Referendum on Scottish Independence

Debate between Martyn Day and Jamie Stone

Monday 13th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Martyn Day]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments; I will come on to that in my speech. We have a clear mandate: 62% of the Scottish people voted to remain. We have a different constitutional opinion from the UK: we believe in sovereignty of the people, not necessarily sovereignty of Parliament. Our people have expressed a democratic wish and I am striving to maintain that. However, if we do not manage to maintain that position, we clearly have the potential for another route and a second referendum.

As I was saying, unlike the UK view of parliamentary sovereignty, the Scottish view clearly states that sovereignty rests with the people, so it will be for the Scottish people to decide. That view is well entrenched from the claim of right and legal precedent, but I want to bring us to a more recent one, because this debate is about Scottish independence and the referendum we held. People may remember the Smith commission, which did not live up to many of our hopes, but paragraph 18 of its report states:

“It is agreed that nothing in this report prevents Scotland becoming an independent country in the future should the people of Scotland so choose.”

That was signed off by all the political parties in Scotland —a very democratic position.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

If we cast our minds back to the beginning of the year and the end of last year the First Minister of Scotland went out to consult the Scottish people, to see how they felt about a second independence referendum. We heard an awful lot about that, and we read about it in The National—[Interruption.] Well, two people bought The National and I was one of them. After that, we heard nothing at all. Will the hon. Gentleman share with us what the results of the First Minister’s survey were?

[Martyn Day]

I think the hon. Gentleman has probably answered his own question. It was the First Minister’s survey, not my survey, and I do not have the answers. If I did, I am sure I could have found hundreds of quotes to support the argument I am making and kept the debate going for the rest of the sitting, but I want to make progress and allow other Members to get in.

I made the point that we have the right—or we should have the right—to make the decision, established by our principle of sovereignty of the people. How best can we achieve that when the time is right? I look back to the 2014 referendum, in which I played a large part for more than two and a half years. That referendum was praised by the Electoral Commission as setting the gold standard for civic engagement and participation. The commission went on to note that

“The Scottish independence referendum was well run, with high levels of voter satisfaction in the voting process.”

It added:

“The atmosphere in polling places was reported by police, staff and observers to be good natured throughout the day.”

That was certainly my experience in the north of West Lothian, where I was campaigning on the day. While people had differing opinions, there was a good-natured democratic outpouring, and we still benefit from that today, as it is still there in civic engagement across society.

The commentator Iain Macwhirter described the 2014 referendum as being

“like the velvet revolutions in eastern Europe, Scotland’s national movement was non-sectarian, peaceful and rigorously democratic.”

That sums up my experience in Linlithgow, in the north of West Lothian, working with many people from different political parties.