Meeting of the Parliament 18 June 2025
I get slightly offended when people imply that we cannot be in favour of strong defences and in favour of a moral and ethical foreign policy. I think that we can do both, and the Liberal Democrats have said that we can do both. Ed Davey has made it clear that we should suspend arms exports to Israel. Not everybody will agree with that position, but we have made it clear from the beginning that Israel has gone too far.
However, as Ed Davey has also made clear, we are in favour of having a strong defence back home, because we are on the north-west frontier of Europe. We are and will continue to be a key member of NATO, and that will be important for dealing with the threat of Russia, which provokes our defences almost every day of the week. We cannot pretend that, somehow, we are in a lazy backwater. We must have strong defences in this country. I favour that approach.
That leads me to the SNP’s position, which is confusing. I have listened to Angus Robertson for years. I listened to him when he was at Westminster, when he would talk endlessly about the defence underspend in Scotland. He put a number on that—in 2011, he said that £5.6 billion less was being spent in Scotland than he believed the population share should have been, implying that the UK should have been spending more in Scotland.
We then had, for a number of years, an SNP position that was in favour of diversification away from defence products and against munitions. We get a slightly different position today, which is a bit more sympathetic in tone, but, fundamentally, is exactly the same position, which favours diversification and is against munitions. Even so, the SNP position is for Scotland to remain a member of NATO if it ever becomes an independent country. That is utterly confusing.
If we are to have any hope of getting any of the coming investment into Scotland, we need to clarify that. We need certainty not only for businesses and those who are seeking to invest but for those who are seeking to branch out into a new career or train for the first time. If they want to know whether to go into the defence sector, they need certainty on there being jobs and opportunities in it.
We need to have clarity, because whatever the strengths and weaknesses of the Labour UK Government, one thing is for sure: it will be spending a significantly increased sum of money on defence. There are many opportunities for workers, people, communities and businesses in Scotland to take advantage of that.
I know Rosyth dockyard particularly well—I used to represent that area. It has just launched a new type of frigate, which the workers are very proud of. A host of jobs in Port Glasgow, Prestwick, Edinburgh and Dundee, and communities across the country, depend on defence spending.
If we are to take advantage of the increased investment to defend our country, which I believe is right to come here, we will have to get it sorted with the Scottish Government. We must be clear on exactly what its position is, because there is a danger that we will throw away the opportunity for growth. The last thing that we need is any further suppression of economic growth in Scotland. For the sake of our economy, for the sake of workers and for the sake of our defence, I plead with the Deputy First Minister to get that sorted.