Mr Speaker, I am going to help you by being brief and I am going to speak from first principles.
I really wish, Mr Speaker, that I could fly you and Members on both sides of the House north into Scotland, north over the unedifying scenes that we saw earlier today and north into the clear sky of Caithness. I would take you to Scrabster, the small harbour that serves Orkney and Shetland and sits beside Thurso. At Scrabster, I have a constituent, Mr Willie Calder. He and his son, William, run Scrabster Seafoods Ltd, a highly successful company that indirectly employs 100 people in an area where jobs do not grow on trees.
I met Mr Calder and his son a few days ago, and he put the situation to me very clearly. It takes him two days to get his fish products to the markets in the south of France. It takes him one day to get to his markets in the north of France. One day’s extra delay, or even half a day’s extra delay, at customs or a port would ruin him. It is as simple as that. The bottom line—this is where I am keeping it short, Mr Speaker—is this: Mr Calder’s business, Scrabster Seafoods Ltd, matters to me a very great deal. My story is based on first principles, but it explains precisely where I am coming from. I sincerely hope that Members on both sides of the House and
both sides of the argument will see where I am coming from. I say to them: please work for the best interests of the people whom I represent. I would be letting them down and betraying them if I did not stand up here and say that.