Dr Scott Arthur

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) for introducing the debate. He is my mother’s MP, so I will be able to give a good account of him on Christmas day. I want to talk about Scotland. I will talk a little bit about St Andrew, but above all else I will talk about Edinburgh South West, which I believe is a microcosm of Scotland. I am talking not about the housing crisis, the potholes, and the long child and adolescent mental health services waiting lists, but about the dramatic landscape, including the fantastic Pentland hills, which I share with the Minister, and the unique culture—the Army School of Bagpipe Music and Highland Drumming is in my constituency. There is also our iconic food and drink; much of the shortbread that people will get as presents this year will have been made in my constituency at the Ferrero FBC factory, where Jammie Dodgers are also made—I am not sure whether they are Scottish, but I am happy to claim them. Influential inventions also have their home in my constituency. This morning, I met a company called Lumino Technologies, which told me how it is using photons, telescopes and satellites to rival data transfer using cables under the Atlantic ocean. I did not understand it, but it sounded fantastic. We also have literary giants. Robert Louis Stevenson used to come to my constituency for his summer holiday to meet his grandfather, and he undertook much of his work there. I turn now to St Andrew—a Galilean fisherman and, as we have heard, the first of the 12 apostles chosen by Jesus; it is no accident that St Andrew’s day comes at the start of advent. It might be because he was a fisherman that he is also the patron saint of fishmongers. The striking thing about him is his name. It is not a Hebrew name, but a Greek one, which tells us that his family was perhaps a little bit more outward looking. As we have heard, St Andrew travelled extensively in the Black sea region including Greece, and perhaps as far as Ukraine and Poland. There is no evidence yet that he visited Edinburgh South West or even the UK. But I think if he had visited, he would probably have come on a small boat; he would have been a man from the middle east coming perhaps to escape religious persecution. What does it mean to have St Andrew as our patron saint in Scotland? He was a man who was called to love and care for other people. He believed in treating others with the same kindness, compassion and selflessness as he desired for himself. He saw foreigners and strangers as brothers and sisters. It is important to remember that. Where would St Andrew go if he were to come to Edinburgh South West? I think he would visit the Edinburgh Interfaith Association, which operates right across the city and is a fantastic, cohesive force in the city for people of all faiths and none. He would visit Holy Trinity church in Wester Hailes, which does fantastic work on debt relief for people in prison and out of it, and obviously those who have never been in prison. He would also visit Soul Food, which is a fantastic community meal in Oxgangs every week. He would visit the people who operate the Edinburgh Food Project and Community for Food, who provide food for people right across the city. They were fantastic in campaigning against the two-child cap, and it is due to people like them, right across the UK, that we managed to get rid of that awful injustice. These are troubled times, and people seek to divide us. We have to remember St Andrew’s values of being open and treating strangers not as foreigners, but as our brothers and sisters. I look forward to celebrating St Andrew’s day next year in that spirit.