Meeting of the Parliament 11 September 2019
Joanna Cherry seems to have created a degree of excitement, not just in the courts today, but in this chamber. I am grateful to her for giving us such clarity and honesty that her exposé of the real purpose of the assembly makes it impossible for us to take part in it. We now know that it is a ruse, a scheme and a mechanism to help the SNP members’ campaign for independence. [Interruption.]
Graeme Dey says that this is about our obsession with independence, but it was the SNP’s idea to have the citizens assembly, it was the SNP’s idea to wrap it up with independence and it was an SNP member of Parliament who put independence at the heart of it. Do not say that we are obsessed with independence; it is the SNP that is obsessed with independence.
I favour abolishing the House of Lords, changing the unfair first-past-the-post voting system and having a written constitution. If we had had that written constitution, that would have helped us today. I favour having powerful regional and national Assemblies and Parliaments—a federal structure. However, with this half-Machiavellian, half-clever approach, it is impossible to discuss all that in the citizens assembly. It is an SNP approach—a Joanna Cherry-inspired citizens assembly—and that is why we can have nothing to do with it, and no one who wants to keep the United Kingdom together should have anything to do with it. Once we have stopped Brexit, we need to change the UK, but at this moment of national crisis we do not need yet another discussion about independence. For goodness’ sake, let us move on. Let us stop Brexit, let us get this country on track and let us reform this country, but the citizens assembly has nothing to do with that.