Chamber and committees

On that and in an attempt to be helpful, you have mentioned meaningful data, so one way that you could build that—whether you do that by your own hand or whether others do it—is through an examination of public bodies’ approved lists of contractors. It is probably easier to gain that information from them than from elsewhere. The purpose of that would be to say that, in a perfect market where innovation and efficiency are rewarded, we would see huge numbers of Scottish companies servicing Welsh local authorities or English companies servicing Northern Ireland authorities. That might give you a better indication, especially over time, of whether the internal market is working more efficiently. Would it be possible, either through your organisation or the Office for National Statistics, to get that kind of data and to monitor it over time to see whether it improves or otherwise?

I have one last point, which is counter to the point that I just made, but that is the way that I think of these things.

There is also a fairly developed movement—I forget the term for it; it is not quite a circular economy. The north of England area, perhaps Sheffield, does this very effectively: it tries to ensure that the money spent by public bodies is spent in the local area—it is recycled, if you like. I do not know whether that would be termed as divergence, but have you come across that or would you take it into account in the figures?

There has been a movement away from compulsory competitive tendering, decades ago, to best value and, in the past 10 years, a more liberal regime. For example, local authorities could place a contract with somebody who was not giving them the cheapest price because there would be wider benefits from placing the contract with them. I suppose that that works against the idea of an internal market, but I just wonder whether that has appeared on your radar yet.

Will the member take an intervention?

My question relates to my constituency interest in the school that has just been mentioned by Alex Cole-Hamilton, who does not represent Dunblane.

RAAC issues were identified at Queen Victoria school in Dunblane, as well as at the University of Stirling, which I will take up separately with the relevant minister. Both are very important institutions in my constituency. My understanding is that QVS is an MOD school, and that the responsibility for its upkeep lies with the UK Department for Education. In addition to what the cabinet secretary has just said, can she confirm that any issues that have been identified have been dealt with and that there is no on-going risk to students and staff in either of those buildings?

Given that QVS is an MOD school, was the Scottish Government made aware of the RAAC issues at QVS when they were first identified by the Department for Education?

I do not know whether Russell Findlay heard what the cabinet secretary said, but all the parties in Northern Ireland believe that the bill undermines the rights of victims to seek redress. It also undermines devolution and, crucially—this is the first time that I can remember this happening—it undermines the independent role of the Lord Advocate. Does none of that concern Mr Findlay?

We should never be complacent when it comes to widening access, but the numbers do not lie. Higher education student statistics show that, since 2006-07, there has been an increase of 31.4 per cent in the number of Scotland-domiciled full-time first-degree entrants to our universities, and we are seeing more people from the most deprived areas going to our universities. Does the minister agree that the party that introduced free university education by scrapping the graduate endowment needs no lessons from the Tories when it comes to widening access?

I was going to talk about the virtues of a written constitution, as many of my colleagues have done, but it is important for the chamber to realise exactly what the Opposition members, who are all looking at their phones just now, support when they support the current unwritten constitution. Rather than quoting Dicey, Edmund Burke, Montesquieu or any of the other thinkers they would normally cite in defence of an unwritten constitution, they have just made a puerile attack on the SNP. I do not know how many times Neil Bibby mentioned the term “SNP” in his speech.

Let us look at what those members support. What do we get with an unwritten constitution? First of all, we get the proroguing of a Parliament when it becomes inconvenient—just stopping the Parliament, and then lying to the head of state about the proroguing of Parliament. The proroguing of Parliament stopped it working altogether. What the Opposition members are doing in the empty benches that we see in the chamber is walking away because they have no arguments to counter our proposals for a written constitution.

We also have the situation in which you can make international agreements and then break them immediately once you have made them—it may only be in a “specific and limited way”, but you have lied to people you have made an agreement with and trashed the reputation of the state that you support in the process of doing that.

Or, of course, you can stuff to the gunnels the House of Lords—that paragon, that mother of Parliaments, where there are 800-plus cronies of the Labour and Tory parties and people who have donated to those parties—and then call that a democracy. It must be the only legislature in the world where the majority are unelected, yet there is not a word of condemnation from any of members of those parties in this Parliament.

You can also lie to Parliament without a word of condemnation being said by the people on those benches in this place about the liar himself, Boris Johnson.

For years, we had the fiction that we had a separation of powers within the UK Parliament but, of course, there was a person with the title of Lord Chancellor who was a member of the executive and the justiciary, as well as the legislature—the embodiment of the fact that there was no separation of powers, with all the attendant problems that that brought, as well.

When we put all those flaws together with the fact that we have an unwritten constitution, and with the presence of the constitutional vandals that we see in Westminster just now, that is where we get some of the major breaches of that constitution. It would have been much more difficult for those constitutional vandals to have done that had there been a written constitution with protections for individuals and groups within society. However, it is easy to go through that constitution and make those breaches if there is the thin veneer of respectability of an unwritten constitution.

It has been a source of shame to me for many years, having studied political science, to see some people put the unwritten constitution up on a pedestal as some fantastic, almost mythical, virtue of the UK state. It is anything but.

An unwritten constitution also allows for democratic denial—a rewriting of what most people understand as the basic principles of democracy such as the idea that, if you win an election, you get to implement your manifesto. That has been ditched. The idea of the mandate, a cornerstone of democracy, has been ditched by the Opposition parties in this chamber, and, of course, there is the devolution mess that we are seeing just now, whereby parties that simply do not like our party can change their mind and act with caprice to stop our legitimate aims of exercising devolved powers within the devolved settlement.

Before Labour gets too comfortable, I point out that there can be illegal wars as well—you can consign many people to death in those wars at the same time as going straight past their normal democratic processes.

There is also the point that Paul McLennan made—we can have an Act of Union that we are told is voluntary, but you just make sure there is no way that people can exercise their right to leave that union, even if that was the deal that they signed up to in the first place.

Therefore, it is quite clear to me that the virtues of a written constitution will appeal to people. Despite what others say about fantasy, I think that it will appeal to the people of Scotland, not least because the curtain has been pulled back from the unwritten constitution. I think that the idea of a rights-respecting Scotland that looks after the rights of individuals in the way that we have heard will prove to be very effective in making sure that people vote for independence for Scotland.

Will Jackson Carlaw give way?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I seek your guidance. We have had a number of amendments tonight that were debated at stage 2 but not moved following the debate on them. We have also had a number of amendments that were debated at stage 2 and defeated, yet they returned at stage 3. We considered an amendment that, had it been agreed to—it was not—would have resulted in a cost of £59 million a year plus expenditure of several hundred million pounds to construct a new prison. Can you provide any clarity on the criteria that are used for the bringing back at stage 3 of amendments that were considered at stage 2?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I would have voted no.