It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon.
We have to take this petition at face value and bear in mind what it is saying to us: that people are frustrated—that those who voted to leave the European Union want to see something more quickly than they are seeing at the moment. I fully appreciate why they feel that way. All the life decisions we make mean we want to move on, and in this country we are used to a quick turnaround—to Governments changing office in the middle of the night, with one Prime Minister leaving as the next arrives, before the sun has come up on the election results—but the negotiations cannot be the same. I appeal to those people who signed the petition to have patience, to think about how important the process is to the future of our country and to give our politicians time to find the best way ahead.
It is fair to say that the petition did not have a lot of support in my constituency. Fewer than 100 people signed it—93, in fact—which is not a huge surprise in Edinburgh West, because at the referendum the vast majority voted to remain in the EU, as was the case throughout Scotland. Although I take the point made by the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) that the referendum was a UK-wide vote and I agree with him entirely that it was, I do not accept that the result had a significant majority—it was the narrowest of majorities. Again, that is a source of frustration for a lot of people and a reason why we should be extremely careful about what we do. The phrase “crashing out” worries me: the implication of crashing in any form, whether physically or financially, is always serious, because there is no control. We cannot know what the outcome will be.