Stephen Gethins

No, I want to continue with this. Alison Evison, a former Labour councillor and former president of COSLA, says: “There is a strong unified voice across all sectors in Scotland in favour of a flexible immigration system that can meet our particular economic, workforce and population needs. For many years, COSLA has been calling for an immigration system that can be responsive to local as well as national needs and that recognises and addresses the challenges that we face.” Finally, Reform Scotland has done a huge amount of work on this—I commend its paper to all Members of the House as we seek to inform ourselves when we go through to Committee, and however we work together to populate that. It has said: “There is no reason why Westminster cannot create an immigration system which takes Scotland’s different situation into account. It is important to remember that this has been done before, through the Fresh Talent Initiative”, which, in fairness, Lord McConnell on the Labour Scottish Executive worked with the UK Government to do. It would not be unique—there are other decentralised approaches elsewhere in the world. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross-shire, whose work on the Scottish Affairs Committee, along with other hon. Members, was very effective. The Committee looked into the matter, and I know he will want to talk about that. A decentralised approach has been taken in Canada, Australia, Belgium and elsewhere, so it is not unique. This is the Government of devolution—they talk about devolution. As Donald Dewar told us, devolution was “a process” not a final destination. This strikes me as being the next process, and it has happened elsewhere. Finally, I want to go into the different conversations about migration.