Meeting of the Parliament 29 January 2020
I am speaking to the amendment in my name, which concentrates on the priorities that the people of Scotland want to see addressed.
Most people will see the past five years as a catalogue of wasted opportunities to improve Scotland. Public service failure under the SNP is the real “material change in circumstances”. Most people want the Government, the Parliament—all of us—to dedicate our efforts to the education, health, prosperity and wellbeing of our people.
Is it not about time that the Government listened to the voice of most people and that the First Minister finally acted on the pledge that she made at the start of her term in office, to serve all Scots and their interests whether they voted for or against independence? Is it not time that the First Minister and her Government put aside their endless campaign for a vote that a consistent majority of the people in the country do not want, to focus instead on the country’s real priorities?
Today, another two and a half hours of parliamentary time will be wasted on debating yet another statement on independence in which nothing new is said—that is all to be saved for other people, not this Parliament, on Friday. Instead, let us get back to dealing with the business that the people outside the chamber elected us for, and let us make this the last such debate—we are fed up.
I move amendment S5M-20615.1, to leave out from “the sovereign right” to end and insert:
“that the sovereign right of the people of Scotland was exercised in 2014 when more than two million people voted to reject independence; agrees with the cross-party Smith Commission report published after the 2014 referendum and backed by the UK Government that ‘nothing in this report prevents Scotland becoming an independent country in the future should the people of Scotland so choose’; recognises, however, that the 2014 referendum was rightly described as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and that it is incumbent on all parties to abide by its result; calls on the Scottish Government to abandon its obsession with a second independence referendum; expects the Scottish Ministers to devote their energies to, and to use their parliamentary time to debate, matters of devolved competence, such as health, education, transport and the economy in Scotland, and regrets that yet again the Scottish Government has chosen to debate the constitution instead of the failures in Scottish public services for which it is responsible.”
15:01Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.