Pete Wishart
Main Page: Pete Wishart (Scottish National Party - Perth and Kinross-shire)Department Debates - View all Pete Wishart's debates with the Scotland Office
(3 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Kirsty McNeill
The people of Scotland were given a choice on our constitutional future, and we gave an emphatic answer that we believe that we are part of a stronger United Kingdom.
Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Douglas Alexander)
Still none.
Pete Wishart
If these are indeed the last Scottish questions for the Secretary of State, we on these Benches will miss him almost as much as his Scottish Labour colleagues will do. If it is his swansong, when is he going to bring something—anything—to the table to help break this constitutional logjam? It could be an idea, a suggestion or a proposal. Here is a last question for him: if we are in a voluntary Union, which they all say that we are, what is the means for Scotland to leave it?
Mr Alexander
I am glad to see that SNP Members are staying classy, as usual. On the matter of personnel choices, I am not sure that my first go-to source would be the First Minister, because of course he appointed Peter Murrell to be the chief executive of the Scottish National party. [Interruption.] They do not like the answers to their questions, Mr Speaker!
On the SNP’s continuing obsession with independence, I simply say that this is surely a better time to focus on delivery. In May, nearly a third of patients in Scotland waited in A&E for more than the target of four hours, with a staggering 16,612 people waiting over eight hours and 6,978 people waiting more than 12 hours. That is the worst performance since records began. The SNP’s manifest failure on delivery is the elephant in the room—or should I say the camper van in the drive?