Monday 8 June 2015

Did Ian Murray ever say this in a speech?

Ian Murray, the only Labour MP in Scotland, has a Facebook page. One of the images posted on it has me intrigued. It's this one:

Taken from here.
The image of Murray standing at a podium and giving a speech, combined with speech marks around the text, makes it appear that he said this statement in a speech; further, given he's signed it as the Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, the speech must have happened after the 11th of May (when he became the Shadow Secretary).

However, despite hunting for a speech I can't find one where he made this statement. I've nothing against the creation of graphics to put a point across but I think the image of him at the podium is rather misleading.

As far as I can tell, the only major speeches that have taken place on devolution since the general election were on last Thursday, when the House of Commons debated the devolution portion of the Queen's Speech. Murray was present but did not make a speech then. Besides, this image was posted last Wednesday (i.e. the day before the devolution debate).

After some image searches, I found the image of Murray at the podium appears on an ACCA accountancy blog post dated 30th Jun 2014 titled Ambitious SMEs need Government investment in exports. This was made when Murray was Shadow Minister for Trade and Investment. So the image is about a year old.

Again, nothing against the creation of graphics but I think this is one on Facebook is rather misleading given it appears not to be a quote from a speech he's made. (On the plus side, at least he does NOT delete comments from Facebook - though you have to click on the image to see them.)


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