May I start by wishing you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and colleagues across the House, a very happy St Andrew�s Day. Perhaps after this heated and charged debate, we might all enjoy a little of Scotland�s national drink to toast what unites us and what divides us.
I will endeavour to reply to as many Members as possible in the few minutes that I have. I apologise if I am not able to pick up on everyone�s comments. As it is St Andrew�s Day, it is probably appropriate for me to start by referring to the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) who is, sadly, not in her place at the minute, but her seat contains St Andrew�s. She made a couple of important points, but this debate is a wasted opportunity today. If the real concern for the separatists on the SNP Benches was to take forward the debate on standards in public life, we could have had a debate on the Committee�s report and some of the related issues on that, but, no, they chose not to
do so. The hon. Lady also suggested that the centralising power of the Scottish Government could properly be examined�issues that really matter to people in Scotland. But no, we did not discuss that.
It is disappointing but not entirely surprising that we have spent our time today responding to the desire of SNP Members once again to engage in the divisive, splitting-up policies that appeal to their fan base in the wake of their recent conference. Perhaps, as my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham) pointed out, it is to give them fresh social media clips to post on Twitter and elsewhere. It was pointed out to me during the debate that SNP command and control was tweeting about this debate using an old photograph of the Chamber, so unless SNP Members have had a complete costume change during the debate, perhaps this is the fresh material that they need.
Of course, I did not expect SNP Members to arrive here with a long list of the ways in which membership of the Union benefits Scotland, or the many ways in which this Government are investing in the future of Scotland as we navigate our way through the pandemic. They want to talk of the Prime Minister�s conduct. I am happy to talk of the Prime Minister�s conduct in securing for Scotland the roll-out of the covid-19 vaccine, saving lives and stopping the spread of the virus. Today, the conduct of the Prime Minister has been to set out how we are going to ramp up the booster programme to give us the best possible defence against the current variant.