Madam Deputy Speaker, I wish you and the whole House a happy St Andrew�s day. I have come to this debate today because it strikes me that the SNP motion is pitiful politicking and that the people of Scotland deserve better. They want to see real solutions to real problems. Unfortunately, it is part of a pattern for the SNP to put ideological purity ahead of the interests of the people of Scotland. We heard that from its leader here, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who argued that independence was not the most important thing on the minds of the people of Scotland, but we know why SNP Members have brought this debate to the House today: it is merely so that they can find another way to make the argument for independence, which they lost so comprehensively when it was put to the people of Scotland five years ago.
Today, SNP Members are calling for the censure of the Prime Minister, but what they should be doing is working to improve the lives of the people of Scotland. The flop of a speech from the right hon. Gentleman demonstrated that they are losing this argument. He read out a list of allegations that were comprehensively demolished by the Minister in his excellent speech. At the heart of those allegations was that the Prime Minister is ignoring advice, but the problem with the SNP is that it ignores not only advice but the decisions of the
people of Scotland and this country in every referendum that it has seen. The problem is that the SNP has not seen a referendum result that it likes, so it ignores the results and asks for a rematch.
On the substance, I will not go into the SNP�s failures in education, but Scotland once had the finest education system in the world. The right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber did not even mention covid-19. I will not dwell on the huge economic cost of independence, but one piece of evidence from the Prime Minister�s tenure that completely undermines the SNP�s case is the vaccine programme. Because SNP Members are losing the argument on substance, they focus instead on politicking. Conceived through UK-funded scientific work involving researchers from universities across the UK, and indeed across the world, the Oxford vaccine is a UK success that shows Britain at her best.
Critically, we bought vaccines for the whole of the UK so that everybody in Scotland and the rest of the UK were the first in the world to access them. Even better, it was a joint effort. People who are Scottish and British and in this Union get the best of both worlds: a UK vaccine delivered locally by the NHS in Scotland, working with local councils, and we could bring in the British Army when we needed reinforcements. It was a huge team effort. All four nations rolled out the vaccine together.
I pay tribute to my then Scottish opposite number, Jeane Freeman. She deserves plaudits for putting pragmatism ahead of ideology. Her only problem was when the First Minister of Scotland would get involved and cause all sorts of problems by trying to politic with the programme instead of delivering the programme.
Finally, why do I, as an English MP, care about this? It is because our Union brings together the best for Scotland, England and the United Kingdom, and for my constituents, too. We should get away from this politicking and concentrate on the things that really matter.
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