Andrew Bowie

It is a great privilege to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) on securing it. Today’s debate is timely and important because Scotland stands on the cusp of an election that will determine the future of our country. Regardless of our politics, we know how lucky we are to live in Scotland, represent it, bring our families up in it, and work for a better future for it. Unusually for a history graduate of Scotland’s finest university, I am going to focus my remarks on the future. I am a Scotland rugby fan, a Scottish football fan, an Aberdeen fan and a Scottish Conservative, so I have to be an optimist. And I am: I do believe that a better Scotland, in a more secure and prosperous United Kingdom, is possible, but only with change—a change in Government in Edinburgh and a change of direction by the Government here in London. Scotland has suffered 18 wasted years—18 years when we should have been focused on binding our country together, building a better economy, promoting Scottish business and building up and improving our education system. However, we were not doing that. Instead, we have had 18 years of division, constitutional obsession and the bitter and, at times, petty politics of grievance. It was Edwin Morgan who, in his poem “Open the Doors”, commissioned on the opening of the new Scottish Parliament building in 2004, wrote, “What do the people want of the place? They want it to be filled with thinking persons as open and adventurous as its architecture. A nest of fearties is what they do not want. A symposium of procrastinators is what they do not want. A phalanx of forelock-tuggers is what they do not want. And perhaps above all the droopy mantra of ‘it wizny me’ is what they do not want.” I am afraid that in the Scottish National party, that is indeed what the Scottish people have had for the past 18 years—a party that leads a Government so misguided from the priorities of the Scottish people that they have allowed themselves to be distracted by narrow political fads instead of focusing on the real issues, with hard-working Scots suffering ever higher taxes to pay for them. However, those are as nothing when compared to the eye-watering social security spending, which is forecast to hit more than £9 billion in Scotland by 2030—triple what it was in 2017. For a population of less than 5 million people, that is insanity. In Scotland, we have an economy that has lagged behind the rest of the UK ever since the SNP first took power. If Scotland’s economy had kept pace, the Scottish Government would have had £12 billion more to spend over that period. It is said that the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out other people’s money; the problem with nationalism is that you eventually run out of other people to blame.