is that this is our house as well as that of the other peoples of the United Kingdom.

That is the basis on which this debate must proceed: how can one continue an economic and social union—the ties that bind us are accepted even by the nationalists—without political representation in the place where such social and economic decisions are made? The debate about the currency, interest rates and continuing social ties must proceed on that basis.