Today I took part with many Conservatives colleagues in the opposition day debate, brought forward by the SNP, titled “Effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on negotiations for a future UK-EU relationship”.
The debate had nothing to do with COVID-19, it was all about more dither and delay on Brexit and the SNP trying to force another independence referendum, which was rejected overwhelmingly by the people of Scotland in 2014.
I decided to focus on the topics the SNP didn’t want to talk about like education and healthcare:
- Scotland has biggest joint fall in Social & Economic Well-being Index
- In international tables Scotland dropped 11th to 23rd in reading, 11th to 24th in maths and 10th to 19th in science
- Less teachers in profession on Scotland than when the SNP took power in Holyrood
- SNP cancelling their own survey into literacy & numeracy because it showed the failings
- SNP’s flagship ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ being investigated by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
- Hospital in Edinburgh, meant to be open on 2012, still closed and won’t open this year costing £1.4 million a month of taxpayers money
Sadly the SNP chose to play party politics instead of helping to improve the lives of the great Scottish people.
The big question today however is, where was the Labour Party?
Not a single backbench Labour MP spoke in the debate and instead they hid in their offices or scurried off home, rather than vote with me to say a clear no to a Brexit extension.
Sir Keir Starmer pretends he respects the Brexit result and says Brexit is done. So why not vote against the SNP? Why abstain?
It’s simple. He is and always will want to remain. In March 2020, in Dudley, he refused to rule out campaigning to rejoin the EU, but in May 2020 he says he wouldn’t. He was the architect of Labour’s disastrous Brexit policy, and both he and Labour MP’s voted recently in the Immigration Bill to keep free movement.
Labour can have all the reviews they want, it is clear they haven’t listened to the people of Stoke-on-Trent, Kidsgrove and Talke, who overwhelmingly backed to leave, and it is one of the reasons you kindly voted for me, to get Brexit done!
Click here to see my speech.