Referendum on Scottish Independence

Paul Masterton Excerpts

Monday 13th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[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.

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

Can the hon. Gentleman use his career in banking to tell me the percentage difference in the number of voters who backed pro-independence parties and those who backed anti-independence parties?

[Martyn Day]

I cannot give the hon. Gentleman that figure, but I am sure that if he has it at his fingertips, he will intervene to give it to me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I welcome the opportunity to speak in today’s debate. My constituency voted overwhelmingly to stay part of our United Kingdom, with 63% of people in East Renfrewshire voting against the break-up of the Union. Added to a further 2 million no voters across Scotland and over 200,000 on one of the petitions we are debating today, Scotland’s voice should be clear. However, one of the main reasons I am here today is because the SNP has refused to listen. We went from 12,000 votes behind and in third place just two years ago to a majority of just under 5,000. That was because there is no appetite for a second independence referendum, there is no need for a second independence referendum and, I am sorry, but there is no mandate for a second independence referendum either.

In the First Minister’s speech to the SNP conference before the last Holyrood elections, she left us in no doubt, saying:

“to propose another referendum in the next Parliament, without strong evidence that a significant number of those who voted no have changed their minds, would be wrong and we won’t do that.”

Yet only a matter of months after losing her majority in Edinburgh and increasing support for the Union, while on a special edition of BBC “Question Time,” the First Minister refused to rule out a third referendum if she lost the second. Where does this end? The SNP “should face political reality”—the words of veteran SNP MSP Alex Neil. Maybe losing 500,000 voters in 21 seats at this year’s general election has put the SNP a step closer to that reality. However, I do not hold out much hope.

Those of us against separation will always be proud of our shared history and optimistic about our shared future. Our pooled resources of capital, land and labour have given the world so much. However, we do not need to look at the past to see our positive contribution; just look at the difference that together we are making today. Today, through the great work done at the Department for International Development, from its base in East Kilbride, we are helping to rebuild homes and lives in areas hit by natural disasters. Today, we are leading the battle to eradicate polio. Today, our brave service personnel are liberating Syrians and Iraqis from the stranglehold of Daesh’s occupation. Our leadership of worldwide organisations has led to sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear programme and on Russia for its illegal annexation of Crimea, and brought about the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord.

The historian Tom Devine remarked that all that the Union has going for it is sentiment, family and history. As if that is not enough! Those things are everything. That is the difference. I do not actually think Scottish independence is stupid. I get the arguments; I understand the rationale. In particular, I understand the emotional pull that drives people to that cause. However, I do not think those on the yes side are able to do that in return. They do not seem able to understand that the Union, for me and many in Scotland, is not and never will be about numbers on a spreadsheet. If I could, I would ban that awful phrase “Union dividend”. Britain is not some financial transaction that I endure; it is an identity that I am.

That is why it was those of us on the pro-Union side who had so much to lose on 18 September 2014. Yessers ultimately had nothing at stake—the loss of an opportunity, maybe some hope, but fundamentally they woke up in the morning the same person as they were before. For me, my nationality, identity, country and self were on the line. A yes vote would have torn an intrinsic part of what makes me, me, away. I am Scottish, but I am British too, and that layer of my identity matters. It matters a lot. All that tosh from the yes campaign in the lead up to the vote that independence would not make people like me feel, or be, any less British was absolutely risible. They just did not get it. I am British, and I do not know how to be anything or anyone else.

I like that when I travel back from Westminster, and the plane touches down or the train pulls in to Glasgow, I smile because I am home, even though I have not really been away. The commentator Alex Massie put it better than I ever could in the days before the vote when he said that Britain is

“a place in which I’m always Scottish but also, when it suits, British too. A country where you travel to very different places and still always come home without having been abroad.”

Scotland is different from England, from Wales and from Northern Ireland, but it is not separate, and we are best served by continuing to face the challenges of this world together, as one United Kingdom.

[Sir Roger Gale in the Chair]

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Paul Masterton]

The hon. Gentleman says that even though the SNP at Holyrood lost a majority, it has a mandate to implement its manifesto. Does he therefore also believe that the Conservative party, despite having lost our majority here, has the right to implement our manifesto to leave the EU, leaving the single market and the customs union? He cannot have it both ways.

[Alan Brown]

There is the difference of opinion: 62% of the voters in Scotland voted to remain in the EU; 71% of the electorate in Scotland voted against the Scottish Conservative party.