That is a past debate, and the people of Scotland will decide the future in a referendum in due course.
Let me deal with the warning. It comes not from the OSCE, which has been mentioned, but from the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. I remember a friend of mine who worked for it sending me a CD of what had happened in the Soviet Union as it was about to collapse and before the Commonwealth of Independent States—the Russian Republic—was formed. The Heritage Foundation moved in, giving lectures to people who became oligarchs—governors of huge tracts of land probably larger than the United Kingdom. They were taught two things about democracy. The first was, “Don’t bother about turnout, because the lower the turnout, the higher the leverage for you.” That was teaching people about democracy—those who had not had it since the Russian revolution. That is the direction of travel. Secondly, it was about demonising minorities. When we look at Putin’s Russia, we see voter suppression and indeed demonisation of those from the Caucasus or elsewhere.
That is the threat that we face. We have to take actions as a legislature that encourage people to participate, not take steps that discourage people from participating. That is about electoral politics, and it is what we should be doing.
I cannot remember who it was, but someone made comparisons with the southern states of the United States and what we are sadly seeing replicated not just in the Jim Crow states but in other states. The direction of travel is not perhaps yet south of the Mason-Dixon line, but the direction being pursued by this Government with this piece of legislation and with wider aspects is most definitely the type of thing that we used to think was left in the history books. Those things come from the Mason-Dixon line and were fundamentally about disenfranchising people whom those in power did not wish to vote, because they knew that the ability of the wider electorate to participate would threaten their power. It is for that reason that I oppose this Bill.
6.30 pm