Parliament Building (Hansard, 23 March 1994)

§ 10. Mr. Canavan
To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will make a statement about the future of the Scottish Parliament building, currently used by the Crown Office.

§ Mr. Lang
The old Royal high school was vacated by the Crown Office on 31 January and was then offered for sale to its former owners, Edinburgh district council, by its present owners, Property Holdings, that part of the Department of the Environment responsible for Government buildings. I understand that the council has decided to buy the building.

§ Mr. Canavan
Will the Secretary of State congratulate Edinburgh district council on having the foresight to buy back the building as a future home for the Scottish Parliament? In view of recent suggestions that, in the meantime, the building might be used as a courthouse for the trials of certain categories of international criminals, would not it be appropriate to place in the dock the Secretary of State and his henchmen on the Government Front Bench who are betraying the people of Scotland by conspiring to steal their water and refusing them a Scottish Parliament, which is their democratic right?

§ Mr. Lang
I hope that Edinburgh district council will have more foresight about the future use of the building than the hon. Gentleman. As far as I am concerned, the Government are answerable to the High Court of Parliament.

§ Mr. Fabricant
Does my right hon. Friend concede that Edinburgh is rapidly going down the same road as London, with hotel rooms costing a fortune? Does he think that, just as we did away with the last bastion of socialism—the GLC opposite—which is now being made into a hotel, which will help to lower the prices of hotel rooms—[Interruption.]

§ Madam Speaker
Order. We are a long way from across the River Thames. We are afloat on this one. I want to hear a question that relates to the original question.

§ Mr. Galloway
Given the almost unbelievably contemptuous—even by the Secretary of State's standards —way in which an exercise where 1.25 million Scots put pen to paper, paper to envelope, envelope to pillar box and pillar box to the Strathclyde region to demonstrate their views on the privatisation of Scottish water—

§ Madam Speaker
Order. I have chastised one hon. Member for not relating his question to the original question. I want a question that relates to what is on the Order Paper.

§ Mr. Galloway
Why cannot we have, not a so-called referendum, but a Government-organised referendum on the future of the Scottish Parliament building, the future of Scottish government and national self-determination for the Scottish people? Will the Government ever listen to Scottish voices?

§ Mr. Lang
Yet again, the hon. Gentleman comes along with another multi-option referendum in mind. The fact is that we have well-established democratic procedures which have been tried and tested over the years and are impervious to the kind of mob rule that the hon. Gentleman favours so much—and it is noticeable that the mechanisms of mob rule are the ones that he favours.