Pat McFadden

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. Given the mood in the House, I do not intend to detain people for long. By now we know the purpose of the Bill: to allow Catholics to be appointed to the role of Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. That is the Bill in a nutshell. Today’s debates have demonstrated that there is wide support for the Bill across the House. I thank the Church of Scotland, the Catholic Church and the Scottish Government for their engagement and collaboration in the development of the legislation. I also thank all those who spoke in our debates, including the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Alison Taylor), the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson), the hon. Member for Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber (Brendan O’Hara), my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (John Grady) and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Cabinet Office. I am grateful to all of them. As we have said, at the signing of the St Margaret’s declaration at Dunfermline abbey in 2022, both the Catholic Church and the Church of Scotland declared that what they hold in common is far greater than what divides them, and that they would commit to continue working towards greater unity. I hope that this Bill, in its small way, will continue in that spirit. The hon. Member for Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber referred to 1923 and asked if I was there. I was not there, but in the same year W. B. Yeats wrote that “peace comes dropping slow”. Maybe equality sometimes comes dropping slow too, but today we have taken a small and important step, and I commend the Bill to the House.