Meeting of the Parliament 22 March 2016
I think that that was a call to speak.
The motion is a fitting send-off for my colleague Rob Gibson because, a bit like him, it is packed with ideas for local democracy, communities and land reform. Taken together, the unifying message is testament to the role that the motion’s lodger has carved out as a dedicated, thoughtful and occasionally just-the-right-amount-of-outspoken champion for the Highlands and, as a committee convener, an esteemed voice in the Parliament on rural affairs, climate change and the environment.
As the Presiding Officer said, this will be my final full speech. I therefore beg his indulgence to take time to develop a broad response to Mr Gibson’s equally broad motion, which is fundamentally linked to the question of the amount of control that people and communities have over their own affairs. That applies in Rob Gibson’s rural Caithness and in my own beloved, urban Edinburgh Central.
When I was elected in 2011, my acceptance speech was the product of three things: euphoria, sleep deprivation and a lot of rehearsal in the Ingliston toilets. It has been immortalised by the former First Minister as, “This victory is statistically impossible”; I maintain that I said no such thing—I only thought it.
What I did say was that this would be the Parliament and the Government that really changed Scotland, and for the better. I contend that we have done that, albeit not quite in the way that I expected at 6 am in Edinburgh that day. The voting buttons of the Parliament have brought much change—probably too much for Alex Johnstone’s liking—raining down on the nation’s heads over the past five years. We are not just the nation’s Parliament; we have a growing sideline in being a job creation scheme for political historians.
The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, which is mentioned in the motion and which I had the privilege—and challenge—of taking through the Parliament, is still sitting there like a present under a Christmas tree. It is wrapped and we have noticed it, but we have not yet opened it to see what wonders truly lie inside.
We empowered individuals and tackled social injustice by legislating for equal marriage. That gave me two stand-out memorable experiences: testing the Presiding Officer’s discretion by tweeting a photo taken in the chamber of the yes button in front of me; and, more enduring, being a witness at one of Scotland’s two, simultaneous, first same-sex weddings, both of which were, atmospherically, assignations at midnight.
Those are two personal highlights, but the real change is in the spirit that runs through the country. It is a spirit of subsidiarity, sustainability and social justice. Scotland has changed, through the actions of not principally her Government or her Parliament but her people. Although they were offered full control of their own country, the people of Scotland drew back, but in the process they built a great, loud, irreverent and sometimes rowdy public square and threw the great questions of state into it like fruit into a smoothie maker.
In 1971, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was asked what he thought of the consequences of the French revolution. He answered that it was too early to say. We will be working out the consequences of these years for a long time to come, but if we or the next Parliament think that the desires that people expressed were just for greater national independence and not for greater personal and community independence too, we are misunderstanding the people more than history has misunderstood Zhou Enlai—because although that is how his comment is famously remembered, it is a misattribution; its meaning was lost in translation, and he was referring not to the revolution two centuries earlier but to the events in Paris in 1968.
The ambitions of the people of Scotland must not be lost in translation. The people wish to be closer to the decisions that hold such sway over the places that they hold dear. They ask how much control they have over their own lives. They ask that of the nation, but they also ask it of their cities, towns and villages. They ask to whom they pay their taxes, in what form and how that is decided. They ask who owns what and to what purpose. Those are great questions of community as well as of state. This country now needs to be changed materially. Like clothes that have been grown out of, our institutions now hang uncomfortably on broadened shoulders.
I am proud of our record, but community empowerment comes not from one act but from every act that is taken to make society more just, taxes more fair and control more local. It will be not for the current Government but for the next one to build on the work that has been done already, to recognise that great challenge and to meet it. I have chosen not to be part of the Parliament in the next session or, indeed, the next Government. I wish everyone who is part of that very well.
At the end, I am reminded of wise words that I heard spoken on a departure:
“there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.” [Applause.]
Meeting closed at 17:40.