Debate on the Address

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), the leader of the Liberal Democrat party, talked about Paddy Ashdown, our former colleague. He was one of the people who, in part, worked for my father in Geneva in the 1970s, and he is an example of why it is wrong to say that people who come into Parliament cannot do anything else.

There are many people who did many things before they came into Parliament, whether with domestic responsibilities or in professional or voluntary work, and there are many who do the same thing again when they leave. We ought to look on our debates in this place as a way of recruiting many others to stand for election and make contributions here.

Our contributions in this place are often about justice as much as law, and those two come together in the Queen’s Speech in leasehold reform. The Government have said that they want to enshrine it in law that ground rents should be zero and that houses should not be sold unnecessarily as leasehold. That is a start, but a great deal more needs to be done.

Leasehold reform was accepted as a key element in the findings of the Government White Paper “Fixing our broken housing market”. That White Paper produced a number of consultations, all of which accept the urgent need for reform. We have been seeing leaseholders abused over the last 10 to 20 years, partly by mistake, partly by crooks and— too often, in the last 10 years—by ordinary commercial organisations that realise they can stuff their own pockets and those of their shareholders by exploiting the weakness of individuals, whether under Help to Buy or in other ways. I am grateful for the commitments made by Government on that.

The Government have accepted Lord Best’s report recommending statutory regulation of managing agents. They have asked and funded the Law Commission to undertake a major review of leasehold and commonhold law. The Government have tasked officials in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government with supervising that work and asked them to carry out their own work on leasehold reform. Earlier this year, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, led by the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), produced an amazing report—as I have said before, it is one of the best Select Committee reports I have read in my time here—urging the Government to do even more.

The Competition and Markets Authority is, with a bit of encouragement, currently considering a potential investigation of major mis-selling activities by developers. I ask the Government to assure us that the reforms that have been considered over a number of years will now come forward. We have the chance to make big progress. It is in a bipartisan area, and it will make a difference to many of the people who live in the 5 million to 6 million leasehold homes—that might be 10 million people, which is a very high proportion of our electorate, to whom we are responsible.

I declare, as a matter of form, that I am a leaseholder in my constituency. We and five others bought the freehold. We had a good freeholder and a good managing agent. Separately, in about three years’ time, I expect to buy a leasehold flat somewhere near here. I say that to avoid people thinking that I am serving my own interest.

I want to turn to two other issues, both relating to justice. The first is the case of Krishna Maharaj, who is in his 80s and who was convicted more than 20 years ago of two murders in Florida that he did not commit. I will then turn to the case of Gurpal Virdi, a Sikh former Metropolitan police sergeant who is still seeking justice for the way in which he was treated and prosecuted—unsuccessfully, obviously—for indecent assault.

Before that, I do not think one should totally ignore the contribution of the leader of the Scottish National party, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who keeps saying interesting things, often very loudly, and then drops his voice and says we should all be very calm in this place. I say calmly to the SNP that, if we are talking about elections, let us remember what happened in the 2017 election compared with that in 2015. The Scottish National party’s share of the vote went down from 50% to about 37%, while the Conservatives’ national share went up from about 37% to about 42%. The SNP always floats the idea that it has a majority, but that did not happen last time and I hope it does not happen next time.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

rose—

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Have I provoked the hon. Gentleman? Of course I give way.

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[Patrick Grady]

We still won a majority of seats in the 2017 election. We still have a very strong mandate to speak on behalf of the people of Scotland. It was the second best result in our party’s history here.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I could have said that as well, and as gently too, but it is also worth remembering that having a greater number of seats does not mean that those Members speak for all the people in Scotland. I think they will accept that getting 37% means that other parties got 63%, and they deserve to talk, if not shout, as much as the hon. Gentleman’s party.

I first met Krishna Maharaj in a Florida jail 22 years ago. It was two days after the funeral of Princess Diana, which is why I remember the date. He was said to have killed two people. There was no evidence that he had done so. The investigation was clearly wrong, and the work of Benedict Kuehne and Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve has now proved that beyond reasonable doubt.

In fact, a magistrate in Florida has concluded that there is an at least 87% chance that the conviction was totally wrong; 87% is seven out of eight, meaning that there is only a one in eight chance that the prosecution was justified. Clive Stafford Smith has done really well. For those who want to look it up, I refer them—I am afraid that this is a bit detailed—to case No. 17-21965-CIV-Martinez/Otazo-Reyes of the United States district court of the southern district of Florida. The petitioner was Krishna Maharaj and the responder was Mark S. Inch, secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections. It was submitted by Benedict Kuehne and Clive Stafford Smith, and delivered on 7 October 2019.

On behalf of someone who is in his 80s and has been in jail unnecessarily and wrongly for more than 20 years, I ask the Florida state to stop going for delay after delay. For someone of that age who has suffered an obvious injustice, the case should be reheard as soon as possible, and Krishna Maharaj should be released. He is British. He is from Trinidad. The whole saga is in Clive Stafford Smith’s book. Following the magistrate’s decision, I ask our American friends to ensure that the Florida authorities re-examine the case in court and then this injustice can be ended.

Krishna Maharaj’s case reminds me of the days when I used to talk more often on such subjects. About seven times a year we would discover that people had been convicted in this country of murders that they either could not have committed or where the conviction was not safe. Some of those cases involved IRA attacks. Sometimes the authorities go too far.

I strongly support criminal justice reform and the need to ensure that the police can do their job more easily, more effectively and more openly. I pay tribute to the Metropolitan police and to members of the police services of other parts of the country who have come together in the past week or so to deal with the street campers and protestors in London.

I was surprised to discover that the so-called Extinction Rebellion had so much money that it could provide up to £400 a week in expenses to people who are ruining the lives of others trying to get to work in the capital city and earning less than £400 a week.

Given the selfishness and, if I may say so, foolishness of those who think it is a good game to take a holiday or receive expenses to come down to London and spread around lots of nylon and plastic tents, most of which seem to get abandoned as though it is the Glastonbury festival, I think they ought to look themselves in the mirror and ask, “Are we doing the right thing in the right way?” I would argue that they are not. When I asked a number of them one evening, “Which G20 country has done more than this country?” none of them volunteered the name of another major country.

I will give the police all the support I can as they work with councils and schools to eradicate the rash of adolescent violence in some of our seaside towns. Young people should be involved in worthwhile activities. They should not be going around in gangs. When they start going astray, they ought to be caught and redirected to ways in which they can actually make something of their lives. Just because someone’s family has a bad past is not an excuse for them to have a bad future. We need to turn people’s lives around, and that is what I think justice should be.

Gurpal Virdi has been a friend of mine for about 30 years. I will not go through his previous experiences, but he is one of the very few minority ethnic officers who has actually got through to full retirement with the Metropolitan police. He was once fired for allegedly sending himself a National Front leaflet saying that black and Asian people were not wanted in the police. That got resolved in his favour. I was there when Bernard Hogan-Howe presented him with an award for exemplary conduct.

Following an attack similar to that on my constituent Stephen Lawrence, Gurpal Virdi left his police station in Ealing, found two of the attackers and the attack weapon, and went to see the family to give them information and comfort. After he retired, he did various things voluntarily and for money. Importantly, he stood as a Labour candidate and was mentored by the present Mayor of London, whom I suggest should get in touch with him to give him the support he should have given him all the way through.

Gurpal Virdi was told that he was being charged with indecent assault, with an extendable truncheon, on someone under the age of 16. The police investigation was not done by the historical sexual offences group; it was passed to the directorate of professional standards, which had been at fault in some of his other disputes with the police.

The one thing it knew all the way along was that extendable truncheons, which the complainant was certain had been shoved up his bottom, were not made available until 10 years later. The police statements from others then serving in Battersea said that they had not seen one until 1997, and the alleged offence took place in 1986.

Every single statement of so-called fact by the complainant was contradicted by the only serious witness put forward by the police. The fact that the event did not happen, that the witness was not there and that Gurpal Virdi was not involved can be viewed as side issues, because the statements made by the so-called witness contradicted what the so-called complainant said in his so-called claim.

It was also known that Gurpal Virdi had arrested this complainant five months later in the company of another named officer. The only known records were the identity of the officer in charge who had arrested the complainant in November 1986; that Gurpal Virdi and another officer had arrested him in March the following year when there was a warrant out for him; and that the police knew that Gurpal Virdi had taken the complainant’s fingerprints in March 1987. That was not disclosed on time to the defence. The officer who was with Gurpal Virdi in March ’87 was not interviewed. The police officer who was in charge in November ’86 did not put a statement to court; we heard later that he had said that he could not remember anything about the incident, which had probably been only a simple arrest, as used to happen. When Gurpal Virdi asked the then Independent Police Complaints Commission to look into the matter, it was passed on to the Metropolitan police, who passed it to the department of professional standards—the investigator into whose conduct the Met was supposed to be looking. The department said that it had done everything right. I say that it did everything wrong, and I ask the new Independent Office for Police Conduct, if it has the powers, to form its own investigation. I ask the inspectorate of police to do that, too.

I conclude by saying this. Operation Midland, into what “Nick”—Carl Beech—said, is going to be reviewing a number of things. I ask for two things. One is that Ministers and the Metropolitan police consider getting someone such as Sir Richard Henriques to give a week to looking at the Virdi case—it would not take more than that.

I then ask the review of Operation Midland to look into Operation Gianna and ask especially how the gold group, the supervising group in the Metropolitan police—I think it went from the deputy commissioner all the way down—managed to overlook every single bit of evidence showing that Gurpal Virdi was innocent. He should not have been charged. There should have been a proper investigation, and he should have been exonerated.

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[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

I support today’s Gracious Speech. I have spoken on the first day of every Gracious Speech debate since I was first elected to Parliament, but never under these circumstances. The atmosphere is a little strange. We are all a little subdued, perhaps because colleagues are stressed out for various reasons, although that is not to say that the quality of the speeches from my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), who is no longer in his place, and my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) was not absolutely splendid.

This really is a broken Parliament, but I have some good news. I, a Scottish National party Member, the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady), who happens to be in the Chamber, and some Labour and Conservative colleagues were all in Rome yesterday for the beatification—

[Patrick Grady]

The canonisation.

[Sir David Amess]

The canonisation of Cardinal Newman —it was the first of an Englishman for 50 years. The House should know that we asked the Holy Father if he would pray for a miracle so that we can deliver Brexit—[Interruption.]. When we asked him if the next canonisation would be of a British Member of Parliament, his eyes lifted up to heaven. A number of us are feeling slightly spiritual at this rather sombre occasion, as today has been thus far.

[Patrick Grady]

I put on record that there was a great degree of cross-party consensus, but praying for a miracle to deliver Brexit was absolutely not part of the SNP’s contribution.

[Sir David Amess]

That was a faux pas on my part, but I think we got on pretty well. We share similar levels of stress and we just want the thing to be over.

I voted initially for us not to join the European Union. I voted for us to leave the European Union when we had the referendum, never thinking for a moment that we would have another referendum, and I was absolutely shocked at the result. No Liberal Democrat Members are in the Chamber at the moment, but I pay tribute to them because their view has been consistent. However, I do not see anything liberal or democratic about their policy.

I had the privilege of helping to chair the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill Committee. There was a first-class debate in the Chamber from Members on both sides of the House. Reflecting on that debate now, I simply do not understand why, when it came to the vote to trigger article 50, such a huge number of Members voted for that process. If we had not triggered the process, we would not be where we are now. Anyway, I hope that a miracle happens, Brexit is fixed and we leave the European Union on 31 October.

The reason I like to speak on this particular day is that we can speak about anything, as a number of colleagues have demonstrated, but bizarrely, I will keep my remarks close to the Gracious Speech. The Leader of the Opposition made an interesting speech, but I did not feel an atmosphere of good will. He seemed reluctant to say that he would support any of the measures. Surely in a broken Parliament, there are at least half a dozen measures that, cross-party, we could support. He said one particular thing that I agree with and I will come to that later.

The last Session was, of course, the longest parliamentary Session since the civil war. I attend business questions every Thursday. Opposition Members said, “When are we going to get the Queen’s Speech?” Well, we have it, so it should be celebrated that we have a new Session. The point I am particularly interested in is the wonderful line about measures to be announced. Besides the 22 measures, there will be many more. As far as Brexit is concerned, I have given my view already. Even if I had a different view, I would follow what my constituents voted for in the referendum: 58% voted to leave and 42% voted to remain.

In terms of cross-party support, I would have thought that the Opposition could support the animal welfare measures. We recently had a debate about the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill. It fell at Prorogation, but it can be carried over, and everyone should be pleased that “dumb animals” will have protection if the legislation is carried. We will ban the imports of trophy-hunted animals and all the other barbaric practices whereby going on safari is advertised and when people get there, the animals are all caged up. How people can celebrate standing on such a beautiful thing as an elephant or a rhinoceros, I do not understand, so the House should support those measures.

Over the years, we have spoken about laws to recognise the sentience of animals. The UK has been a global leader in this area for as long as I can remember, and I pay tribute to the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, of which I am a patron. I am very glad that the Queen’s Speech suggests that we will do something about that issue.

I know that no Minister sums up this debate on the first day but, if we ever get to day six, I would like an answer to the question about pet passports. In terms of when we negotiate the withdrawal Bill, a number of my constituents have asked whether we are going to continue with the reciprocal arrangements, so that those remain in place for them when they take their dogs or cats abroad.

There is another point that the House should surely agree on. Only last week, we had a wonderful debate about the Domestic Abuse Bill, when the House was at its very best and we heard a number of splendid speeches. I am absolutely delighted that that Bill has been carried over. If we really are going to vote down the Queen’s Speech, it would be a great shame if that Bill is lost.

I was on the Health Committee for 10 years. You reach a point where you just go round and round in circles in the inquiries that are held, but I was really pleased that we announced in the Queen’s Speech that we would have an integrated care Bill. Our NHS is a huge organisation. The treatment that we get from general practitioners, hospitals, pharmacists and other services is absolutely essential, but it is important that we have joined-up healthcare. I hope that that is what the Bill will mean, and it is certainly something that the Conservative party has been promising ever since we formed the coalition Government in 2010.

The morale of our staff who work in the NHS is very important. I am very glad that they have been given a reasonable pay rise. I visited my local hospital recently. Every single ward does a splendid job. I suppose that this will go down like a lead balloon, but I am going to pick out the Elizabeth Loury ward, which deals with particularly ill patients. I thought that the staff were absolutely amazing and when I went to congratulate them, a patient who was hooked up to all sorts of machines heard what I was saying and forced their way out to say, “I want to agree with you: they are doing an absolutely wonderful job.” I would have thought that all Members of Parliament would agree that we should praise the work that they do. All this talk about the privatisation of the health service is absolute rubbish, as far as I am concerned.

The Royal College of Nursing’s staffing for safe and effective care campaign was brought to my attention at the recent Conservative party conference, and I am glad that the Queen’s Speech included matters relating to support for the NHS workforce, which the RCN believes should be at the heart of Government policy.

Earlier this month we had another really good debate on women’s mental health, led by the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), who is no longer in her place, with first-class contributions from colleagues. I think it was the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger)—she has recently joined the Liberal Democrats—who said that we need more money for mental health services. We would all say amen to that, but it is a question of balance. In that debate, I spoke about two inspiring local women, Kelly Swain and Carla Cressy. Both those ladies run charities in my local area, and I know that access to Government funding would represent a significant boost to their organisations. I hope that we will look at how clinical commissioning groups and the Department of Health and Social Care can work together to ensure that money goes to small charities.

I said I agreed with the Leader of the Opposition on one point, and that was Grenfell. We all remember waking up after the election and seeing the terrible scenes. The hon. Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad), who was newly elected, made a fantastic speech, and we have had some very good debates. I am the chairman of the all-party parliamentary fire safety and rescue group, and I absolutely agree with the Leader of the Opposition that we should fit sprinklers retrospectively in high-rise buildings. No new school should be built without sprinklers being fitted, and I agreed with his point about new building safety standards. Following Dame Judith Hackitt’s review, it is important that the House gets behind the legislation, about which I hope to hear more detail.

At the recent Conservative party conference, I met the British Heart Foundation, and the statistics it gave us on UK air pollution were truly shocking. From the reports that I have read, the environment Bill about which we have heard today will address not only poor air quality but the protection of landscapes and habitats. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) is the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We all know that to deliver a clean environment we must promote electric cars. I am surrounded on these Benches by experts in the technology of electric cars. I am no expert, but I now understand much more about hybrid cars than I did. At the conference, I met representatives of the industry who mentioned serious concerns about the lack of charging points available across the country, with just one charging point in my constituency, and a total of five in the whole of Southend. It is essential that the infrastructure legislation that will be introduced improves that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) mentioned Extinction Rebellion. I do not want to be a hypocrite about this. I collected my tree, as did a huge number of colleagues. I got a beech tree, which will be used for hedging. Umpteen people locally would like more trees. I promised the chap who gave me the tree that I would mention his opinion that, while what the Government are doing at the moment with tree-planting programmes is good, we need to plant billions of trees. Quite where billions of trees could be put, I do not know. All I would say is that in Southend West we have an active tree-planting campaign, and I am sure there is plenty of space in Scotland to plant even more trees.

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[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I have a huge amount of respect for the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), who was diligent and well-respected as a Minister and is proving to be the same on the Back Benches. Clearly, we have a bit of a disagreement about Brexit. If we have spoken on these Benches about the risk of a no deal, it is because that risk remains very real. Many people might say it remains an extreme possibility. It is one that the Government seem willing to contemplate, despite the fact that, if there is a majority for anything in this House, it is for avoiding no deal. That will be the situation we end up in come the end of this week, one way or the other.

Several Members have commented that this is a slightly unusual Queen’s Speech, with a slightly unusual atmosphere and slightly unusual timing. For the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), who opened the debate, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) and myself, it is taking place during our 40th year. We have all celebrated our 39th birthdays; indeed she and I share a birthday, so we will look forward to celebrating that next year. Who knows what situation we will be in. The hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) noted that the temperature goes up and down, but we have a role to fulfil, which SNP Members take seriously, as the third party in this House and as the largest party in Scotland. We have never claimed to speak for all of Scotland, although I would draw the House’s attention to the remarks made by our former leader, Angus Robertson, in his first speech after the 2015 election, when he recognised that we won considerably more seats than was proportionate to our vote and that we did have a responsibility to be aware of the broad range of political opinion that exists in Scotland. But there is consensus in Scotland, and every constituency in Scotland voted to remain in the EU. We will not shy away from speaking up for that point of view.

This Queen’s Speech is also slightly unusual because this debate is taking place while the SNP annual conference is going on in Aberdeen. No matter how many representations my predecessor and I make through the usual channels about according our party the same respect as all the other parties get in terms of a conference recess; or about how the parties should work to obliviate the need for a conference recess, here we are nevertheless. But it is political party conferences that are the place to lay out manifestos and make broad political declarations and plays to attract voters, not the ceremonial opening and the state occasion of the Queen’s Speech. However, that is what today’s Queen’s Speech has had: all the hallmarks of a political manifesto targeted at the perceived priorities of a narrow range of voters in particular parts of England and Wales.

As far as I can see, at least a third of the Bills will be subject to the English votes for English laws process, in whole or in part. Those are all in areas where the SNP Government have already shown themselves to be much more progressive and have a considerably more enlightened vision. We are not cracking down just to be seen to be tough on crime; we are working towards the rehabilitation of offenders, recognising the difficulties that can be caused by short sentences and finding different ways to bring people who have fallen foul of the law and fallen into criminality back into the fold of society. We are sent here to speak for Scotland and then the rules of this House continue to exclude us, through that EVEL process.

The Bills that will apply in Scotland already seem to be a source of concern; even since the Queen’s Speech was delivered my inbox has filled up with dozens of emails with concerns about the proposals for voter identification. The SNP wants to expand the franchise and make it easier for more people to vote, starting with 16 and 17-year-olds, and extending the franchise for elections to this place to include our friends and neighbours who are European nationals, but it seems as though this Government’s proposals want to narrow the opportunity for people to take part in our democratic processes. That is equally true of the immigration Bill and the end to freedom of movement, which, as all SNP colleagues who have spoken have said, will be a social, economic and cultural disaster for this country.

This theme of narrowing, isolation and an insular approach comes with Brexit, and the notion of global Britain that the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East spoke of is just increasingly a joke. I was recently in Malawi, where I went to visit the high commission, which had a pop-up banner saying, “Apply, come to Britain. Britain is great. Come and take part in our Chevening scholarship.” The night before, I had met stakeholders who could not get a visa for love nor money for their Chevening scholarships. So the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing, and Brexit is the exact opposite of the vision of a global Britain. Much of the legislation that has been outlined today is going to have to help to try to clean up the mess that Brexit could leave behind.

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

I am listening to the hon. Gentleman, who is making a very good speech, with lots of pertinent points. Surely, however, he would agree that the most narrow, isolationist and separatist agenda being displayed in this House today is coming from SNP Members, who want to break up our United Kingdom. Surely that is narrow, nationalist and isolationist. Surely breaking up our United Kingdom, the most successful political union the world has ever seen, is the most isolationist policy being put before the House at the recent time.

[Patrick Grady]

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) pointed out, the EU has secured peace on the continent of Europe throughout the history of its existence. Of course what we want to do as an independent country is join the family of nations. The way to know that a country is independent in the modern world is if it is part of organisations such as the EU, the UN and the World Trade Organisation, all of which are partnerships of equals, where the different member states, through the mechanisms that exist, can have their voices heard. I have just said that Scottish Members, including the hon. Gentleman, will be actively excluded from at least a third of the Bills outlined today because of the EVEL process. So I do not think the point he is trying to make stands up well.

It is becoming abundantly clear that there is no good outcome to Brexit—there is no good way of leaving the EU. If there was a better deal than membership of the EU, all the other members would want that deal and the EU would not exist. It stands to reason that the best possible deal we can have is the one we already have, which is membership.

The global challenges, which have been outlined in the Queen’s Speech and the speeches we have heard today, of poverty, the climate emergency, people trafficking, animal welfare and online harm all require a global response, with countries working in co-operation with each other. This Government are determined to pull the UK out of one of the most important mechanisms for delivering that. The Queen’s Speech, in effect, recognises that, because it has to put in lots of different frameworks and structures to deliver on those issues, when we already have one that is working exceptionally well. That shows, as I said to the hon. Gentleman, the importance of Scotland’s alternative: our opportunity to genuinely share sovereignty in a partnership of equals. In the EU, legislation comes forward through the Parliament, the Council and the Commission, where the different member states are represented on a fair and proportionate basis, and their voices are heard appropriately. That is the point of independence. The SNP’s vision is internationalist: it is about Scotland rejoining and taking its place on the global stage. That is the vision that is being articulated at our conference this week.

Sadly, this SNP conference is the first I have missed in around 15 years, and I think only the second one I have missed since I left university. That is partly because of my duties in the House and partly because, as the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) said, I had the immense privilege of being the only parliamentarian from Scotland to be part of the delegation for the canonisation of John Henry Newman in Rome yesterday. There are undoubtedly lessons from that. I think we were praying for many different things—the hon. Gentleman’s recollection is perhaps not quite the same as mine—but that was an opportunity for ecumenism, in respect of both theological and political experience, which was quite useful given the week that we are going into.

I hope and expect that by the time of the SNP conference next year—perhaps not by the time of the next Queen’s Speech, because that could be sooner than we would have expected—several Members, including myself, will have celebrated our 40th birthdays. I expect we will have had another Queen’s Speech, and I hope that the SNP will have been returned in even greater numbers, solidifying the mandate that we have to give the people of Scotland a fair say and a choice in their future. I hope we will be taking our country closer than ever before to the independence that we so badly need, so that we can continue to work as if we live in the early days of a better nation.

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[Andrew Bowie]

I could not have put it better myself. I agree with every single word that the hon. Gentleman has spoken.

[Patrick Grady]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can explain why that argument then does not pertain to membership of the European Union. As I have explained, if Scotland were an independent member of the European Union it would have its own voice at the top table where decisions are being made. What is happening in this House is that those of us who are Scottish MPs are actively excluded from decision-making processes. If the UK partnership is so strong, why is the European Union not such a good thing for the UK to be in?

[Andrew Bowie]

The hon. Gentleman will be fully aware that I campaigned and voted to remain in the European Union. As a democrat, however, I recognise that I lost that referendum and we have to follow through with the will of the British people as expressed in the referendum. I will always contest those who say that Scotland would be better off outside the United Kingdom. That argument falls flat on its face. It would be bad for business, bad for the economy and bad for the people of Scotland if we were to rip apart the most successful union of nations that the world has ever seen.