European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Roger Mullin Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

It would be very churlish of me not to recognise some of the contributions from those on the Government Benches. In particular, I wish to mention the speeches of the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) and the many contributions and interventions of the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). Those two individuals have probably done more to progress the cause of Scottish independence than anyone else today.

I voted, of course, with my colleagues against this ill-thought out and vastly underprepared referendum. Not only that, but, at the time, my colleagues and I said that, if there was to be a referendum, we wanted the maximum franchise possible, and this Government did the reverse. They denied the vote to the people whose future is most at stake—the 16 to 18-year-olds. Of particular concern to us at the time were the EU nationals, who were refused a vote in the referendum, but who had been allowed a vote in the Scottish referendum. I think that I was the first Member of this House to raise the issue of EU nationals.

Before the vote took place, a horrific immigration debate was unleashed, which bordered at times on xenophobia. I talked to two of my constituents, who said that they felt so upset at the whole process that they were leaving the country the week before the vote and were deciding their future. Sadly for me, they are selling their house and leaving Scotland for good. They should have been welcomed here. What happened after the people who made the immigration argument had won? Their leader horsed off to help a president get elected in the United States, pushing the same kind of vicious immigration xenophobic debate that got that man Trump elected.

On this of all days, we should remember a different Republican president. On this day in 1865, the House of Representatives of the United States passed the 13th amendment to the constitution, abolishing slavery in America. The amendment read:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

There was a statesman—Abraham Lincoln! I will end with some of Abraham Lincoln’s favourite lines, which will be recognised by many and that he carried with him all his life:

“Then let us pray that come it may,

(As come it will for a’ that),

That Sense and Worth, o’er a’ the earth,

Shall bear the gree an’ a’ that .

For a’ that an’ a’ that,

It’s coming yet for a’ that,

That Man to Man, the world o’er,

Shall brothers be for a’ that.”