S4M-12670 Scotland’s Place in Europe

The Presiding Officer (Tricia Marwick): The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-12670, in the name of Humza Yousaf, on Scotland’s place in Europe.

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15:49

Stewart Stevenson (Banffshire and Buchan Coast) (SNP):

In the same way as others did, I campaigned in the 1975 referendum that Harold Wilson called to solve internal political difficulties in the Labour Party, which was then the party of government. The result was a yes vote. My party took a position against because of the sell-out of the fishing industry but, for my part, I was always firmly on the yes side and voted accordingly with a heavy heart, knowing that I was disagreeing with my party.

Of course, 1975 was not the start of the story. The UK joined the then European Economic Community in 1973 under a Tory Prime Minister, but things go somewhat further back than that. A UK member of Parliament who had been a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials was the moving spirit behind the European convention on human rights. Winston Churchill was the Prime Minister who took the UK into that, and he was a proud signatory to the convention when it came into operation on 3 September 1953.

Of course, it goes back further than that. In 1320, when Scotland sought to protect its independence, it was to the Pope in Rome that Scotland wrote, because the Pope was not simply the head of a church; he also had a key secular role in co-ordinating international relationships. Scotland is no stranger to Europe and has no distant connection with it. Scotland has always had an intimate connection with Europe.

Jamie McGrigor and others derided the idea of four-nation consent, saying among other things that it would be inconceivable for different parts of the UK to go different ways. However, that is to neglect what has already happened. In 1982, Greenland—an autonomous country within Denmark—voted to leave the EU, and by 1985 it successfully did so, despite having that relationship. I do not commend that approach, because I would wish to stay in Europe, but Greenland’s choice was to go. The example shows that it is entirely possible for there to be different decisions and different effects even within a single existing member state.

Jamie McGrigor also seemed to imply that Spain should withdraw access to benefits from the nearly 1 million UK citizens who live in that country.

Reference has been made to Norway and Switzerland. For a while, one of my nieces lived in Norway—and commuted daily to Sweden to work, I may say, never showing her passport or anything else at a European boundary, which I thought was quite interesting. There is certainly increasing disquiet in Norway, first at the economic contribution that it requires to make to the European Union as a price for being in the European Economic Area, but also at its having to be bound by the rules of the European Union while having no say in how they work.

We heard someone say that France is substantially more centralised than the UK. I think that that will come as a great surprise to many people in France. Gabriel Chevallier’s satirical novel of 1934, “Clochemerle”, which was made into a successful TV series in 1972, was all about the local mayor wanting to build a new—forgive me, Presiding Officer; this is literally what he said—pissoir in the town square, and to this day there is considerable local authority in the towns and villages of France. Indeed, in the real life Clochemerle—Vaux-en-Beaujolais—the mayor is there every Thursday for two hours while she takes her lunch and eats her sandwiches; in that tiny little village, she is there. France is a far less centralised country than we might imagine if we listen to some people in this debate.

I turn to the amendments. For the most part, I could find myself being relatively comfortable with the Labour Party’s amendment, but it fails to understand the reality of the UK’s engagement with the European Union when it states at the end:

“believes that the UK should lead ... as a strong member of the EU.”

The one thing that the UK is not is

“a strong member of the EU.”

The UK has never, to this day, properly engaged with the internal workings of the EU. The moment the Irish got in in 1973, they sent their people across, they got into the grass roots and they were involved in the very early stages of formulating European policy. The UK has always waited until the policy has been formed before saying, “This winna do—we’ve got to change it”, by which time it is too late. I suspect that, if the UK had engaged properly, the EU would now be operating in a way that would satisfy many of Jamie McGrigor’s colleagues who are less sympathetic to the idea of the EU—leaving aside its operation—than he is.

In conclusion, I was interested to hear that the Tories are essentially saying, “Let the people speak.” Article 3 of protocol 1 of the ECHR, on elections, means that we have to have democracy. A majority of the UK’s legislators are unelected, so we are in breach of that protocol. I would love to have a referendum on the House of Lords, and I suspect that I know how it would turn out: perhaps that is why the Tories will not have one.

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