---

Scotland Bill

I am sorry not to be able to support the new clause moved by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who is in many ways a walking advertisement for the Union. It would be a great loss to this Parliament if he were not here and were prevented from coming here by a division between our two great countries. I am deeply concerned about his new clause. It is partly creeping republicanism, partly an attack on property and partly a subsidy to Scotland from the poor, hard-done-by English taxpayer, who has had enough of this and wants a little bit of money to creep back south of the border from time to time. Let me start with that sad day in March 1603, when our beloved sovereign of blessed memory, Elizabeth, died. When she died, James VI was hailed as James I of England, and we saw a mystical union of the Crowns: a mystical union that has remained true through not only world wars but civil wars, and has brought our people together. We have come together as peoples in the Crown, and as a result of a further development in the Act of Union 1707, we have come together as a Crown in Parliament. Anything that attacks the Crown, that undermines the Crown, is something about which we, representing one part of the Crown in Parliament—one part of the great system of government that we have—should always be careful.