Leaving the EU: Implications for Scotland

Peter Grant Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Sir Roger. It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, and to follow the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson).

As a Scottish Conservative and Unionist, I strongly believe in democracy. The Scottish people rejected independence in 2014, just as the British people voted to leave the EU two years later. Both referendums were massive exercises in democracy and in both many people voted for the first time, and we must respect that. If we are to retain that level of interest and keep people’s trust in our system, those results must be respected—both the independence referendum and the Brexit referendum.

While a majority of Scottish people voted to remain in the European Union, 1 million of them turned out to vote leave. More Scots voted to leave the European Union than voted for the Scottish National party in the last general election.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Following the hon. Gentleman’s logic, the number of people who voted for independence was 60% higher than the number who voted to leave the European Union. What, then, does his logic suggest we should do about the 1.6 million people who voted to leave the United Kingdom?

[Colin Clark]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for that question; I absolutely respect that point, and I covered it in the first line of my speech. People voted to stay in the United Kingdom, and we had a United Kingdom vote in the European Union referendum.

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[Colin Clark]

It will go to Europe, with us outside the EU. It will go to Japan, America and the rest of the world. Those are the enormous opportunities that we have. It is incredible that the hon. and learned Lady does not realise that the common fisheries policy means that British fishermen catch only 40% of their potential fish catch. We cannot go to other countries in Europe and take their agricultural production, so it is important that more of our fish should be caught by Scottish and United Kingdom fishermen. I look forward to that happening. I am interested in how the Scottish Government explain to people on the coast why they want to hand fishing rights back to Europe immediately.

To move on to other industries, which I am sure Scottish National party Members will ask me about, last year whisky represented 20% of the UK’s food and drink exports—£4.4 billion. Diageo and Macallan, in the constituency next to mine, have made multi-million pound investments because they have confidence in our international future. Ardmore, Glen Garioch and Glendronach in my own patch predict a huge improvement in sales, which is good news to me as a farmer, because hopefully that will happen with Scottish barley. The reason for the investment is confidence in an export future and not sharing the Scottish Government’s negativity. A free trade deal with India alone would massively boost whisky. We cannot actually grow enough barley in Scotland—and apparently not in the whole United Kingdom—to supply the Indian market, if we had full access to it.

Oil and gas in the north-east—a dollar-denominated industry trading around the world—is resilient after a massive price collapse: the industry still supports 300,000 jobs. Its international horizons are huge, and already the vast majority of its exports are outside the EU. It has no problems with taking on the opportunities of exporting outside the EU, and is investing vast sums in the north-east of Scotland. Financial services, from Aberdeen Asset Management to Artemis in Edinburgh, have global brands and huge international opportunities. They invest in international opportunities throughout the world, not just in the EU. The UK is the clearing bank of Europe and the world; it is the hub of mergers and acquisitions.

What is the threat? We do not have to go far to see bigger risks in Scotland than Brexit. INEOS, the largest private UK company, which has invested £2 billion in the North sea and Grangemouth chemical plant, plans to invest £2 billion in the north-west of Europe. Brexit? No, apparently: from listening to Radio 4 this morning it is about fracking gas—we have to be careful how we pronounce that—from the US. It is half the price of gas in Europe. However, the Scottish Government will not listen to science. They want to demonise fracking wherever it takes place—America, Scotland or England. High-tech companies will run a mile from an anti-business Government who believe in quasi-science and carry on peddling it.

[Peter Grant]

Is it the policy of the Scottish Conservative party that fracking should be allowed in Scotland and that decisions about it should be taken by Westminster?

[Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be creative enough to relate his reply to the matter under debate, the European Union. I am interested to hear his response.

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[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

I am pleased to begin the summing up in this debate. It has certainly been interesting. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) on securing it and on the well-informed and comprehensive way in which she set out the social and economic impact that leaving the European Union threatens to have on our country. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) commented very knowledgeably on the potential legal and judicial impact and correctly pointed out that the UK Government have simply refused to acknowledge the issue.

We have had some interesting contributions from the Scottish Conservatives about Scottish independence; somebody forgot to tell them that we are actually talking about the European Union. I did not hear a single word from the Scottish Conservatives about why ending the free movement of people is a good idea for Scotland. We heard a lot of words about why the SNP is bad, why independence is bad, why the SNP is still bad, and why independence is even worse, but there was not a single word of justification for what the UK Government keep telling us was the single biggest reason for people voting to leave the European Union. I wonder why that might be. I wonder why they are scared to talk about the impact that ending the free movement of people will have on our nation.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) made an excellent contribution about the huge benefits that the free movement of people creates for all of us. Those benefits cannot be measured just by counting how much people pay in tax or generate for the economy. The free movement of people and the exchange of beliefs and ideas is probably more important than the movement of labour, workers or anything else. People coming here from other places and cultures enrich our place and our culture. It will always be a negative, backward and regressive step to try to prevent people from doing that by asking them to pay to exercise rights that they already have, or by putting in place some completely arbitrary, picked-out-of-the-sky number to limit who is and is not allowed to come here.

The single biggest impact of Brexit on Scotland is the one that my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran referred to her in her introduction. The Scottish Conservatives will try to hedge around it with the creative use of statistics, but it is an inalienable fact that 62% of people in Scotland voted to stay in the European Union. The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) was muttering at one point, “Have you seen the opinion polls?” I have not seen an opinion poll since then that puts support for EU membership in Scotland at less than 62%. I have seen quite a few that put it significantly higher—75% in some places.

[Stephen Kerr]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) said, we were elected last year on a manifesto commitment to take our country, the United Kingdom, out of the European Union, the single market and the customs union, and to do so in a way that protects jobs and our economy. That is why we are here. The hon. Gentleman can quote statistics about the cumulative referendum vote in Scotland until the cows come home, but we were elected on that manifesto and are here to see that the interests of our constituents in our part of Scotland are well represented and protected as we leave the European Union.

[Peter Grant]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point on a United Kingdom basis, but I gently remind him that we were elected with a substantial overall majority of Scottish seats in this place. As has been pointed out, the Scottish Government were elected on a manifesto commitment as well, which they will put into practice. Incidentally, his party was elected in 2015 on a manifesto that said it would keep us in the single market, so I do not know what its manifesto will be in next year’s general election.

As I said, 62% of the sovereign people of Scotland voted to remain in the European Union. We ignore that at our peril. If Scotland votes a different way from other parts of the United Kingdom, or if the Scottish Government and the UK Government, or their Parliaments, disagree, that does not create a constitutional crisis. It might create a political crisis, but a constitutional crisis happens only when those in power refuse to accept the will of the people. Clearly the UK Government intend to ride roughshod over the demand—not the desire, request or plea—of the people of the Scotland that our voice will be heard and that our links with our European partners will not be sacrificed on some altar of far-right ideology in a vain attempt to keep the Conservative party together.

[Luke Graham]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fine point about respecting the will of the people. Will he now publicly, for everyone in the Chamber, finally respect the will of the people in 2014, who voted by a 10-point margin, rather than by a four-point margin such as in the 2016 referendum, to stay in the United Kingdom? Here is your opportunity, sir—please take it.

[Peter Grant]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has noticed, but we are in the United Kingdom Parliament. That is a kind of acceptance that, for now, Scotland is part of the United Kingdom. However, there is a legal principle that subsequent legislation always trumps previous legislation if the two are incompatible. What about the mandate in 2016 for the Scottish Government to give the people of Scotland a choice if Scotland is threatened with being taken out of the European Union against our will? Nobody forces the Scottish people to do anything. The Conservative party want to deny the people of Scotland the right to set our own future. They want to deny the people of Scotland the right to remain in the European Union, which 62% of us have demanded. In percentage terms, the majority to stay in the European Union was almost 2.5 times bigger than the majority to stay in the United Kingdom.

The Conservatives do all this fancy footwork—I call it the Maradona trick. They take the vote on one side in one referendum, and to back up their argument they compare it with the vote in a different election on a different day on a different question. I call it the Maradona trick because it would mean that Argentina were still in the World cup—Argentina scored three goals and Brazil scored only two, so Argentina stay in the World cup and Brazil go out. Totally ridiculous, but no more ridiculous than the attempts of the Scottish Conservatives to set one part of the electorate against another based on an election or referendum held on a completely different day.

The fact that the Scottish Conservatives turn up to a debate about Scotland’s place in Europe and spend most of their time arguing for the lost cause of Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom says it all. They cannot argue the benefits to Scotland of leaving the European Union, because there are none. The damage done to Scotland by being forced to leave the European Union against our will is even greater than the damage that would be done if we left on our own terms and with the will of the people.

The people of Scotland are our masters; they are our sovereigns. There is no absolute parliamentary sovereignty in Scotland. There is no absolute sovereignty of the monarch, nor will there be of anyone who replaces the monarch in the future. The people are the absolute sovereigns, and our sovereigns have told us what to do. Brexit threatens to deny the people of Scotland the right to have the country that they have decided they want to have. Anyone who ignores the people in that context does so at their peril, because the people of Scotland will not be kept silent.

The hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) shakes his head, with that smug smirk that he is so fond of.

[Stephen Kerr]

We are so used to your threats.

[Peter Grant]

It is not a threat to say that the people have spoken and will ensure that their voice is heard. If the Scottish Conservatives are afraid of the voice of the people, what are they doing here?

[Luke Graham]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

I will give way just once more, on the off-chance it is worthwhile listening.

[Luke Graham]

I will try to make it worth the hon. Gentleman’s while. I am still caught on the Maradona comment; if only I could rival those skills. Does he not realise that not only Scotland but London, Manchester and Bristol voted to remain? Should all the different parts of the UK that did not vote the same way threaten to leave? I do not think so. There are different views across the United Kingdom. Everyone should be respected, and not threatened.

[Peter Grant]

I am trying very hard to think of a way of saying, “The people of Scotland are sovereign,” in words of one syllable. The difficulty that some Government Members have is that the word “Europe” is more than one syllable, so some of the arguments seem to be beyond them. The people of London are not sovereign over London. I would argue that the people of England are sovereign over England—I am quite happy with that. England is a nation. What a fall from grace it is, in just over a year, for someone who came down here to stand up for Scotland to say now that Scotland is a city of England and has no more rights to self-determination than the great cities of England. Scottish Conservatives came down here saying that they would stand up for Scotland, and suddenly they are not speaking for Scotland, but talking about Scotland as some kind of equivalent to Leeds, London, Manchester or anywhere else.

Scotland is an “equal partner” in this Union of nations. Those are not our words, but the Government’s words from 2014. It is not an equal partner of a city, region or county council, but an equal partner of the other nations in the Union. The sovereigns of that equal partner have said, “We want to stay in the European Union.” If that choice is not made available to the people of Scotland within the United Kingdom, it will be made available to them by some other means.