Meeting of the Parliament 19 December 2019
I take the First Minister at her word. I would have thought that, as a very loyal servant of the First Minister, the member would do the same. The First Minister said many times in the 2013-14 referendum campaign that it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That was not at my insistence—it was her concession. In order to get people to vote yes in that referendum, she pretended that she would respect the result of that referendum and that it would indeed be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The bill has been promoted by the Scottish National Party in breach of faith, in breach of trust and in breach of promise. That is why the Scottish Conservatives will vote against it at decision time tonight.
At the same time, the bill is a missed opportunity. The issues that Patrick Harvie raised earlier today and that he and I sought to raise in committee at stage 2, are really important. If we are to have a future in Scotland in which referendums are used more, rather than less, we have to do the work of understanding the relationship between popular democracy in the form of a referendum and parliamentary democracy in the form of the Scottish Parliament. We do not understand the relationship between popular democracy and representative democracy in Scotland and the bill should have addressed that question. Its failure to address that question is a lost opportunity.
When should referendums be held? We do not know—the bill does not tell us. On what subjects should referendums be held and why should referendums be held on those subjects and not on others? How often should referendums be held on the same subject? What do referendums even do? What happens in a referendum? Do they decide things or are they mere expressions of opinion? If they decide things, on whom are those decisions binding? Are they binding on us as individual members of the Scottish Parliament, on the Parliament, on ministers or on the Government? In what sense are they binding? What is the nature of the bind? Are they legally, politically or morally binding?