Scottish Independence and the Scottish Economy

Debate between Robin Millar and David Duguid

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robin Millar]

I will not take an intervention on pizza, thank you.

How is such spending to be managed? Where is the central bank to buy Government bonds? Where is the support of the UK taxpayer? How is Scotland to simultaneously build up the estimated £64 billion in reserves that it would need to join the EU? The welfare of millions rests on the answers to such questions, but the document is silent.

Moving on to the EU, the document notes that the single market accounts for a minority of Scottish exports, or about 18%, compared with the 60%—fully three times as much—exported to the rest of the UK. How then can trade with the EU compensate for cutting off Scotland’s biggest trading partner?

What would be the effect of customs checks on the border? How would those who travel across the border daily to buy groceries interact with stringent EU agrifood checks? How would farmers whose land is split by the border contend with the EU’s sanitary and phytosanitary checks—the same checks that have stopped tractors because of mud on their tyres and that have refused permission for loads to be taken to Ireland because blue ink has been used instead of black ink on the forms?

[David Duguid]

My hon. Friend gives a good example of why we need to stay together as a Union. On this Back British Farming Day, does NFU Cymru agree with the National Farmers Union of Scotland that keeping the integrity of the internal market of the United Kingdom is far more important than any other external market?

[Robin Millar]

Indeed it does. The internal market we enjoy by virtue of being a United Kingdom is of huge importance to every farmer in every part of this United Kingdom. There is more I could say on that, but I will keep to the thrust of this debate.

I must agree with the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray): there is no plan. The SNP’s plan is no plan at all. It falls short on how key public services will continue to be funded and to operate. Further, it does not address the two biggest shocks to our economy in the past two years—a covid pandemic and a war in eastern Europe. The UK Government have responded to both by virtue of the strength of the United Kingdom economy, for the benefit of all parts of the United Kingdom. There is no provision, however, in the plans of the SNP and the Scottish Government for a response to such emergencies and no demonstration of the resilience necessary to cope with the global storms we must weather.

The plan fails to give those whose livelihoods depend on the UK an idea of how they would be able to provide for their families. It fails to offer anything to communities that would be split by a new border. In short, more than matters of the heart or even of the head, and more than the hard-nosed transactions of an economy, the plan fails in its moral duty to the people of Scotland.

That moral duty is real. The fate of Ukrainian refugees is a concern to us all, and we know that the people of Scotland and the Scottish Parliament extended a warm welcome to many of them. However, that warm welcome has been poorly served. We know that those people are being housed in temporary accommodation on ships, and that the space they are allocated on them is less than the amount a prisoner in a Scottish prison can expect by law to enjoy.