I am delighted to rise to speak in this debate this evening. In fact, there is nowhere else I would rather be on a beautiful July evening than here, and no issue that I would rather discuss than the Union yet again. It is an issue that is close to my heart, and close to the hearts of my constituents, 60.4% of whom voted to remain in the UK in 2014, and 67.6% of whom voted for Unionist parties in last year’s general election. Despite what SNP Members say, what I hear regularly from my constituents, and expect to hear many times again this summer as I traverse my beautiful constituency of West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine—details are on my website—is that they have little appetite left for referendums, whether on Scotland’s place in the Union or on Britain’s place in Europe. A recent poll by the Daily Record has found that fewer than half of Scots agree with Nicola Sturgeon when she says that
“independence is back on the table”
after Brexit. What the overwhelming majority of my constituents—and, I believe, the public at large—want from us is to get on with the job of governing in the national interest for all of Britain’s people, and that is what we in the Conservative and Unionist party are doing.
As I was looking for inspiration for this speech today, I stumbled on these words:
“This morning we have renewed our joint commitment under the Edinburgh agreement to work constructively and positively to implement the will of the people. That work starts immediately.”
Those are the words that Alex Salmond did not say on the morning of 19 September. They are taken from the speech that he had prepared to use if Scotland had voted yes in 2014. It is a pity that he was not so keen to renew that commitment to “implement the will of the people” following the actual result. Unlike the SNP, the Conservative party kept to the spirit of the agreement, respected the result and delivered everything it had promised through the Smith commission to build a strong Scotland with a powerful voice inside a United Kingdom of which every Member in this House should be proud.