Meeting of the Parliament 13 December 2016
Of course. Thank you.
We need to talk about international migrants but, more than that, we need to listen. Alasdair Allan talks of negative rhetoric and I have four quotes right here—one from a Scottish National Party MSP, one from an SNP MP, one from an SNP councillor and one from an SNP aide. All separately seek to suggest that being a member of the Conservative Party equates to being anti-immigrant and anti-immigration. Another recently tweeted:
“Tories don’t care about vulnerable families”.
It is lazy, dog-whistle politics and base-level debating. Let us have none of that here today. Dr Allan is absolutely right. We must be careful how we use language in this debate.
Let us clear up something else: 17 million people exercised their democratic right to vote to leave the European Union, and their vote to leave does not mean that those individuals are in any way racist. We must not forget that 1 million people in Scotland voted to leave and they had legitimate reasons for doing so. I hope that the SNP will start to speak up for those who voted leave—around 38 per cent of whom were, famously, SNP voters—as well as those who voted remain. The SNP should stop casting aspersions on those who accept the democratic result of the referendum and it should try to work with the UK Government to secure the best deal for the UK.
Dr Allan rose—