Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship — House of Commons, 2020-07-15
Topic: International Affairs
Jonathan Edward Gullis (Conservative, Centre-right): It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Andrew Griffith). Let me be clear that it is because of our United Kingdom that, by the end of June, nearly 900,000 jobs across Scotland had been protected by the UK Government’s unprecedented support, and the Scottish Government have been allocated an extra £4.6 billion for coronavirus funding However, today’s debate is really about revisiting two questions that have been answered: Scotland leaving the UK, which was rejected in 2014, to join, if allowed, the European Union, which the UK collectively voted to leave in 2016. Both referendums were once-in-a-generation votes, and it is our duty to respect the people’s voices. The nationalist obsession with separating themselves from our United Kingdom risks at least half a million jobs, throwing Scottish business into chaos with dither and delay while they wait to see whether they are allowed into the protectionist racket, and the opportunity to export the best of Scotland around the world could be lost. The SNP is desperate to rejoin the European Union and would do so at the cost of its own workers and industries, and fishermen and women are a prime example. Remaining in the common fisheries policy would be detrimental to the health and success of the Scottish fishing industry, and we know that the European Union’s oppressive one-size-fits-all approach simply does not work The SNP could have talked about topics that are more pressing to the people of Scotland. In January this year, Scotland had the joint biggest fall in the social and economic wellbeing index. Why the decline? Education is one major part of the fall. Since 2006, PISA—the programme for international student assessment—shows that Scotland has dropped from 11th to 23rd in reading, 11th to 24th in maths, and 10th to 19th in science. Teacher numbers are lower today than when the SNP took power. However, it is not just PISA that points out the failure of the nationalists in Holyrood. A survey on literacy and numeracy, which the SNP set up, came out with damning figures about what is happening, so what was the First Minister’s response? It was to close it down, dismiss it, and tell the professional statisticians they were wrong. Instead of a data-driven approach, they asked teachers what they thought about every pupil relative to a test that may have been taken at any point in the year. That does not allow proper moderation and applies unfair pressure on teachers, causing impartiality to be thrown into doubt. The SNP choose to play party politics over helping to improve the educational outcomes and destinations of the youth in Scotland However, before the SNP tells me that positive destinations have increased, let me point out that it happened because the Scottish Government chose to include zero-hour contracts in their figures—a system that SNP Members regularly lambast. The Scottish Government will also praise their flagship curriculum for excellence, but it is to be investigated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development—failure after failure after failure. Let us talk about these issues instead, rather than revisiting the same old arguments that the public of the United Kingdom wish to move on from On top of educational failure, let us not forget the new children’s hospital in Edinburgh that was meant to be delivered in 2012 and is now mothballed for the remainder of 2020, costing the taxpayer £1.4 million a month. Let us not forget the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow, which tragically saw two children die due to water contamination in 2017, and which saw NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde placed into special measures. Scotland is also now the worst place in Europe for drug deaths, after the highest ever rise in fatalities following an 80% reduction in rehabilitation beds since the SNP came to power Let me offer something that Members from the Scottish National party and we on the Government Benches can agree on: where is the Labour party? Rather than showing that it has learned the lessons of December 2019, its Members are hiding. Dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge—they try to avoid discussing Brexit, because in private they want to stop it. It is one of the many reasons that people of Stoke-on-Trent North, of Kidsgrove and of Talke rejected them at the ballot box. My constituents overwhelmingly asked to leave the EU in 2016, but they were ignored time and again by the Labour party Let us not forget that the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), the architect of Labour’s disastrous Brexit policy, said to Labour members in Dudley in March that he wants to campaign to go back in. Then he told the media in May that he wants to stay out of the EU, yet he cannot walk through the Division Lobbies with us this evening to reject an extension. Time and again, Labour is failing the people of Stoke-on-Trent and the United Kingdom. [Interruption.]