Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Scotland – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 3 March 1993.
John McAllion
, Dundee East
12:00,
3 March 1993
Does the Secretary of State begin to comprehend that constitutional change is not an end in itself but a means to an end? Does he not understand that 75 per cent. of Scottish voters want their own Parliament not for its own sake but because it frees them to make their own decisions about the future of Scottish water, Scottish local government and Scotland's railway system? Will he at least try to understand that whatever he announces next week about the stock-taking process, unless it frees Scottish democracy from the chains of the Westminster Parliament it will be decisively and deservedly rejected by the mass of the Scottish people?
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.