I thank my hon. Friend, and I could not agree more. My office has been involved in helping out a constituent who is championing the cause of a former constituent of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) who was involved in the foundation of Singapore. Often overlooked in favour of Raffles, my constituent is making sure that this noble man from Perth receives the recognition he so rightly deserves.
Our Union enabled us to have victories not only on the battlefield but in sports stadiums, with Scottish athletes bringing 19 gold, 27 silver and five bronze medals in summer Olympics since 1997—trained, funded and championed by Team GB. In science and technology, it is not about competition between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom but working together. One fine example is that of the Boulton and Watt steam engine. The first one in Scotland was in my constituency in Clackmannanshire used by the Kennetpans distillery. Clackmannanshire led the way in technology then. I hope that, through the geothermal project that I hope the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will support in this House, Clackmannanshire will once again lead the way in technology and renewable energy.
It does not stop there. We also had Dolly the sheep, funded by PPL Therapeutics and the then Ministry of Agriculture. The Forth Road bridge, which was an engineering achievement of its time, was 78% funded by Westminster. More recently and most excitingly for the “Star Trek” fans in this House—I know there are many on the SNP Benches—a collaboration between a Scottish university, the University of Dundee, and an English university, the University of Southampton, funded by UK Research and Innovation, created a tractor beam. How forward-looking could we be?
What is the Union about? It has to be about more than money. With almost the equivalent of one fifth of Scotland’s population living in England, it is about the shared values that we hold of democracy, justice and international humanitarian aid, as demonstrated by the nurse, Pauline Cafferkey, who was saving lives abroad in Sierra Leone under the British flag, before falling victim to Ebola. When she returned home to the United Kingdom, she received life-saving treatment in London before returning home to Glasgow. That is what true Union is about.
In the United Kingdom, we are proud not just of the nations, but of our proud regions and counties. That is why in supermarkets people champion Devonshire custard as much as they do Perthshire strawberries. Rather than
there being just a homogenous bloc of Scotland versus England, people want to know the county, town and village—all around the country—from which the products are sourced.