Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to deliver my maiden speech. I commend the hon. Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) for her very entertaining speech. She spoke about her constituency with great passion and commitment. I also commend the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (George Kerevan) for their maiden speeches. I thank the Whips on both sides of the House for sending most of their Back Benchers home, thereby significantly increasing my chances of catching your eye this afternoon, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I also want to thank—for possibly the first time in a maiden speech—the air traffic controllers at Edinburgh airport, who this morning arranged for two high-altitude aircraft to fly at right angles to each other, presumably not at the same time, thereby creating a vapour-trail saltire that could be seen all across the constituency. How they organised that, and how they knew I would be speaking here today, I do not know, but they managed it somehow.
If I appear a wee bit nervous, I should explain that although I am now proud to call myself a Fifer, I was brought up very close to Cliftonhill, home of the mighty Albion Rovers. I supported the Rovers as a wee boy, and I am not used to seeing quite this number of people in one place—although since I left Coatbridge they have gone from strength to strength, and are now the reigning Scottish League 2 champions and will play in Scottish League 1 next year.
It is traditional to pay tribute to your predecessor, and I am delighted to be able to commend the contribution to the constituency and to Parliament made by Lindsay Roy during his almost eight years as a Member here. Lindsay was elected in November 2008 in a lengthy and often bad-tempered by-election in which I finished second, and it would have been easy for that to put divisions between us. I was leader of the council; Lindsay became the MP. We could easily have ended up on opposite sides, but thanks to Lindsay’s willingness to work together, we did so on a number of issues, as he worked with politicians across the political divide. Thanks to that willingness to work together, we prevented the threatened closure of our emergency medical out-of-hours service in Glenrothes.
I will be delighted to carry on working on a number of the campaigns in which Lindsay made a lot of progress but which are not yet completed. Those include reopening the rail link to Levenmouth, the largest
population centre in the whole of Scotland that does not yet have a railway; making the much-needed and overdue safety improvements to the A92 trunk road; and ensuring that the energy park in Methil fulfils its potential to become not only a national but an international centre of excellence in the renewable energy sector, bringing much-needed and highly skilled jobs to an area that desperately needs them.
It is my intention to follow Lindsay’s practice and refer to the constituency as Glenrothes and Central Fife, because Glenrothes, although it is the town where I live, and I love it more than any town anywhere, represents only 50% of the population of the constituency; the rest do not like being told they live in a new town. I think it was insensitive of the Boundaries Commission not to take that into account.
It is a constituency that is literally built on coal. Although most of the coalmines had gone before I moved to Fife over 30 years ago, once a town has become a coalmining community I do not think it ever stops being that. The community spirit, the independence of spirit, and the looking out for each other get ingrained into the population, and thankfully stay there.
It is a constituency that has produced genuine working-class heroes who were brought up in difficult conditions, sometimes of extreme poverty, and yet achieved absolute greatness. It was the home of the radical socialist poet Joe Corrie, described by T. S. Eliot as the greatest poet Scotland had produced since Robert Burns. It was the home of Celtic and Scotland goalkeeper John Thomson, whose brilliant career was tragically cut short at just 22 by an accident on the football field, and who, even in that short time, had established himself as possibly the greatest footballer ever to pull on a goalkeeper’s jersey.
The constituency is the birthplace of Jimmy Shand, whom these days it is fashionable to mock. Jimmy Shand recorded more tracks than Elvis Presley and the Beatles added together. It was the boyhood home of Andy Thomson, who emigrated as a young man and is now renowned as one of the most successful indoor and outdoor bowlers in English bowling history, with seven world titles to his name. We have also produced great Scotland internationals on the bowling green such as Julie Sword and Lynn Stein, who have represented the nation with great distinction at Commonwealth and UK championships. It is the birthplace of Jack Vettriano, an artist who becomes more popular the more the artistic establishment appear to detest him. There is that rebellious element not only to Jack Vettriano but to most people who have been born and brought up in Fife.
The constituency is home to the mighty and all-conquering East Fife football club—at least they were in 1938, when they became the only team to win the Scottish cup from outside the top division. It is also home to the more recently formed East Fife Ladies football club, whose steady climb through the divisions is worth watching, thanks partly to the contribution of my late and very dear friend Arthur Robertson, but also to Liz Anderson, a coach who is already attracting interest not only from ladies’ football clubs but from the mainstream Scottish clubs, which would be very keen to attract her abilities. Watch out for that name—she will be coaching a national squad, I predict, before very
long. Of course, the constituency is both the domestic home and the political home of Tricia Marwick MSP, who will undoubtedly go down in our history as one of our greatest ever parliamentarians.
Although the constituency is named after a new town, it includes sites of great antiquity. Dalgynch is the ancient capital of the kingdom of Fife, which has existed as an administrative and governmental unit since before the days of recorded history. It is possibly the only kingdom that is more ancient than the nation of the Scots itself. The constituency coast is home to the Wemyss caves, home of some of the most priceless works of bronze-age art anywhere and of possibly the oldest existing painting of a real object anywhere in Scotland. Tragically, the caves are in danger of disappearing as a result of the ravages of the weather.
There is a contrast in the local economy, with success stories in some industries and severe problems in others. The constituency, particularly the Glenrothes and Levenmouth area, is still reeling from the loss of the iconic 200-year-old Tullis Russell paper mill, the closure of the family owned retailer Sphere & Turret—which has led to a lot of job losses not only in my constituency but next door in North East Fife—and the closure of the Velux window factory and head office. In the past year, those closures have between them taken 1,000 direct jobs, and a similar number of indirect jobs, out of the constituency.
At the same time, the constituency is also home to the Balbirnie House hotel, which has won the Scottish wedding venue of the year award so often that most other hotels want it to be disqualified from taking part, to give them a chance. It is also home to the Cameron Brig distillery, one of only two places in the world that makes single-grain Scotch whisky that is good enough to drink. I am sorry that the Leader of the House is not here just now, because he mentioned the Epsom Derby earlier. I remind Members who may partake of Gordon’s, Tanqueray, Pimms, Archers or Smirnoff at any of the quintessentially English sporting events this season that they will be enjoying something that is produced in the heart of the Glenrothes and Central Fife constituency. So, as well as remembering the huge contribution we make to the sporting culture and social life of our neighbour, do not ever forget the contribution we are making to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s bank account.
I am going to break with tradition and not even pretend that my constituency is the most scenically beautiful in the whole of the United Kingdom. Even on the SNP Benches, I cannot compete with the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) or with the Western Isles, Angus or East Lothian.
What my constituency does have, however, is people of genuine character and absolute integrity who will work tirelessly to give their families a good standard of living and for the benefit not only of themselves, but of others around them. By entrusting me to represent them, these people have given me the greatest privilege and responsibility I will ever carry. They are relying on me to put an end to the obscenity of benefit sanctions being inflicted on the weakest and most vulnerable in our nation. They are relying on me to put an end to the shame of 10,000 emergency food parcels per year in a single constituency—and it is not even the most deprived
constituency in Scotland. They share my belief that, for such extreme poverty to exist in a Scotland that is one of the wealthiest nations on the planet, is nothing short of criminal, and I am determined to change that for the better.
All of us can claim with some justification that we come here with the hopes and dreams of our constituents. I have been humbled and inspired in equal measure by the knowledge that the constituents who have entrusted my hon. Friends and me include a great many who for far too long have been told they have no right to dream. I am proud to speak with the voice of thousands whose voices have never been heard, not because they have nothing worth saying, but because nobody in this place would listen. I carry the awesome responsibility of shouldering the hopes of a people who are now waking up to the fact that the future is something to be faced with hope, not with fear.
The reason the SNP Benches are usually so packed is that one of the four equal partner nations in this Union has once again dared to hope and dared to believe in a better future. “Project fear” may have won the day in 2014. I am proud to stand here in 2015 as a representative of “project hope”, and “project hope” will prevail.
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