To answer the first question, Mr Cameron has asked for nothing. Bernard Jenkin MP—I think it was him; it was certainly one of the senior back benchers—said, “Is that it? Is that all you want?” Mr Cameron does not want very much and he cannot get very much. Merkel has already told him that he is not getting anything, and Hollande said the same thing.
What David Cameron has asked for is nothing—it is just will-o-the-wisp nonsense. It is a joke; he will not get any changes. He is doing it to cover his embarrassment. He is a Europhile and he is leading a party of people who are anti-EU, so he has a problem. He is trying to persuade them by saying, “Oh look, we’ve made these changes” but it is nonsense—he cannot get anything.
On Scotland’s involvement, I believe that Scotland should put in its tuppenceworth. The Parliament is here, and wise people here should be saying what they want to say, but I do not think they will have any more luck with changing the European way of doing things than Mr Cameron will have. I believe that the United Kingdom is more of a federal system, and the question is probably for Westminster to handle, but I am sure that Nicola Sturgeon will not be shy about sticking in her tuppenceworth. I am sure that she will say what she thinks.
Immigration is a serious problem. There is an exodus—that is the best way to describe it—of people to Europe. It is sad and appalling, and I am sure that there are some refugees from Syria among those people, but the vast majority are economic migrants. I do not blame them: if I were living in one of those awful countries, I would be getting my family together and coming over. The problem is that it is not possible for us to have unlimited numbers of people coming over. There is a housing shortage and unemployment in Scotland and in Great Britain, and we cannot have mass migration.
The Germans are already having problems. Madam Merkel made a very stupid remark—which I think she now regrets—saying, “Let’s have everybody in.” It is nonsense. I have said repeatedly in the European Parliament—you can look at all the clips on YouTube if you like—that we should set up good, properly run camps on the Turkish-Syrian border. The British Government is giving more money than any other Government. I would like the European Union to give a bit more of its own money, although not by itself—I would rather that the nation states did so individually. Once the money ends up in the sticky fingers of the European Union, it will disappear into an oubliette and never be seen again.
I would also like the Kuwaitis and the Saudis to get their fingers out of their pockets and produce some money. They have pots of it, and they are not doing anything for their co-religionists. That is a disgrace. There is no reason why we cannot have good camps over there. Once the situation in Syria has been resolved, those people can go back home again.
I wonder whether there is a tendency for people to want to cause more trouble by bringing in more refugees. We have security problems, and we are all aware of what can happen. I spoke to the First Minister about that when she met the members of the European Parliament in Brussels. I said, “You are responsible for the people of Scotland in the same way that the Prime Minister is responsible for the security of Great Britain.”
We must ensure that we keep our good race relations in this country. We have good race relations in Scotland because there are a number of people who work and whom we have integrated into the country. If we have mass immigration without integration, we will have terrible problems. The situation in the banlieues de Paris—the Paris suburbs—is appalling. There are ghettos that are utterly terrifying. I have been to those places, and I would not like to go there at night or even during the day. Europe has a massive social problem because those people are being imported here and they are not getting jobs. If a lot of young men are running around with no jobs, they will get into trouble. They feel rejected by society, and they go and join jihad or whatever.
10:30
We have to be sensible. There are only so many people we can keep in the country. We have to maintain our social security and hospitals, and we need to ensure that tax is at a reasonable rate. At the moment, a lot of soldiers are not being housed. That is a disgrace that we should be handling. Until we solve the problems of social housing and unemployment—I do not see anybody around the table who has a miracle cure for that—it is best not to have mass immigration in Scotland.
We should try to get people housed preferably in the first country that they come to. It seems strange. If I were a migrant, I would be happy to go to Turkey, as I would be safe there. I would not necessarily want to plough all the way across Europe or jump into a leaky boat to get somewhere else unless, obviously, that would be to improve the lot of my family. I do not blame those people, but it is not right that we should take such an approach. We have to think of our own people, too.