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Scotland Act 1998

I will come to my involvement with the national conversation in a moment, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bide his time. The national conversation on which the SNP has embarked has been carried out largely in cyberspace and in the early hours of the morning for some strange reason. Perhaps the nationalists are up pounding their computer keyboards because they are too worried about all the manifesto promises that they are breaking to sleep. Perhaps the consultation process will tell us the reason, but perhaps it is because some of the contributions to the national conversation do not deserve to see the light of day. There have been comments about burning the Union Jack and about Union liars, as well as comments that could incite hatred and divide people, such as those about Asians, Swedish, Danish, Belgian, Norwegian and English business men owning land in Scotland. I want the SNP as a party, and certainly Ministers in the Scottish Executive who represent me, to dissociate themselves from such aggressively confrontational comments. I hope that SNP Members will take the opportunity of this debate to do just that.