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Scottish Banknotes (Acceptability in United Kingdom) Bill

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. May I say at the outset that I am grateful to the Minister and to the Secretary of State for Scotland for the opportunity to discuss my Bill with them before Second Reading? I am grateful, too, to the many constituents and other people mainly, and perhaps not surprisingly, from Scotland, who have been in touch with me since I intimated my intention to introduce the Bill. Indeed, many aspects of the measure are summed up in an e-mail that I received only this morning from Johann Murrison, in which he said:""I am a Scot who has been living abroad for sometime and when returning home here there are times when I travel through England. I find it not only irritating that Scottish bank notes are not accepted and refused by retailers but find this overall insulting more so when some appear willing to accept Euros.""The reason being, that when refused in a retail shop which has other onlookers one feels they are being accused of trying to pass counterfeit or illegal money, which is very unsettling and embarrassing.""I fully support your private members bill and feel that resolving this issue is long overdue and the law truly needs to take into account not only this issue but also recognize the history of Scottish Notes"." Inevitably, in pursuing a measure such as this, I learned a number of things about banknotes. First, there are relatively simply marker-type pens available that can easily determine if a banknote is a forgery. Secondly, in the presence of a television camera, Scottish banknotes are universally accepted. Indeed, in retrospect, a Bill requiring TV cameras to turn up every time a Scottish banknote was handed over would achieve the desired effect. My constituents were instrumental in the Bill's inception. After my position in the ballot for private Members' Bills was announced, I sought their views on what piece of legislation I might introduce. The acceptance or, I should say, non-acceptance of Scottish banknotes was certainly to the fore. It was an issue with which I was personally familiar and a problem, at least anecdotally, that most Scots have experienced. There is also a phenomenon to which my constituency of Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale bears witnesses. My constituency has as its backbone the M74 corridor linking central Scotland with the north of England. Increasingly, people who are heading back to England, having spent time in Scotland and found themselves in possession of Scottish banknotes, are going to local banks and businesses and asking to have their Scottish notes changed to Bank of England notes, for fear that they will run into difficulty with the use of the Scottish notes back in England. My constituents deal politely with such requests when they can be accommodated, but they are irked by the implicit suggestion that there is something wrong with the Scots notes.