Alyn Smith: Brexiteers lied to us but an inquiry won't change much

I spoke in favour of the petition. It is important that policy is evidence-based and if the UK seeks to plot a way forward out of the Brexit quagmire, it should have an honest conversation with itself about how it got into this mess.

Scotland, of course, did not vote for Brexit and support for the EU has only increased since then. I expressed my support for the petition with the caveat that some of the wording could have been better, particularly the phrase “the impact that Brexit has had on this country and its citizens”.

This is because my country is Scotland. The United Kingdom is not my country – it is a state composed of four nations. Scotland has a very clear European perspective – the SNP are the most pro-European party in Parliament.

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Moreover, the people who were most affected by leaving the EU in the way the UK did were the EU nationals living in these islands who weren’t counted as citizens.

Their lives were turned upside down whilst their rights to live, work, study and marry into our communities were taken away without them even getting a say in it.

In contrast, in 2014, the Scottish Government deliberately expanded the franchise in the independence referendum to broaden eligibility on the basis of residency rather than nationality. We have since established that right permanently in all Scottish parliament and local council elections.

As I said in the debate, it is our mission to get an independent Scotland back into the European Union. We have a clear constitutional agenda and I believe that we will thrive as an independent state in the European Union.

Equally, I want to see the UK do well. It would be good for the rest of the UK to have a close, deep and functional relationship with the EU. Such an approach is a win-win for all of us since a close working relationship between the EU and the UK means a better relationship between an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK.

So what would a public inquiry do? Let’s remember, for a moment, the Brexit greatest hits. The Brexiteers said: “There will be no downside ... only a considerable upside,” and that: “Nobody is talking about leaving the single market”. We were told that we could keep Erasmus and that the UK “holds all the cards”. And I seem to recall a big red bus about giving £350 million to the NHS every week.

People who voted Leave were entitled to believe the promises that were made to them by politicians and others. The vote was presented essentially as being risk-free and consequence-free. People were told: “Everything you like, you’ll keep. Everything you don’t like or don’t understand will recede from your life.” The reality is that those promises were not delivered. There may be reasons why they have not been delivered, so an inquiry would be useful in ventilating discussion – and this is why I support the aims of the petition.

However, a public inquiry into the impact of Brexit only goes so far and the problems of the UK’s departure from the EU are having an effect right now. The people struggling in my constituency, Stirling — an area bigger than Luxembourg and to me, the heart of Scotland — are suffering right now as a consequence of leaving the European Union.

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Our farmers cannot get their crops planted or harvested, as we have a crippling shortage of agricultural labour. We have a crippling labour shortage in the hospitality industry, which is deeply relevant to my community. The NHS is short of staff. We have a lively music scene, but creative touring people are struggling. And young people on student exchanges are finding the process more difficult, more complicated and more expensive.

Universities across these islands are suffering from the uncertainty over continued engagement in Horizon Europe and there’s one main solution to this problem. Let’s join Horizon Europe.

For our food importers and exporters, we need a veterinary agreement to make sure that the flow across the borders is as frictionless as it can be. For our small and medium-sized enterprises, we need single market membership to remove the barriers that have been put up by the recent events that we have suffered.

Yet for all the individual deals that the UK can strike with the EU or other countries, there will never be a better deal than membership of the European Union. The UK parties have no interest in this; as such, the only way that Scotland will get back into the EU is with independence.

I commend the work of those who have brought this petition forward, but for us Scots, it is clear what the solution to Brexit’s problems is – our independence in Europe.