Grand Committee
Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Act 2010 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2014
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Newby
That the Grand Committee do consider the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Act 2010 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2014.
Relevant document: 1st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, the regulations represent the latest step in the Government’s drive to deliver improved legislation for registered societies in Great Britain, by which I mean co-operatives and community benefit societies, hitherto known as industrial and provident societies, as well as credit unions. The regulations relate to how we refer to this group of businesses, and make the necessary changes in secondary legislation to enable new industrial and provident societies in Great Britain to register as either a co-operative society or a community benefit society.
Around 6,000 co-operatives and community benefit societies are registered across Great Britain. They come in all shapes and sizes and cover a diverse range of activities and industries. Their continued popularity is evidenced by growing numbers of members. Some of these mutually run businesses already refer to themselves as co-operatives or community benefit societies, and many industry stakeholders now regard the expression “industrial and provident society” as old fashioned.
The sector requested a formal change of description in legislation to modernise the language used to describe these businesses, which will enable them to become more relevant to members and the general public. I imagine that most people would have a sense of the terms “co-operative” and “community benefit society”, but many might struggle to describe quite what an “industrial and provident society” might be.
These regulations will make amendments to secondary legislation consequential upon the commencement of Section 1 of the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Act 2010 as re-enacted in the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014, which lays down new registration requirements for societies in Great Britain, other than credit unions.
As well as requiring a new society to be registered as a co-operative society or a community benefit society, the 2014 Act refers to all societies registered under the 2014 Act or before 1 August 2014 under existing legislation—including credit unions—as “registered societies”. The consequential amendments reflect those changes for Great Britain, but will preserve references to industrial and provident societies in Northern Ireland legislation.
Any new societies registering under one of the new terms from 1 August will not face any additional costs. For existing societies, only those that choose to amend their description may incur minimal costs; for example, to replace stationery or to amend website information. In any case, the sector has indicated that any costs as a result of registering under a new description will be more than offset by the benefit of using language that is more transparent to the public and their members.
These regulations form a small part of the Government’s wider commitment to support mutuality. Beyond this, a number of changes to mutuals legislation have been progressed during this Parliament. Those included a package of measures that came into force in April, which included: increasing the amount of withdrawable share capital an individual can invest in a society from £20,000 to £100,000, making it easier and cheaper for societies to raise capital; giving the FCA additional powers to investigate a society if suspected of unlawful or improper behaviour; making insolvency rescue procedures available to societies that previously would have had no alternative but to be wound up; and simplifying electronic registration for new societies.
Linked to the regulations we are discussing today, the Government also brought forward the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014, which was announced by the Prime Minister in January 2012. The Act has now gained Royal Assent and is due to come into force in August this year. It is a consolidation Act, which brings together and modernises the existing legislation for co-operatives, and was requested by the sector.
Today’s regulations are a necessary step in the work under way to strengthen the legislation for the co-operatives and community benefit societies. They form part of the wider package of measures implemented during this Parliament to strengthen and support the mutuals sector. The changes included in these regulations have received wide support from the sector.
Lord Graham of Edmonton (Lab)
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to welcome this stage of the legislation and the changes. In looking at my research, I am reminded of the efforts of John Roper—the noble Lord, Lord Roper—who played a large part in getting credit unions on to the agenda. Since then, Ed Balls in his ministerial capacity welcomed the issue and moved it forward. Of course, the present Minister, who I am delighted to see in his place, and his colleague the noble Lord, Lord Freud, have played a major part in keeping the issue alive.
I go back not to 1844 but to 1852 and the first industrial and provident societies Act. One of my studies has been co-operative law, and from 1852—certainly to 1863 and then into the 1890s and beyond—there have been genuine attempts to improve the raison d’être of co-operation as an economic form. There has been no objection. I am a Newcastle upon Tyne co-op society man, and one of my jobs for a period was to pay out the dividend accrued. That was the way in which many members of what I am still proud to call the working class saw an opportunity to save for the rainy day; it was marvellous. They would keep and take out of the dividend what they wanted, but they knew it was safe, secure, guaranteed and that it was their own.
We come to governance and changes, and of course this is not the place to go wider than the topic that we have here. That is why I was delighted to notice in a document from ABCUL, the association of British credit unions, that the ministry has already earmarked £38 million to be available for leadership training. It has been a great sadness to see something go catastrophically wrong for an organisation of this kind—there are thousands of credit unions and more than a million individual members—but one discovers that it was not the principle that was wrong, but the manner in which it was led or monitored. As a consequence, there have been blemishes in the credit union movement; I will not say more or less. However, I am delighted that one aspect of the legislation is to continue the good work that has already been done to ensure that those who have the temerity and courage to start a credit union will have the backing in due time of an organisation and of leadership. There must be nothing more catastrophic or devastating for a group of people, be it small or large, who have put their faith in a savings bank or whatever one likes to call it only to find that they have been let down by a lack of oversight and tightness. Having followed the development of legislation, I am certain that, in time, credit will be given to all three main parties in the House and many people will be rewarded by organisations which are sustainable and guaranteed.
I have nothing specific to talk about, because, being associated with the Co-operative movement even now, I am certain that if there were matters to be raised I would have been asked to raise them, and I have not been. I am not looking for trouble these days, so I do not write to somebody asking whether there are any points they want to make. If a point wanted to be made, they would have made it to me and other Members who have a close association with the Co-operative movement. I simply say to the Minister who has carried this legislation through that he will get no trouble from me, because I understand that a great deal of consultation has been done with the Co-operative Credit Union, Co-operatives UK and ABCUL, which plays a vital part in providing leadership. I believe that this is as big a step forward as was taken in 1844, when the Rochdale Pioneers took a leap forward. They were not the first co-operative in the country, but they are looked on as the founders of the modern Co-operative movement. After 180 years, who is to blame anybody for accepting that something that was relevant in 1844 and 1852 requires an overhaul, which is what it has had with this legislation? There has been no malice or agitation. I think that it is generally accepted in the country that small businesspeople are just as competent to run the affairs of a body such as a credit union as anybody else, provided that they have sound principles, that there is oversight and that, from time to time when required, the members will be faced with the fact that they will have do something drastic. To the Minister and anyone who is listening I say, on behalf of myself and others in the Co-operative movement, “Well done”.
The best guarantee of an audience at the City Hall in Newcastle was when there was a fear that the dividend was in danger or that a general manager was going to be sacked. I was there on two occasions when those things were prospective. We have to avoid that situation. I speak as an ex-student of the Co-operative movement. There are a number of other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Tomlinson, who have a strong connection with it. I wish this legislation well and congratulate all three main parties on having done a very good job on behalf of millions of people.
Some reference was made to numbers. I have some figures, too. There is great co-operative movement in Ireland. It is strong on credit unions. The same goes for the West Indies. A number of people have come from there and established their lives here. Across the world, the principle of co-operation as an economic and social force is well founded and I am proud to stand here and say on behalf of all those people, “Thank you very much”.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, it is the duty of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition to oppose, so I have worked on these regulations to see what I could oppose. The answer, frankly, is nothing. It is good of the Minister to review the general primary legislation connected with this statutory instrument. I thought that in general this was the privilege of the Opposition, but never mind. I congratulate him, and the noble Lord, Lord Graham, for his complimentary speech. Together, their speeches are a gratifying review of this movement and the work that all parties have done to improve it. However, as I read these regulations, they do no more than change the name of “industrial or provident societies” to “co-operative or community benefit societies”. I hope that the Minister will reassure me that it does no more or less than that, because otherwise I have misread the paperwork.
The Explanatory Memorandum goes on to say that the change has been requested by the sector. Will the Minister outline how, because in the paragraph about consultation in the memorandum, it says it was carried out in 2007? I know this has been going on for a long time, but is the sector’s request to change the name more recent, and through what mechanism has that request been made? Finally, I think it is clear, but will the Minister confirm this? As I understand it, it is a matter of choice for societies that are already registered or who register before 1 August whether they change status. I am curious how they will exercise that choice. Will the FCA communicate with all industrial and provident societies to see if they want to change their former registration? With those really trivial questions, I indicate our support for this instrument.
Lord Newby
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, for his generous welcome to this statutory instrument. He spoke eloquently about the role of the divvy. The divvy had a particular place in the Newby household because my mother in 1931 went to work in what was then called the check department of the Leeds co-op. Her role was to work out the divvy for the members of the co-op. She—and as a result I—have fond memories of the divvy and the part it played in working-class communities at the time. The noble Lord is absolutely right to say how important it was to people. That explains why the Co-operative movement was so strong at the time.
The noble Lord also drew attention to the funding that the Government are giving to the credit union movement. As he said, the DWP has earmarked £38 million for its credit union expansion project. The aim is to get credit unions to have a million more members by 2019. This is an ambitious target, but it will be achieved only if the leadership of the sector is well qualified. As the noble Lord said, skilled practitioners are needed to make it work and there are a lot of downside risks if they do not, so we hope that this funding will substantially help in doing this. I can also tell the noble Lord that only yesterday the Treasury launched a 12-week call for evidence and opinions on what more we can do to help credit unions to grow sustainably in future. We hope that we are not resting on our laurels, but are continuing to push this agenda forward.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked a number of specific questions. He was right that this statutory instrument just changes the nomenclature. It has no other substantive components to it. He asked about consultation. The original consultation that is referred to in the documentation was undertaken in 2007, and this was taken into account when the 2010 legislation was drafted. These regulations flow from that 2010 primary legislation and simply implement that. The Treasury did not undertake a formal review, but talked to Co-operatives UK and other stakeholders in the sector informally, just to confirm that their view had not changed. I can confirm that their view had, indeed, not changed. They very much welcome this, simply as part of bringing the nomenclature and thereby the sector more up to date.
I can confirm that the regulations are a permissive piece of legislation. An industrial or provident society currently in existence can do nothing if it opts to do so. The noble Lord asked what is being done to explain what the options are if one opts to change. The FCA is preparing guidance notes to bring the legislation to the attention of the sector, and to set out what its members need to do if they are changing status. However, as I said in my introduction, the cost involved in doing that will be minimal. We hope that many current industrial and provident societies will simply do it as they change their stationery and upgrade their websites.
Having dealt with noble Lords’ points, I hope, I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Legislative Reform (Clinical Commissioning Groups) Order 2014
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, this draft legislative reform order would amend the National Health Service Act 2006 in two ways. First, it would allow clinical commissioning groups—CCGs—to form a joint committee when exercising their commissioning functions jointly. The NHS Act already allows two or more CCGs to exercise their commissioning functions jointly, but does not make any provision for them to do so via a joint committee. Secondly, it would allow CCGs to exercise their commissioning functions jointly with NHS England, and to form a joint committee when doing so. The Act already allows NHS England and CCGs jointly to exercise an NHS England function, and to do so by way of a joint committee, but it makes no provision for them jointly to exercise a CCG function.
This draft order has already been scrutinised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and I was pleased with its recommendation that it should continue under the affirmative resolution procedure. I hope it will assist the Committee if I set out the need for these proposals.
I emphasise from the outset that the proposed arrangements are voluntary. One party cannot impose the arrangements upon another. This allows CCGs to retain their autonomy and to continue to make decisions that are in the best interests of their local populations. At the moment, the lack of provision for CCGs to form joint committees is placing a burden on CCGs and preventing them from working in the most effective and efficient way. Without the power to form joint committees, CCGs have had to find other means of reaching joint decisions which are binding. As an interim measure, some CCGs are forming “committees in common”, whereby a number of CCGs may each appoint a representative to a committee in common; those representatives then meet, and any decisions that are reached are taken back to their respective CCG for ratification. This leads to costs in people’s time to sit on multiple committees and administrative resource, as well as extra financial costs.
For example, I am aware of the limitations that the current commissioning arrangements are having on the East of England Ambulance Service. NHS Ipswich and East Suffolk CCG is lead commissioner for ambulance services across the east of England, and the remaining 20 CCGs in the region are associates to that commissioning arrangement. The CCGs established a commissioning consortium, which brings together all 21 CCGs to discuss both delivery against the ambulance contract and future strategy for ambulance services. However, due to the restrictions of current legislation, the consortium itself is not delegated any decision-making authority. While most CCGs party to the consortium have delegated a level decision-making authority to the individual officers who attend the consortium, the contract with the ambulance service is large, and decisions may exceed delegated limits. In those instances, decisions must be referred to CCG governing bodies, introducing a delay to the decision-making process.
Clearly arrangements such as these are burdensome, particularly when compared to the simplicity of a joint committee. Primary care trusts, the predecessors of CCGs, were able to form joint committees at which, subject to the terms of reference, all participating PCTs were bound by the decisions reached. We therefore want to allow CCGs a route in which, when they are collaborating with other CCGs, they can take decisions in a properly constituted forum. Furthermore, CCGs when agreeing to form a joint committee will have the freedom to agree terms of reference, including voting arrangements. This will not dilute the emphasis of local decision-making.
Similarly, the lack of any power for CCGs to exercise their functions jointly with NHS England is also causing inflexibility. NHS England and CCGs may wish to act jointly to commission better out-of-hospital services, for example. Making sure that services are integrated around the needs of the patient is the best way of ensuring that care is provided in a safe and compassionate way that most benefits the person. This amendment would allow CCGs and NHS England, as co-commissioners, to develop and agree strategic plans and delivery processes that take into account the effects of services across a whole pathway, facilitating design and continuity of services across primary, secondary and community care.
For example, CCGs and NHS England may wish to review service delivery across specialised services, commissioned by NHS England, and any impact redesign may have on non-specialised acute services, commissioned by CCGs, in order for services to be designed and delivered to achieve the best possible outcome for the population served. The inability of NHS England and CCGs to jointly exercise a CCG function and to form a joint committee when doing so makes it more difficult to make timely decisions, which can delay the ability to improve patient safety. Furthermore, the amendments would encourage the formation of new commissioning partnerships, allowing the most effective approach to be used.
The amendments would build upon them by giving CCGs greater flexibility and control in the way that they work. As CCGs become more established organisations, they need to have more flexibility to work together, and with NHS England. In any commissioning structure you have in place, there are always going to be some decisions that may need to be taken locally and some that span a wider population.
CCGs are still accountable as individual organisations. Joint arrangements mean that each CCG is still liable for the exercise of its commissioning functions, even where they are being exercised jointly with another CCG or NHS England. These proposed arrangements will not lead to reconfiguration by the back door. The purpose of these changes is to support more effective joint working and to allow discussions about service redesign to take place across the health economy. The proposed changes will not affect the existing processes and tests that any significant service redesign needs to follow. I beg to move.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, the NHS Act 2006 started us down the route of commissioning; obviously, with the updating and creating of clinical commissioning groups under the Health and Social Care Act 2012, we are still moving into fairly new territory. Inevitably, CCGs are feeling their way in the new structures, including joint working. I am pleased that the order will now legislate more formally for CCGs to work closely with each other and with NHS England, and to jointly commission where appropriate.
One of the many reports that come back to your Lordships’ House from CCGs and NHS trusts is the desire to gold-plate any system with legal advice. For example, we know that the Health and Social Care Act enabled tenders to be taken for quality and efficacy, not just on cost, as under the 2006 Act, yet we hear time and again that lawyers tell commissioners that cost is the most important point. I also welcome the issues around CCGs and National Health Service England overlapping. The Minister referred to some of those; it is also important where there is a pathway in rare diseases, where there may also be some linkages with CCGs perhaps implementing at a lower level. That will smooth the way for that to work well.
To this non-lawyer at least it seems extraordinary that CCGs could not form joint committees to commission over boundaries. This draft order now makes it crystal clear that joint commissioning and the arrangements for ratification by the separate CCGs are not just acceptable but welcome. It is encouraging to see in the accompanying notes that the consultees to this order also see it as a cost-efficient measure; I add to that smoother working systems and, most importantly, joined-up services for users of the NHS.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, on the face of it the order is unexceptional, although I agree with the noble Baroness that CCGs have got themselves into a ludicrous state of getting legal advice on almost everything. It is patently obvious that there are ways in which they can come together to make decisions. We also see that as regards tendering, where, despite the commitments the noble Earl made, we see CCGs absolutely panic-stricken about making a decision not to tender out services. If ever one wanted evidence of the foolishness of the arrangements we now have, it would be the kind of reaction we are seeing from CCGs.
I will ask two or three questions on the order. I noted in paragraph 4.6 of the consultation paper that the department points out that there was opposition to the proposal to enable CCGs and NHS England to form joint committees. I understand that while it is mainly about CCGs forming joint committees, they can also form a joint committee with NHS England. The necessary protection is laid out in paragraph 3.6 of the paper we received, which says that:
“The Minister considers that the proposals maintain the necessary protections. CCGs enjoy a degree of autonomy”.
I thought that they were going to be autonomous, but there we go; it has been qualified in that document. The paragraph goes on:
“To this end, NHS England is under a duty … to promote the autonomy of persons exercising functions in relation to the health service. The wording of the proposed amendment to section 14Z9 is designed to ensure that a CCG function can only be jointly exercised with NHS England where both parties are in agreement, thus preserving a CCG’s autonomy”.
I put the point to the noble Earl that if you talk to CCGs, they do not feel autonomous, because they are used to being beaten up by NHS England—receiving incessant phone calls from the local offices of NHS England—and they and the accountable officer find themselves under huge pressure when there are problems with the system. Therefore the idea that there is an equal partnership between NHS England and the CCG as regards a joint committee is simply not believable. Clearly, local area teams will use that mechanism to force CCGs into joint committees and then force decisions through. I would have thought that that is patently obvious from what is happening in the field in the National Health Service. I would be grateful to hear the noble Earl’s comment on that.
Of course, I have no problem about CCGs working together so that we can get rid of some of the current fragmentation. If we take my own patch of Birmingham, where three and a half CCGs cover the city, there is no chance, it seems, of actually having a strategy for the city which can embrace all the trusts and commissioners unless it is done jointly. I would like to hear from the noble Earl how in fact this mechanism is going to be used to encourage CCGs, which are patently too small in many areas, to come together so that we get some decent strategic planning instead of the fragmented and inadequate contracting process that so many CCGs are undertaking at the moment.
I would also like to ask the noble Earl about consultation when decisions are made by a joint committee. I assume that the consultation rights and responsibilities would apply to a joint committee as much as they do to an individual CCG but, as there is scant evidence of CCGs undertaking proper consultations, I suppose that that is not much comfort. It would be good to hear a little more about how CCGs are going to work this. I must say that after two years of this wonderful new system, I am still waiting for a letter from my CCG saying that it actually feels some form of accountability to me as an individual, but alas that letter has yet to come. From the legal cases which have been brought against some CCGs, it is clear that they do not have any sense of accountability to their local population. That is not surprising because they are membership organisations. They are owned by GP practices, which are the members of the organisation.
This morning I listened to Simon Stevens, appearing before the Public Administration Select Committee, talk about the proposal to hand over some of the contractual responsibilities of NHS England to CCGs. So, in effect, not only are the CCGs membership organisations, they are now going to be given co-power with NHS England to contract with the individual members of the organisations in relation to primary care services. I can well understand why the local area teams do not have the capability to manage the primary care contract. It was patently obvious that they were not going to do so. But what it comes back to is that the governance of CCGs is hopelessly compromised. They ought to be public bodies with much greater lay representation. If they were, we would have much more confidence in the arrangements, but they are not. They are dominated by contractors who have a vested interest in the decisions made by those clinical commissioning groups.
Finally, I turn to page 3 of the impact assessment that provides the evidence base for the supporting paper. It is implied that decisions to deal with specific funding requests might be dealt with by a joint committee. That, of course, is a euphemism for rationing services. Again, we know that some CCGs are making highly dubious decisions about restricting patient services to which NHS patients are entitled. I would like some reassurance that if the joint committee is going to do this, it will be done in public, not behind closed doors, and after full consultation. Recently I have been particularly concerned about evidence which shows that NICE technology appraisals are not being fully implemented in the National Health Service. I remind the noble Earl that it is a legal requirement for a NICE technology appraisal to be fully implemented by the NHS. Again, I would like to hear what the Government are going to do to ensure that CCGs actually play fair by the public and do not unnecessarily restrict treatments.
The order itself is unexceptional and it is supported, but I have to say that the performance of some CCGs leaves a lot to be desired. It is because of the potential of the joint committees to make major decisions that I raise some concerns today.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for their comments and questions. My noble friend was quite right to cite the example of rare diseases and specialised services as one which will be assisted by the order before us, because while we have a mechanism for NHS England and CCGs to get together to discuss these things, we lack the ability for decisions to be taken about the whole patient pathway. This, of course, is vital when we look at the aspiration to join up services for the benefit of patients—not just the specialised care they receive in a centre of excellence, but also the follow-on care that they receive in the community. I therefore share my noble friend’s welcome for this aspect of the order.
I turn to the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. A key plank of the Government’s reforms was to increase clinical commissioning. We do not want to depart from that, or from the principle of giving clinical autonomy to those who run clinical commissioning groups. We want to encourage them to enter into arrangements that have the buy-in not just of the local GPs, but of health professionals in their local area and the local authority. We have been clear on the need for a different splitting out of the commissioning functions—for example, to avoid CCGs commissioning individual GP practices and the conflicts of interest that may arise. The arrangements for safeguarding against conflicts of interest are still in place, but what we hear is that as organisations become more established they need a bit more flexibility to work together. In any commissioning structure, there is going to be that need and this order is about allowing those CCGs to work more efficiently. I emphasise that point about allowing them and not requiring them to do so. There is no compulsion about this. The noble Lord indicated that he felt that CCGs do not feel autonomous. I am surprised to hear that, because the arrangements that we have put in place are designed to ensure that local area teams of NHS England are there to support CCGs, not to oppress or breathe down their necks. That is my experience as I go about the health service. This is about joint working and taking decisions together in the best interests of patients.
The noble Lord asked me about transparency. CCGs are under certain duties with respect to patient involvement and transparency when they exercise their functions. Those duties would continue to apply when they exercise their functions jointly with other CCGs. The duty to consult still applies. CCGs will be under the statutory obligations as to patient and public engagements. However, it will be up to committees to agree precisely how they will work in accordance to their obligations. Some consultation responses that we received refer to committees in common that meet in public. Joint working does not have to entail working behind closed doors.
The noble Lord asked about NICE technology appraisals. He is right that some CCGs are slower than they should be under the legal provisions that pertain to adopting and commissioning approved technologies flowing from NICE. To shine a light on that, as he may know, under the Innovation Health and Wealth provisions, we have the NICE implementation collaborative, which is the mechanism designed to measure the extent to which local commissioners adopt approved technologies. The innovation scorecard is also designed to show how innovation in various forms is being rolled out and diffused across the NHS. I believe that mechanisms such as these will be enormously helpful in exposing the laggards in the system.
I hope that I have answered the noble Lord’s questions. I shall write to him if I have failed to cover any substantive point.
Defibrillators
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Storey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they will take to ensure that all schools, sports clubs and public service buildings have defibrillators as part of their first-aid kit provision.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, today we debate a topic that is close to many of our hearts. I note that defibrillation has been raised in your Lordships’ House 57 times in some form or another since 1995, but today I hope that we will see some movement on this issue. Much like the conditions that trigger the need for a defibrillator, this issue will refuse to go away until we fully grasp it. Of course, I am talking about defibrillator provision and what the Government plan to do to ensure that all schools, all sports clubs and all public service buildings include AEDs as part of their first-aid kit provision.
My concern and my involvement in this area stem from the tragic death of a young Liverpudlian boy, Oliver King, in March 2011. He suffered a cardiac arrest during a swimming race at his school, King David High School, in Childwall. Sadly, he passed away as a result of SADS, or sudden arrhythmic death syndrome. His father, who has campaigned tirelessly for the past three years, is here today. I pay tribute to him and the foundation that he and his friends set up in Oliver’s memory, campaigning to get SADS provision in every Merseyside school and for their life-saving work in Merseyside and across the nation. They do tremendous, largely unsung work. I thank them and encourage the Government to pay heed to their suggestions.
In advance of today’s debate, I have received several briefings, notably from the London Ambulance Service, which sent me its Shockingly Easy campaign booklet. That title sums up this issue perfectly. St John Ambulance, the British Red Cross and the British Heart Foundation also sent me notes, as of course did Mr King. I thank them for their assistance and their efforts.
All present will know that a defibrillator is a machine that delivers an electric shock to the heart when someone is having a cardiac arrest. Used in conjunction with cardiopulmonary resuscitation, defibrillation massively increases one’s chances of survival during heart failure. Every second counts, as they say, and I echo calls for defibrillators to be made available within easy reach of anyone who needs such life-saving treatment.
Much like the provision of fire extinguishers and first-aid kits, defibrillators save lives. However, unlike the case with the regulations that mandate fire-extinguisher facilities and first-aid kits, currently no legal safeguards require provision of defibrillators. This is a disgrace, especially when we think that there are 60,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests every year in the UK. Survival rates, which have barely improved over the years, range from 2% to 12%. In London, one’s chances of survival shoot from 28% to 80% in cases where a trained person uses an AED.
I shall not labour the facts any further, but they beg the question why, if we think it important to place first-aid kits and fire extinguishers in our schools, old people’s homes and sports clubs, we are holding back defibrillators. More to the point, why is it that we have 16, soon to be 17, defibrillators on the Parliamentary Estate? If it is good enough for your Lordships’ House, surely it is good enough for everybody.
I shall return to the wider question and the topic of this debate. I suggest that the first step towards making our communities more resilient to the devastating effects of cardiac arrest must be to place AEDs in areas that see the highest number of cardiac arrests. To me this sounds like a no-brainer, and it is. I welcome the move by David Laws and the Department for Education to encourage schools to install machines, although I regret that, in this Parliament, we are not yet any further forward in making them mandatory.
As well as the installation of defibrillators in places of high footfall such as schools and public buildings, we should not forget the other side of the coin, which is education. People, young and old, must be educated in how to use a defibrillator, whether in a school, a young offender institution or at work. Fortunately, here in Parliament we are offered training. For the record, the next training session will be at 10 o’clock on 16 November in 7 Millbank, although perhaps that is a long time to wait. In order to make any investment in defibrillators worth while, young people must have access to and be able to engage in first-aid and life-saving education. Only 7% of the population have the skills and confidence to carry out basic first aid in an emergency, which is an appallingly low figure that must increase. What plans do the Government have to ensure a more comprehensive approach to first-aid education?
I know that it is not the done thing to use visual aids, and my noble friend will be pleased to learn that I do not intend to do so, but a defibrillator is very easy to use. You do not actually need any training. Although Mr King has brought one with him, I do not suggest that he should show it to us, but even I could use it without ever having had any training. You just follow the simple instructions. However, it is still important that first-aid training for all should be linked to that.
I think that we agree on the need for and importance of defibrillators, but it is worth stating that they must be installed in areas where there are high numbers of cardiac arrests. According to St John Ambulance, 74% of people think that it should be compulsory to have AEDs in care homes, and I agree. Indeed, I suggest that we should examine the case for having them in all care-home settings, both public and private, because this is a topic that should cut through the distinction between public and private provision. Quite simply, it is too important not to mandate the use of AEDs across the board, whether that be in football clubs, cinemas, schools, train stations or churches. Indeed, I know of some churches that have defibrillators because they save lives.
I am determined that we should do more. My noble friend Lord Nash, who supports efforts in this area, informed me on 3 February that,
“it is a matter for individual schools to decide whether to have defibrillators and to arrange individual training”.—[Official Report, 3/2/14; col. 7.]
Even though the governing bodies of maintained schools must now make arrangements to support pupils with medical conditions—we should remember from the Children and Families Act the importance of the duty of care in terms of medical conditions—perhaps we should extend that duty of care to those pupils who might suffer cardiac arrest.
I want to raise one other issue, on which I have already written to my noble friend the Minister. It concerns a universal logo. If you want to find a fire extinguisher quickly, you know the logo. Similarly, you know the logo for a first-aid kit. However, there is as yet no universal logo for defibrillators, although the Minister did mention that NHS England is considering all avenues to increase the uptake of bystander resuscitation, including the location and use of AEDs. I suggest that a universal logo, combined with their inclusion in first-aid kits and a comprehensive approach to training and education, might be the way forward. Would the Minister consider taking a lead on this issue, particularly with the NHS, by suggesting that we should look at adopting some form of universal logo?
Finally, a word from Mr King, who says that use of defibrillators is often,
“the difference between life and death”.
This fact has been recognised by the national clinical director for heart disease, Professor Huon Gray, who I met with Mr King, as well as the Secretary of State, last year. Let the message go out from this short debate that lives can and will be saved by immediate access to defibrillators.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on tabling the debate this afternoon. I felt compelled to speak after a chance encounter with a young girl and her family who I met at the Paralympics in 2012. Ruby is a wheelchair user because she had a heart attack in school at the age of five. She is now 10. Luckily, and amazingly for Ruby, her teacher had been on a course—I think just a week before—and knew what she had to do to save Ruby's live. She was starved of oxygen for 40 minutes and left with many severe impairments and a heart condition. Apart from one or two isolated cases that I had heard in the news, this was the first time that I had met a child who had had a heart attack, and it had a big impact on me. Her parents are amazing and they give her an incredible and fulfilling life, but it led me to wonder whether, if there had been a defibrillator in the school, her life might now be very different.
In researching for this debate I was contacted by a number of people. One or two raised some legitimate questions about the potential cost of having this equipment in every school and sports club versus the number of heart attacks that occur. In the end, all members of the public who got in touch were in support of equipment in every school. I have seen figures suggesting that up to 12 young people a week are affected by this and perhaps the Minister would clarify the scale of the problem. Obviously the cost per unit versus the cost of medical treatment constitutes a significant saving, but this is not about money. It is about saving young people’s lives—and other people’s lives. I was contacted by a teacher who said that they had a defibrillator in their school; a teacher had had a heart attack and survived.
I was also contacted by a lady from a local community group who said that a person had had a heart attack at their centre and died. However, there was a lot of reluctance to have equipment in the centre because people were not sure about how to use it or about the safety. Most of the time when we think about defibrillators, we think about something from a movie or TV when everybody stands back and it is all very dramatic, rather than the modern technology which, I have been assured, is fool-proof. Someone puts the pads on and the machine takes the decisions. No one has to make the decision about whether it is a heart attack or not, the machine does that.
We also tend to think of this occurring when somebody takes exercise. There was a report in the Hampshire Chronicle on 29 March 2014 about a Mountbatten School pupil in Winchester, Sam Mangoro. He nearly died when he had a heart attack in a PE lesson. He was just 16. Again, he was really lucky. His life was saved by trained members of staff who had access to a defibrillator. As a result of this, the parent-teacher association of another school in the area, the Westgate School, purchased one. However, these are really hard decisions for head teachers to take. Put “defibrillator” and “schools” into a search engine and there is a list of companies willing to sell this equipment. How does a head teacher, a parent or somebody raising money know what is the right equipment to buy?
I was therefore delighted with the Department for Education announcement that the Government are working to identify suppliers. They will look at competitive price, because that is important, but also at the statutory guidelines and advice for schools on supporting pupils with medical conditions. It is important that the Department for Education and the Department of Health take a lead on this, to guide PTAs and schools and make sure that they buy the appropriate equipment.
This should also be on the school curriculum. My husband, who is a triathlon coach, recently went on a first-aid course and learnt how to do heart massage. It reminded me that the last time I did anything like this was when I was a Brownie a very long time ago. Until my husband mentioned it, I thought that I knew what I was doing. I remembered that the numbers five and two were involved, but I could not remember whether it was how many times I was meant to breathe or how many times I was meant to press somebody hard. It made me realise that if I saw somebody have a heart attack, I would be extremely reluctant to get involved, because I would be more worried about causing any more damage than doing something that could help. My daughter helpfully joined the conversation. She is 12 and in school she was taught what to do, using the song “Nellie the Elephant”, which is a brilliant way of doing it, and she would be able to step in and help.
Since I saw this debate tabled, I have noticed signs in many more shopping centres and elsewhere showing where defibrillators are. It made me realise that I am not sure where they are in the Palace of Westminster. I suppose that we are lucky to have a number of eminent doctors or professors here, so we are in a pretty good place if anything should happen to us.
Most sports clubs are very small. They are run by volunteers and do not have a lot of money, so the cost of installing such equipment would be prohibitive even though I think that a lot of them would want it. If there were to be a scheme for schools, it would be an excellent idea to extend it to local sports voluntary clubs so that they would be able to access the right equipment. It is also important that we carry on pushing training courses. I know that they are provided in many sports, but for a lot of voluntary sports clubs it raises issues around training, insurance and the worry about what would happen.
I did not realise until I saw this debate tabled that you can get a free app for your phone which enables you to find the location of your nearest defibrillator. It also has an emergency 999 button already on the screen so that you do not have to press all the buttons. I have not tried it yet, and hope that I will not have to, but things like that should be publicised. It is in that moment of panic, when you see something happening, that you need all the help and guidance that you can get.
We should take this matter very seriously. I want to see defibrillators installed in schools and sports clubs and generally more awareness about what can be done to help people if they suffer a heart attack.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for raising this important issue and for keeping it to the forefront. When I was training to be ordained, I became used to some people going off for a little doze while I was preaching. What I did not know was that, during my very first sermon, somebody—a very nice lady—would have a heart attack. Fortunately, she did not die and I got to know her and her family very well during her convalescence. I saw something of the impact of such events on families; indeed, my sympathy goes out to those who know something of this in their own family.
Each year in the UK, some 60,000 people suffer a sudden cardiac arrest. Ambulance services are able to attend on average only 25,000 of those and the corresponding survival rate is depressingly low. Sudden cardiac arrest is therefore a key issue for us.
Time is of the essence in such instances. Survival is often dependent on quick access being gained to medical assistance in the form of CPR, defibrillation and then excellent follow-up care. I am told that, for every minute that elapses following a cardiac arrest, the victim’s chances of survival decrease by 23%. If CPR alone is available, the survival rate remains alarmingly low—at around 5%—but if defibrillation is conducted within five minutes of the arrest, the survival rate soars to some 50%. Given the stretched resources of our ambulance services and the large and often complex geographical areas that they serve, it is not always easy for professional medical assistance to be with the victim in that very short timeframe. Even the current eight-minute general response target is reached in only two-thirds of incidents. It is obvious, therefore, that for assistance to reach the victim before time runs out, we need some more help to be available locally.
The technology of defibrillation, as many of your Lordships will know far better than me—I am not a medic—has advanced in spectacular ways in recent years. The development of automated external defibrillators—AEDs—represents a huge step in the right direction. AEDs allow ordinary people like me to administer defibrillation to victims of SCAs. They are fully automated and include audio and sometimes visual instructions so that defibrillation can be carried out safely and effectively.
In recent years, thanks to the hard work of charities such as the British Heart Foundation and the Community HeartBeat Trust, many AED schemes have been initiated, which have served communities to good effect. For example, the villages of Wooburn Green and Bourne End in Buckinghamshire recently set up their own AEDs to provide the communities with the ability to treat those who suffer from SCAs in the area. In my own diocese, Buntingford Cougars Youth Football Club, which provides football training in East Hertfordshire for over 200 people, recently acquired a defibrillator for its ground thanks to money given to it by the local council. Thanks to the British Heart Foundation and the Football Association, 11 Hertfordshire football clubs recently acquired their own AED units. These things are happening; it is just a question of whether we can encourage them to happen even more often. These examples show just how much awareness has increased and how the chance of survival for those who suffer SCAs has likewise increased. The tragic case of Oliver King and the almost miraculous incident involving the former Premier League footballer Fabrice Muamba just go to show how increased awareness of cardiac arrests and the need to administer defibrillation is making a difference.
That awareness, as has been pointed out, has extended far beyond sports clubs and into schools, which are providing both defibrillators and the training that has been referred to. I will give two other examples from my diocese that I know of: Bishop’s Stortford College and the Robert Bloomfield Academy in Shefford both have AED units and are able to administer defibrillation if required. Those local examples show that things are moving. Why are we not thinking about what we can do in our churches and church halls? I want to think more about that; indeed, this debate has made me think more about it. On a typical Sunday in my diocese, we have about 30,000 people in our churches and, over a week, it is probably double that number. With the church halls, many of which have lots of events, we are certainly talking in excess of 100,000 people. These sorts of debates make a number of us ask hard questions about what we can do ourselves rather than just looking to government to do things. Sometimes we just need local communities to get on with it.
I commend the work of community first responders—volunteers trained to administer basic medical assistance, including defibrillation. They carry AEDs with them and are often able to treat the victim before the emergency services have arrived. In the east of England alone there are over 2,000 community first responders, who are able to reach those who have suffered SCAs. They are, however, only able to reach about 20% of them, which is where the work of groups such as the Community HeartBeat Trust comes in. They help to fund the installation of community AED units and provide education and training so that people are able to spot the signs of an SCA and are able to use the AED units effectively. For example, the Community HeartBeat Trust has worked with the authorities in Central Bedfordshire—part of my area of responsibility—to develop plans to install units in a number of towns and villages.
For all of this work to have maximum effect, it is essential that there are good levels of communication between the emergency services, the community first responders and AED volunteers. In many cases, the emergency services alert the community first responders in the event of an SCA, who are able to respond and treat the victim if possible. That is a great example of bringing help to patients promptly, which maximises their chances of survival, rather than simply relying on bringing them to hospital. The Community HeartBeat Trust also works in collaboration with ambulance services to ensure that all parties are aware of where AEDs are located and that those AEDs are properly maintained and ready for use.
I am convinced that the growing use of AEDs should be seen as a great and positive development in tackling the relatively poor survival rate of SCAs. However, AEDs certainly should not be a replacement for the emergency services, nor are they an alternative to improving access for all to emergency medicine. They are not suitable for all types of SCA, so it is critical that calling 999 is still the first action taken upon witnessing an SCA or coming across a victim who has recently suffered one. None the less, as part of our integrated emergency care system, in the hands of trained volunteers, community-based AEDs have the potential to save many thousands of lives each year and their deployment in schools and sports clubs as well as in public places—and, yes, I hope in churches and church halls as well—ought to be encouraged and supported. I hope that we can move that forward.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on tabling this debate. It is a subject that is not only close to my heart, if your Lordships will forgive a feeble pun, but quite literally a matter of life and death for a significant number of our fellow citizens in the UK. Having listened to the three excellent speeches so far, I could probably cut my own contribution to little more than the words, “Hear, hear!”, but I hope that I will be allowed to reinforce some of the arguments and will be forgiven for inevitably covering a considerable amount of the same ground. No doubt that is due in part to my having received the same helpful briefings from the bodies mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and indeed from the House of Lords Library. I have to say that my heart sank as one after another of my points was made by the previous speakers. I do not think that my heart has actually stopped yet but, if it does, there is a defibrillator in the Peers’ Lobby.
As we have heard, some 60,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur each year in the UK. Somewhere between 20% and 40% of them are estimated to occur in public places, with nearly half of them being witnessed by bystanders. The remainder take place at home. Any assistance that is provided at the scene by those bystanders before the emergency services arrive can help to save life. In such cases, every minute that passes without intervention reduces the chances of survival by around 10%. So what are the chances of survival from shockable cardiac arrest? In Oregon, they are as high as 56%, while in Norway they are 52%. In the UK, the average comparable survival rate is only 20%. What accounts for the difference is, quite simply, the number of people who have been trained in first aid. In Germany and the Scandinavian countries, where first aid training in schools is mandatory, the proportion of people with first aid skills is estimated to be as high as 80%. It seems to me a matter of national embarrassment, to put it mildly, that only one in 13 people in the UK feels confident that they could carry out emergency first aid.
Automatic external defibrillators can and do save lives. They are a key part of the so-called chain of survival as defined by the British Heart Foundation and the Resuscitation Council (UK). That includes four elements: early recognition of a cardiac arrest, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, early defibrillation and post-resuscitation care. In order to improve survival rates, that whole chain needs to be in place. AEDs themselves will be effective only, first, if there are enough of them; secondly, if they are in appropriate and visible places; thirdly, if they are accessible and not locked away with the key nowhere to be found, about which I have heard stories from time to time; and, finally, if people know how to use them and are willing to do so. I therefore welcome the policy of encouraging the wider installation of AEDs. Research by St John Ambulance indicates that the majority of people, some 79%, think that it should be compulsory to have AEDs in places such as NHS buildings, 74% that they should be in care homes, as the noble Lord told us, 73% that they should be in large event venues such as concert halls, 67% that they should be in sports centres and gyms, 55% that they should be in workplaces, 53% that they should be in hotels and 50% that they should be in supermarkets.
As important as having defibrillators in place is, of course, knowing where that place is. I was going to suggest that this would be a perfect opportunity for an app, only to hear from the noble Baroness that the app already exists. That is another good point gone. Moreover, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, mentioned, there are 16 defibrillators on the Parliamentary Estate and a significant number of trained first-aiders who know where they are and how to use them, including, I believe, most or all of the House of Lords attendants. Some noble Lords may not be aware that the best number to call on the Parliamentary Estate in the event of my having an emergency during my speech is not 999 but extension 3333. That is the first point that I alone have made.
All the AEDs that have been or are about to be installed, however numerous, well located and easily accessible, will be effective only if people know how to use them and are willing to do so. Current research shows that only one person in 10 knows what an AED is and, of those who do, just half know how to use it. Again, training is needed. The only way to increase, over time, the proportion of the population who have basic emergency life-saving and first aid skills is to teach those skills in schools, not just to teachers but to students as well. In that way, we can ultimately create a nation of lifesavers, to quote a phrase whose source I have mislaid.
Many voluntary organisations, such as St John Ambulance, the British Red Cross, the British Heart Foundation, the Resuscitation Council (UK) and SADS—Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome—UK, do a good job of providing both information and training. I declare an interest as a trustee of St John Cymru Wales. I have now been trained in first aid three times: by St John Cymru Wales, by St John Ambulance under the auspices of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on First Aid, of which I am a vice-chair, and by the parliamentary Safety, Health and Wellbeing Service, which also covered the use of defibrillators. At least 14 parliamentarians have completed the training offered via the first aid all-party group.
The Government have committed to enabling schools to acquire defibrillators at discounted prices, which I welcome. However, they also believe that schools should decide for themselves whether to include first aid training in their curriculum. That is just not working. The combined efforts of all the groups that I have mentioned reach only a relatively small proportion of students in schools—I believe about one in seven, or 14%. This is nowhere near enough to address what should surely be a significant national priority. Leaders of all five of these bodies signed a letter to the Times last month, expressing their disappointment that, at the same time as encouraging schools to buy defibrillators,
“the government did not go further and insist on first aid education for all pupils and staff”.
I apologise if I am overrunning. I am very much encouraged by the fact that I seem to have spoken for no time at all, but that is presumably not the case.
At the very least, government should surely look at providing much more in the way of incentives and encouragement to schools. Subsidised AEDs, at least for schools in England, are a welcome start, but what about subsidised training in how to use them? What about awards and recognition for schools that achieve the best results in numbers of students trained or in levels of proficiency attained? Incidentally, I welcome the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill, which should help to overcome any concerns that people may have about the possibility of being sued after trying to resuscitate someone.
Children aged 10 and above can learn the full range of emergency life support skills, including CPR. From the age of 14 they can be, and are, trained in using defibrillators. A significant number have had to use the skills that they have learnt to save the life of a family member or fellow student. Of the children on a British Heart Foundation Heartstart programme in Northern Ireland, 98% enjoyed the training and 67% shared what they learnt with family and friends. Separate BHF research found that 86% of teachers thought that emergency life support should be part of the national curriculum, 78% of children wanted to be taught how to save someone’s life in an emergency and 70% of parents thought that children should be taught emergency life support at school.
First aid and defibrillator training is straightforward; it is quick, requiring as little as two to three hours; it is cheap; it promotes self-esteem and citizenship; it is fun; and it can save lives. Without it, the Government’s laudable initiative to enable more schools to acquire defibrillators may not—will not—be as effective as it could be. So why on earth should such training not be made mandatory in all schools? I look forward to the Minister’s response to that question.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for starting this debate; I very much agree with his central points. I also pay tribute to the Oliver King Foundation and Oliver’s father, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting on a number of occasions. Indeed, I think that the noble Earl would agree with me that the Liverpool primary schools’ defibrillator programme is a remarkable effort on the part of the foundation, which embraces all primary schools in the city. As part of the project, 12 staff in each school were able to receive training. It is a model for what ought to happen in the rest of the country.
Noble Lords have given us a lot of information about what is happening and raised some of the concerns. I will refer to the research undertaken in Hampshire which was published earlier in the year, the authors of which included the South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Southampton. They reviewed all calls to the ambulance service between September 2011 and August 2012 following a heart attack. For all emergency calls made from locations other than a person’s home, the call handler specifically asked whether the caller could access a defibrillator. If so, instructions were given on how to use it. During the course of this study over a number of months, the service received just over 1,000 calls about confirmed cardiac arrests away from hospital, which was the equivalent of one for every 600 members of the public each year. For 44 of those incidents in 34 different locations, the caller was able to access an external defibrillator—that is 4.25%—and it was successfully retrieved and used in less than half the cases, 18 cases, before the arrival of the ambulance.
This gave an overall use rate of just 1.74% of all cardiac arrests recorded, which the authors understandably felt was disappointingly low and was apparently similar to previous figures from the London Ambulance Service. Looking at the Hampshire picture, 673 defibrillators that could be accessed by the public were located in 278 places, including 146 devices in large shopping centres. The research also showed that only just over one in 10 nursing homes, around one in 20 railway stations and a similar number of community centres and village halls had defibrillators. The suspicion is that figures in Hampshire are probably similar to many other parts of the country. This shows the scale of the challenge before us, for which we hope for a government response.
Noble Lords mentioned St John Ambulance, to which I am grateful for the briefing I received. The survey work which it undertook shows that a majority of the public think defibrillators should be compulsory in NHS buildings, care homes, concert halls, sports centres and gyms, workplaces, hotels and supermarkets. This seems persuasive evidence that the public would welcome a more decisive response by the Government.
In relation to schools, where I would have thought there was an overwhelming argument for having a defibrillator and trained staff—and indeed trained students—we are relying on the response which the Government have given. This is simply to say that it is up to each school, then relying on changes to the Children and Families Act in relation to the duties of governing bodies and the common-law duty on staff to act in loco parentis while children are at school. We could expect a little more action now from the Government. Particularly in relation to schools, I want to hear that the Department for Education will reconsider its disappointing response so far.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, made a good point about the need to help people to use defibrillators and for education programmes. I also take her point about the need to help sports clubs. Does the noble Earl not think it would be good for health and well-being boards to take this on? Because of the potential collaboration between local government, the health service, third-sector and many other organisations within a locality, might they not spearhead an approach to getting many more defibrillators fitted and people trained to use them?
Finally, Public Health England is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Department of Health. Could the noble Earl be tempted to give an instruction to Public Health England to treat this as a priority for the future? The Department of Health has a really positive role to play if, through Public Health England and health and well-being boards, this was seen to be important and I am sure we could make much further progress.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Storey for giving us the opportunity to debate what is undoubtedly an important issue. I know that many people feel that better provision of defibrillators could help save more lives of people who have a cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting—known as out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. I acknowledge in particular the work of the Oliver King Foundation in this area.
First, I emphasise that responsibility for the provision of defibrillators rests with ambulance trusts, which are undoubtedly best placed to know what is needed in their local area. Notwithstanding that, last year’s Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Strategy set out some recommendations around defibrillators. NHS England is implementing the strategy’s recommendations, which includes working with stakeholders to promote the site-mapping and registration of defibrillators and to look at ways of increasing the numbers trained in using defibrillators. The strategy also acknowledged that, although defibrillators are important, more lives could be saved if more people had life-saving skills. As I shall indicate shortly, NHS England is also working with stakeholders to help achieve just that.
Schools are of course at the centre of their communities and are often used for other purposes outside school hours. They are also frequently the location for sports events and other types of physical activity. There have been tragic incidents in which young children have had a sudden cardiac arrest and were not subsequently able to be resuscitated. The number of such incidents is thankfully very low, but of course every child who dies in this way is one child too many. The use of a defibrillator may have made a difference in these cases, which is why we are encouraging schools to acquire defibrillators in a broader package of measures designed to ensure that the medical needs of children in our schools are supported. It might be helpful if I explain a little more about these measures, particularly in answer to my noble friend’s questions.
We have introduced a new duty on school governing bodies which requires them to make arrangements to support pupils with medical conditions and to have regard to new guidance on Supporting Pupils at School with Medical Conditions, which will come into force from this September. We will also inform schools via the “need to know” e-mail and the “myths and facts” documents, which are sent out to schools each term. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, that emergency life-saving skills are very important. Those skills can be taught as part of personal, social, health and economic—PSHE—education. However, it is also right that teachers should be free to exercise their professional judgment in designing curricula that meet the needs of their pupils. Giving teachers greater flexibility and freedom than ever before will help to raise standards and expectations for all pupils. However, one must put that in the context of the role of governors of schools, who undoubtedly have an influence. The Government do not believe that the teaching of emergency life-saving skills should be a statutory requirement, but we encourage schools to teach PSHE, which may well include emergency life-saving skills, and have outlined that expectation in the introduction to the new national curriculum.
On defibrillators, we believe that head teachers are best-placed to make decisions about installing them in schools. They may, for example, wish to have multiple AEDs, or to share a machine between two schools located on the same site. By strengthening guidance and working to secure the devices at a reduced price, we are encouraging schools to install defibrillators.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, asked me to give some statistics in so far as I have them about the scale of the issue in schools. The Office for National Statistics says that the total number of cardiac deaths of patients of school age—that is aged five to 19—is 88, although we do not know how many of those deaths occur in schools. However, I have some very interesting statistics from the London Ambulance Service. In London, between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2013, there were 3,848 patients with a presumed cardiac origin to their arrest and in whom resuscitation was attempted. The breakdown of location for these shows that 79.2% were in the home or in a care home. Of the 800 cases which happened in public, 1.1% were in a sports centre and 0.3% were in a school. I shall make a further comment about that in a moment.
The Department for Education intends to produce a protocol on the use and purchase of AEDs in schools. The guidance to which I referred asks schools to consider purchasing a defibrillator as part of their first-aid equipment and, if they do so, encourages them to promote knowledge of cardiopulmonary techniques more widely in the school, among both teachers and pupils alike; I have already referred to that point. To help schools, we will be working with the Department for Education to identify a supplier that will provide suitable defibrillators to schools at a competitive price. We will provide schools with additional advice on the installation and use of these potentially life-saving devices so that staff will feel confident in using them should the need arise.
Safety in all sports is a matter for the national governing bodies—NGBs—as the designated authorities with responsibility to regulate their sport. The Football Association is working alongside the British Heart Foundation to oversee a £1.2 million investment towards state-of-the-art automated external defibrillators at football clubs in England. This initiative, which started in 2013, will see almost 1,300 defibrillators distributed to those clubs in which they will have the greatest potential use. Through bulk purchase, the FA has secured the defibrillators at a reduced cost and eligible clubs may apply for a defibrillator at a further reduced cost. The FA’s partnership with the BHF has ensured that this investment in defibrillators has the greatest possible impact. In addition, all FA-licensed coaches are required to undertake a first aid course and should be able to administer CPR while awaiting the arrival of emergency medical services.
In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, on who is responsible for the safety of people participating in sports in local venues, the national governing body for the particular sport is responsible for the safety of athletes and/or their training. In practical terms, the responsibility would fall to the coaches and/or any other support staff at the facility. We would expect the owner or manager of the building to be subject to any other relevant health and safety regulation or legislation, such as that on fire safety.
There is frequent discussion about screening for the causes of sudden cardiac death. Screening may have the potential to save lives but it is not a fool-proof process. For example, I understand that the footballer mentioned by the right reverend Prelate, Fabrice Muamba, who suffered a cardiac arrest during a match, had received several screening tests. However, it is important that we keep the issue of screening under review. That is why the UK National Screening Committee, which advises Ministers about all aspects of screening, is reviewing the evidence for screening for causes of sudden cardiac death in people between the ages of 12 and 39. The review is looking at the most up-to-date international evidence, including evidence from Italy, where all competitive athletes are offered screening. There will be a public consultation on the review this autumn.
Noble Lords raised with me separately the need to make sure that, when a person dies of sudden cardiac death, potentially affected family members are identified and are offered counselling and testing to see whether they are also at risk. We know that this does not always happen. That is why in last year’s CVD strategy we said that work would begin to improve the necessary processes. I can tell the Committee today that, since the strategy was published, NHS England has met the chief coroner to discuss what can be done. At the beginning of the year, the chief coroner wrote to local coroners asking them to make the families of those who had died of the condition aware that it may be inherited and encouraging them to contact either the British Heart Foundation, Cardiac Risk in the Young, or their GP.
On the general question asked by my noble friend Lord Storey about why the Government should not be providing more funding for defibrillators, I am sure he will agree that we must direct NHS resources responsibly, particularly now. As I indicated earlier, the statistics show that most out-of-hospital cardiac arrests occur in the home, which means that in our view more lives could be saved if more people had life-saving skills. NHS England is continuing to work with the British Heart Foundation, the Resuscitation Council (UK) and other organisations on how best to increase the number of people trained in basic life-saving techniques. The BHF and the Resuscitation Council (UK) have both produced a variety of free publications to help members of the public understand the importance of basic life-saving techniques, as well as offering training through the Heartstart scheme in various mediums that enable more individuals to learn the basics of helping to save someone’s life in the event of an emergency.
But I come back to the point I made earlier: since February 2007, ambulance trusts have been responsible for sustaining the legacy of the National Defibrillator Programme. To address a question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, we undoubtedly expect the commissioners of urgent and emergency care who take part in discussions at health and well-being boards to engage with ambulance trusts in an appropriate way and, if necessary, to feed in their views to the priority-setting process that the boards engage in.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, asked whether I have numbers for the people who are trained in life-saving skills. I understand that 3.5 million people have received emergency life support training through the Heartstart scheme. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans correctly referred to the important role played by community first responders. I have with me an extensive note which unfortunately I do not have time to read out, but suffice it to say that CFRs carry automated external defibrillators and are trained and equipped to provide oxygen therapy. Finally, my noble friend Lord Storey asked me about a universal logo. I am very happy to take that point away and ask Huon Gray in NHS England to consider the matter. I will then feed back to my noble friend as appropriate.
In closing, I would like briefly to take this opportunity to pay tribute to charities such as the British Heart Foundation and the Oliver King Foundation for their tireless work in placing defibrillators locally and raising awareness of sudden cardiac death. I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge and thank the wide range of stakeholders we have collaborated with to develop the new statutory guidance for schools that I mentioned earlier. I know that they include my noble friend, with the Health Conditions in Schools Alliance, along with a range of other cardiac organisations such as the Oliver King Foundation and the British Heart Foundation. Their advice played an instrumental part in shaping the arrangements that we are now introducing.
Education Institutions: Autonomy and Accountability
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the appropriate balance between the autonomy and the accountability of educational institutions.
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
My Lords, it was the French Prime Minister, François Mitterrand, who, on introducing reforms of education in France in the 1980s, declared that accountability had to be “le contrepart même”—the exact balance—to the autonomy of institutions in the education system. We need no persuasion today that the issue of accountability of schools and teachers, as well as the degree of autonomy that they should be allowed, is central to the future shape of our education system.
Rather than starting with the accountability side of the equation, I begin by asking how much freedom schools and teachers need if they are to accomplish all that they and we hope for our children’s education. There is plenty of evidence to show that granting freedom to professionals to do the job they are trained and motivated to do is the surest way to achieve high quality.
In his excellent book, Education, Education, Education, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, says rightly that,
“governors—and the headteachers and management teams they appoint and sustain—need to be unambiguously in control of their schools without managerial interference from local and national bureaucracies”.
This, he says, is the magic ingredient of the success of academies. I agree. It is the quality of leadership in a school which determines its success, which means good governors, a good head and a good management team.
Of course, as we have seen all too recently, there can be governors who are not capable of good governance, and heads and teachers who get it wrong, but this does not mean that the model is faulty. As Samuel Johnson said—in what is my favourite quote—it is,
“happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust”.
Through the huge expansion of academies and free schools, this Government have had the courage to trust schools and teachers. I rejoice in that.
We have at present possibly the best generation of teachers that we have ever enjoyed. They are well qualified and well educated, with strong support available from heads and senior staff for those who enter the profession for the first time. I pay tribute to the previous Government for the Teach First initiative, which has brought some outstanding young graduates into our schools. This Government have made teacher quality rightly central to their policies, and new entrants to the profession are of the highest quality, as are many of their older colleagues. It therefore makes absolute sense to trust their professionalism to the maximum extent.
Teachers, like doctors with their patients or other client-centred professionals, are more motivated to do the best for the pupils in their charge than to seek the approval of those above them in the hierarchy. We want them to feel that way, for that way quality of provision lies. However, as Mitterrand said, this freedom needs to be exactly balanced by accountability. The public who pay their taxes for public services, as well as the parents and students who benefit from the public service of education, have a right to know whether the provision offered is of good quality and appropriate for the needs of its recipients.
In achieving the delicate balance of accountability and autonomy, it is important that teachers and heads are not distracted from their prime self-motivation towards their pupils by the imposition of too much bureaucratic regulation. We need them to be looking into the classroom and the children in it, not looking out to the inspectors and regulators. Good schools and good teachers are not driven by their external regulators; they take them in their stride, recognising that if they behave with professional dedication to the task at hand, the results will be what the regulators seek. For this reason, I welcome and applaud the much needed changes which this Government have made in the two key tools of accountability: inspection and examinations.
Ofsted was set up for the best of reasons: to inspect every school often and thoroughly. Such a remit demanded a huge taskforce. By the time the excellent Sir Michael Wilshaw came into office as chief inspector, more than 2,000 people were involved in inspection, employed by private contractors, mainly part-time and often with scant educational know-how or even none at all. Quality control of their activity had therefore to resort to giving them a list of predetermined items in boxes to be ticked, rather than trusting informed, senior professional judgment. As a tool of accountability, Ofsted in this form far too often simply alienated teachers. More seriously, it could, especially for the less secure and inexperienced teachers, reduce their creativity to meeting the tick-box requirements, which might bear little relation to a broad education.
It is therefore with huge pleasure that I welcome the decision to trust future inspection mainly to the 400-plus HMI who are experienced, senior professionals whose judgment can be trusted, and to dispense with the contractors. HMI can judge the key index of a school and the experience of the pupils. This may or may not match the items in the box-ticking exercise, but it will go to the heart of whether the school is providing the pupils in its care with an education fit for the values of our society, and which allows every child and young person to achieve across the widest possible range of elements in and beyond the curriculum.
In my view, it is not possible to overestimate the value of this change. By applying the broad professional judgments that teachers accept and share, Ofsted can become a tool to reward good schools and good teachers for their creative ways of achieving the best possible outcomes for their pupils. It can also become a more developmental and less regulatory tool that will spread good practice and encourage those schools which are struggling to succeed in providing the high-quality education that other comparable schools have achieved.
Examination results are the second measure of accountability by which schools are rightly judged. This has not always been a reliable measure to use. When schools and their pupils were allowed a wide choice of subjects at GCSE, the results were hard to compare. Those schools, and there were many, which avoided basic English and maths, for example, might achieve good GCSE results overall, but when their performance including English and maths was measured, it was not so impressive. In one school, 100% of the students achieved five good GCSE grades, but only 45% included English and maths. The EBacc was therefore a much needed incentive for all schools to include these basic tools, and now the new standard allowing more choice at key stage 4 is an innovation that will raise true performance standards for all young people. The inclusion of high-quality technical and vocational qualifications that was announced last week will at last bring real quality to areas that are attractive to the many young people whose motivation is more practical than academic.
Finally, the long-debated issue of value added has been recognised in a simple and fair way by the planned introduction of progress 8 as a measure for secondary schools. This charts the progress from entry standards to GCSE performance and will be the measure of whether a school is achieving appropriately. At last, a school’s performance will be measured in relation to its own intake rather than against schools with very different pupil populations.
I am proud of our Government and the developments in both autonomy and accountability which are being introduced. Above all, I hope that through these changes the many excellent teachers who serve us so well in schools and colleges every day will find that their dedicated and creative work will flourish, and that they will welcome them.
The Lord Bishop of Birmingham
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to address the topic of autonomy and accountability in our educational institutions, particularly in our schools. As noble Lords can imagine, coming from Birmingham, this is a very pertinent topic. We are experiencing a perfect storm of anonymous allegations. Birmingham City Council is conducting various investigations, of which I am a part, into those allegations.
There is confusion among ordinary people between politics and process, about which the noble Baroness has been telling us and which the Government are promoting to achieve high standards. There is also confusion between faith and fear. These are softer, organic areas that need to be introduced and understood when we are trying to raise standards, achieve excellent exam results, and put in place a proper inspection regime. Of course, we all want our children to have an excellent education. We want high academic standards and high vocational standards for pupils for whom those are appropriate. We especially want good governance, and that is something we are all attending to at the moment.
In terms of our accountability and sense of autonomy, we also want a real and in-depth understanding of what it means to have an ethos in our schools—whether they be church or community schools, academies or free schools—of both diversity and unity. These are areas that local people care about deeply in trying to achieve the very best for their children.
You might want me to mention a wonderful biblical pattern of accountability and autonomy, where human beings in many faith traditions are expected to grow up to be responsible, engaged and fulfilled. In the Christian scriptures, if you turned to Matthew chapter 18, you would see the appropriate introduction about receiving the kingdom of heaven like a child, and the parable of the lost sheep, where so many people can go wrong and stray from a pattern that is set out for them. Then there is the command to forgive; not just once or twice but an infinite number, of 70 times seven. There is a culture of empathy and sympathy, but also a culture of real responsibility, and in the middle of that, there is a little teaching about accountability and how it might work in an ordinary community.
If your neighbour offends you, go and see them personally. If that does not work, take two or three trusted people with you and allow them to examine the controversy or problem. If that does not work, then bring the whole community together and examine the issue. If it is unresolvable, then there are harsh things to do. There are examination or inspection judgments. However, there is a pattern there which ordinary, local people can instinctively understand and which would allow us not only to have autonomy locally, but also to have responsibility where it truly lies, in those local communities: responsibility for education and unity, but also for rejoicing in diversity.
In our own Church of England in Birmingham, I should mention the expansion we have had in the academies programme which the Government have been promoting. This is something we have embraced and found to be very effective. However, to achieve the ambitions of the Government and the excellence we want for our children in a great variety of communities, we have formed a diocesan board of education trust, which publishes, for example, an academies accountability framework. Such a framework enables both support and challenge in our local schools. In other words, it expects responsibility and people to be accountable, but at the same time, where there is difficulty, they should have the appropriate support at the appropriate level.
This lays out clear requirements and expectations. It is a local framework of support and there is proper challenge within it. There is complete clarity about the improvement of tasks before the school, the resources that are available to tackle the tasks, clear lines of accountability to monitor and evaluate the pace and scale of the improvements required, and an appropriate balance between support, challenge, self-evaluation and external evaluation. In a church school, we would go further, to give a guarantee to parents, communities, pupils and staff about what are the various granular expectations that they would find in various areas to do with religious education, prayer and worship, spirituality, valuing of pupils, opportunities that there are at any good school, and what the school should undertake to achieve those values to do with ethos.
I am arguing today for accountability and autonomy, but in our experience, the way to make this succeed in all our schools is to make sure that there are proper, local and trusted arrangements: trusted by pupils, staff and parents, by the whole community and, of course, by the Secretary of State.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Perry on securing this debate and on the expert and typically penetrating way in which she introduced it. It is also a privilege to follow the right reverent Prelate, who comes fresh from Birmingham to tell us how it feels there right now, and with some gloriously practical suggestions. Even better, some of them are based on parables. There can be no argument about the fact that the more autonomy an institution has—whether it is a school, company, university or public body—the more likely it is to be successful.
That belief underpinned the introduction of local financial management and GM schools in the 1980s, from both of which far-reaching reforms the academies movement developed. Equally, it is beyond argument that all truly successful institutions, especially publicly funded ones, regard the establishment of clear, accessible lines of accountability between them and those they serve as a sine qua non. If you do not have those lines, you are not a success. There should, therefore, in theory, be no conflict between on the one hand the autonomy of educational institutions, and on the other the absolute clarity of the systems put into place to ensure their full accountability.
When local financial management was introduced in Norfolk schools in the late 1980s, school heads, until then accustomed to asking, and blaming, county hall for everything, realised that the buck would now stop with them. After some initial nervousness and after, together with their governors, appropriate and thorough training, the vast majority relished the extra responsibility and flexibility it gave them, especially as it was made crystal clear to the wider community that that local accountability was underpinned by the more general accountability of an elected local authority.
That was a halfway house between full LEA control and a step towards autonomy, and it was always intended to be transitional because the movement towards full schools autonomy was unstoppable. No one today is making the case to restore the role of LEAs. The 22,000 schools in England now include 2,500 academies and 174 free schools, with many more to come. The overwhelming majority of those academies and free schools are hugely successful, transforming their pupils’ life chances. The problems with the system, as we have seen in Birmingham and elsewhere, often boil down to a lack of appropriate oversight and an incomplete preparation of heads and governors for what autonomy and accountability actually mean in practice. We are once more in a transitional period.
I have a very simple definition of accountability, which I do not find an abstract concept; it is about knowing who to speak to if things go wrong, as I rather think the right reverend Prelate said. The government website on complaints guidance—which I assume applies to all schools, including academies and free schools—encourages parents first to raise matters of concern with the head. But what if he or she is the problem? Well, then you go to the members of the governing body. However, will you know or can you find out who they are without going through the head, and will they tell the head? Alternatively, you can contact the DfE direct, although that might be daunting for some. However, does the department now have the resources to deal with the volume of cases it receives in the Schools Complaints Unit, and how, practically speaking, are they dealt with? I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell us the answers to both of these questions.
I think that LEAs’ roles are now limited to child protection cases, and Ofsted—which is in a way a long stop—can deal only with whole-school issues. I think I am right in saying that it cannot seek to resolve or establish cause for any individual complaint. There are now regionally based Ofsted offices; perhaps my noble friend can tell us what the role of those offices is and whether staff in them have systematic contact with local schools and a systematic report back.
I will give two examples of the accountability problem. A town council in Norfolk with no educational role at all has just called a public meeting in order to oblige the local academy trust to explain its policies and plans to parents and the public following the resignation of more than half the teaching staff and, I think, the head. There is undoubtedly an inside story here, and I do not know what it is, but there is no doubt that the children’s education is currently suffering from the uncertainty. In that case, although it is an isolated one, the situation does little to demonstrate an understanding of accountability within that particular academy system. These will be isolated examples. At another local academy, no fewer than 16 key members of staff have left, feeling unable to complain to the head or to the chair of governors because she, the chair, has been put in place by their employers, the academy chain. Now, that is not good. The students, parents and staff in the school do not know who to speak to. This is bad, but it is isolated and not at all like the pattern of overwhelmingly successful academies. In Birmingham, accusations of extremism in schools are serious enough. However, as serious, if not more so, are the allegations that complaints were made but the lack of a clear accountability system apparently made it impossible for them to be dealt with. I know that four or perhaps five investigations are now under way, so I will say no more about that because we shall all know more when those investigations have reported.
We are again in a transitional period. I spoke earlier of the training and oversight arrangements put into place to ensure the success of the 1980s schools reforms. Those simple principles are still relevant. Academies and free schools will transform our education system. The best academy chains already prepare staff and governors to be accountable. That work is being done and the experience is there. We do not need a nation-wide, one-size-fits-all solution, just to use all the clichés. What we need is reassurance that it is understood, no matter how humdrum it may be, that the preparation of heads, teachers and governors for ensuring the accountability of all our schools is as important as their academic performance.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)
My Lords, I begin by saying how much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, in her analysis that local authority control no longer exists. I get so angry when people refer to schools needing local authority control. Control disappeared years ago. Local accountability, as the noble Baroness said, is important.
I refer to personal experience in education in Lancashire over a 20-year period as a councillor. It is often forgotten that all the great innovations subsequently claimed by all political parties—such as nursery education, a full year in reception class and education maintenance allowances—began as local authority initiatives, working accountably with the local community. I cite one example in Preston, which occurred because the tax arrangements meant that Skelmersdale suddenly lost Courtaulds to Spain. That was one of the initiatives that led to encouraging young people to stay on in full-time education and training as an alternative to going on to what many now agree were youth training schemes with no future. That is important.
I praise the many leaders of our Catholic and Anglican schools and Jewish leaders in Lancashire, and my noble friend Lord Patel of Blackburn, for developing in the early 1980s an education document about education for a multifaith, multicultural society that was totally agreed across the community. In the early days in Blackburn, we saw the BNP rising. The response was to bring people together rather than to let people divide us.
The noble Baroness referred to teacher innovation. I pay tribute to the late Lord Joseph, who said of the curriculum that there was no place for a politician to make a comment about which books teachers should use; I shall say no more on that.
He was also superb on political education. In a statement circulated to all Lancashire schools, he said that, when questioned by secondary school pupils, a teacher could say that they were a member of CND but should also say that other teachers or their parents or councillors might hold totally different views. Sir Keith took the view that education was an important process, and our best teachers recognised that.
In looking at accountability and the role of local authorities in the future, it is important that we recognise the importance of responding to the needs of the whole community and of the school. In particular, children facing problems should be able to draw on the range of local authority services, with a co-ordinated approach taken towards social and housing problems, which afflict the lives of our children.
My conversations with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, go back over decades. I am sure that she will remember the local authority higher education funding body and the former Preston Polytechnic, now the University of Central Lancashire—I blow the trumpet for it at this stage—which developed the most diverse student intake of its time. It accepted people from all sections of society. It co-operated successfully with Lancaster University and the Open University, with students being able to switch between them for different modules or different years of their course. Perhaps an answer to the funding crisis now being faced by people going into higher education would be to look back at that sort of experience.
I have worries about accountability and judging schools. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, I believe that HMI has a deep fund of experience which is invaluable in looking at how to help schools. London First gave us a very good example of heads from one school going into another school, of linking and pairing. In the early 1980s, which were not easy financially, we in Lancashire developed curriculum co-ordinators. A good individual teacher in a specific subject or year would be given supply cover to go and work with another teacher. That is the variation on the scheme that London First operates, but it costs money, because one has to have people able to leave their own class and go into another.
I worry about the local community becoming more fragmented. I worry that we may not have the balance of experience. I remember a Conservative county councillor—she was the aunt of the noble Lord, Lord Horam—being appalled when we were interviewing for a head teacher in a school in a very deprived area. Quite obviously, county councillor Mrs Horam was uneasy about the candidate who had been the most forthcoming. She had answered all the questions beautifully and, in despair, Marjorie turned to me and said, “Is there any other question you could ask?”. I grasped at the fact that that candidate had been on a course to identify gifted children. I asked, “Was it a good course? Was it useful—was it great?”. She answered, “It was a superb course and I learnt a lot from it, but it wouldn’t be useful in a school serving an area like this”. At that point Marjorie Horam put her pen down and we nailed her.
It is important that there is a thread of responsibility in making appointments and judgments about teachers, which must involve those with experience—like Marjorie, who knew that something was wrong—and be able to draw on that. Those children come from communities which have both very diverse problems and some very similar problems. In the middle of dealing with the problem of surplus places, which was a fraught experience, I had to talk to people about meeting the needs of all the children. I worry that we are in danger of continuing to provide schools where they are not needed, and not providing them where they are.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful for receiving permission to speak in the gap. I was interested in speaking in this debate because at the moment, as the governor of a fairly newly converted primary academy, I am in negotiations with our academy chain over the scheme of delegation between the local governing board and the academy chain. That has thrown up an interesting conundrum about the role of the local governing board in relation to the academy chain.
That is first illustrated by who appoints the head. If the academy chain appoints them, and delegates responsibility for management and organisation of the school to the head, the local governing body has very limited responsibilities; it becomes a very largely advisory body. Yet when Ofsted comes along, it will look to and examine the local governing body, which will be held responsible. Therefore the relationship between the local governing body and the academy chain is an extremely important one.
If one takes the traditional local authority model, the local governing body appointed the head and was responsible. It set the scheme of delegation and had broad strategic responsibility. However, if the head did not perform, the local governing board had to make sure that it was accountable. When Ofsted came along it would examine the local governing board for doing that. If, however, the academy chain is to appoint the head, and sets the scheme of delegation and organisation, there is a very considerable fuzziness there, and it is not clear whom Ofsted should examine and hold responsible. You also lose the link between them, as the local governing body represents the local community. That is an interesting issue, and not one that we have fully resolved, although we are discussing it. However, I thought it was worth raising in this debate.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for tabling this debate today and for giving us a chance to have what has been a well thought-through and—despite the shortage of numbers—very detailed and interesting debate. The debate was also very topical, sadly, for the wrong reasons. As we know, a number of examples have hit the headlines which are an illustration of the fact that the Government have not found the right balance between autonomy and accountability, and that a number of challenges remain. That is particularly sad because when that balance fails, it is the children’s education which suffers, and many of these young people will never get a second chance to recover those lost years from an education that has been damaged. Therefore we all have a responsibility to get this issue right.
We know, for example, the issues that have been in the headlines recently: the collapse of Discovery Free School, concerns over the mismanagement at E-ACT academies, the poor educational standards at the al-Madinha Free School and the financial concerns at Kings Science Academy. All those remind us of what can go wrong if we do not get these policies right and rush them through. As the National Audit Office said,
“the primary factor in decision-making has been opening schools at pace, rather than maximizing value for money”.
There is a concern about the pace at which these changes have occurred.
Now we have the turmoil at the Birmingham schools and the Trojan horse allegations. This was an issue that the Minister’s predecessor was worried about back in 2010, but was then unwilling or unable to intervene. We know now that the Permanent Secretary has been asked to investigate that issue. We await the outcome, but I would be grateful if the Minister would confirm that the Permanent Secretary’s report will be made public when it is concluded, so we can all share the lessons. I should tell the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, that one of the rumours coming out from Birmingham was that people felt they did not have anywhere to go. The complaints existed and they were desperate to have their voice heard, but people felt that, for whatever reason, it was not being heard at a local level. We therefore all have something to learn from that.
Now, four years on, we have a situation where schools which were given a clean bill of health by Ofsted suddenly find themselves being downgraded on re-inspection, leading to questions about Ofsted’s role, independence and judgments. We cannot be sure that these concerns and problems are contained only in one city. Already, new allegations are coming to light elsewhere, each one again highlighting that there is a problem about the local oversight of what is happening in our schools.
Whatever the outcome of the inquiries now taking place, particularly in Birmingham, I hope that the Minister recognises that the impact on community relations has been particularly damaging. I could not have put better myself the issues raised by the right reverend Prelate about the challenges to the local community that have occurred in the way the allegations have come to light and been handled by all sides, particularly by the media. That is a particular challenge for us. We also perhaps expect too much from Ofsted, because it is now the only intermediary between individual academy and free schools and the Secretary of State. In a sense, it is put in an impossible position, because it is expected to oversee, in quite some detail, a growing band of autonomous schools, facing it with particular challenges.
I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, that because of Ofsted’s style and the way it behaves when it goes into schools, there have been a number of occasions when it has lost the confidence of the teachers in the schools and the governors. That is a real concern to us when it is the only port of call for many people. Like the noble Baroness, I welcome the fact that the inspectors have been brought back in-house and that quality is being driven up, because it was long overdue.
Of course, not all the schools caught up in the turmoil in Birmingham were academies. While I am sure that Birmingham City Council has its own governance issues that it needs to address, the fact is that, of the 21 schools recently inspected, five out of the six found to be inadequate were academies. I hope that the Government are coming to realise what we told them all along: that 5,000 schools and rising cannot effectively be monitored from behind a desk in Whitehall. The Minister will know that this point was made to him in a private briefing by civil servants recently. They advised that, as ever more bad publicity came from failing schools, there would be a growing public realisation that the department did not really have the tools to enable it to intervene effectively.
I hope that the Government are now reflecting on what has gone wrong with this policy. Perhaps the Minister will share with us details of the steps that they are taking, rather belatedly, to put in place an intermediary tier of accountability.
On these Benches, we already have proposals that we believe will address this accountability deficit. David Blunkett’s recent report sets out an effective blueprint to devolve power down to local areas and ensure that all schools are supported and challenged to improve. This echoes the argument made by the right reverend Prelate and, indeed, by the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, that we need more local oversight and involvement in the performance of schools. Under our proposals, a new director of school standards would be appointed in every area. The director would have powers to intervene in underperforming schools, to broker collaboration and to commission new schools.
The issue of collaboration between schools marks a clear distinction between our approach and that of the Government. My noble friend Lady Farrington commented on the London Challenge, which was introduced by the last Government. It was highly successful in transforming poorly performing schools in London and went on to achieve some of the fastest improving schools in the country. The key difference in that approach was that it was done through a policy of sharing best practice and collaboration between schools. It happened in London, and my noble friend went on to point out where it happened elsewhere in the country, such as in Lancashire. We need to learn more about what schools can do in terms of collaboration rather than have them acting as isolated, autonomous institutions.
A recent OECD report has confirmed the importance of this approach. It states that:
“Knowledge about strong educational practices tends to stick where it is and rarely spreads without effective strategies and powerful incentives for knowledge mobilisation and knowledge management”.
The report goes on to identify a number of high-performing PISA countries and regions, including some of Michael Gove’s favourites such as Finland, Japan and Shanghai, and shows that they have strong histories of co-operation networks and shared resources. Those are what have made them successful. But that does not happen by osmosis. The plan has to be laid down and determined, with a clear expectation that this is the way schools will behave, and rewards have to be linked to it.
The report goes on to address another clear dividing line between ourselves and the Government, which is on the importance of high-quality teachers. Again, this point was made eloquently by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry. It emphasises the need for continuous professional development. We on these Benches believe that all teachers should be qualified and expected to be involved in continuous professional development, and should indeed be periodically revalidated. The OECD data support this approach. Further, this research has been backed up by the Sutton Trust and shows that teacher quality can make as much as a year’s difference to the learning progress of disadvantaged children, so it is a very important tool when addressing the issue of social mobility.
To sum up, while we share some of the Government’s desire to give teachers autonomy over the curriculum and how subjects are taught, we believe that it has to go hand in hand with the professionalisation of teaching and evidence of continuous school improvement. The problem with the Government’s approach is that schools sink or swim, and sometimes they sink. When they do, they take with them a cohort of children and their aspirations and dreams. We do not think that that is the right approach. We believe that driving up teacher quality, allowing for early intervention in all schools, a new element of local oversight and, most important, building in an element of continuous improvement through learning and collaboration, are the right way forward. I hope that the Minister will be able to agree, and I look forward to hearing what he has to say.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Perry for securing this important debate and for her insightful speech. I also thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions. Autonomy and accountability are the two key pillars of our school system, and the OECD PISA results show clearly that greater autonomy coupled with strong accountability can lead to a better-performing school system. Strong evidence of this can be seen in countries such as New Zealand and Poland.
By contrast, we have seen in Sweden the perils of an autonomous system which is not strongly coupled with accountability, and we can see in Wales the shambles created when you have neither. It is therefore critical to strike the appropriate balance and we have done exactly this in creating a self-improving, school-led system, which has the resounding success of the academies and free schools programmes behind it. As my noble friend Lady Perry mentioned in quoting the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, the academy programme gives schools the magic ingredient of the freedom to run their schools in the best interests of their pupils.
We are continuing to work to bring decisions much closer to schools through the introduction of our eight regional school commissioners, through which we are trusting school leaders to run their own system and provide the department with much better local intelligence to enable it to insist on matters to which my noble friend Lady Shephard referred. Unlike the Labour Party, we believe that breaking the country into eight regions run by leading heads and supported by other leading heads on their teacher boards is the way to run the system. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, referred to the Blunkett report, which talks about breaking the country into 50 bureaucracies, each with their own layers of management. We feel that that would basically be a retrograde step.
As the PISA findings show, the more freedom given to schools, the better the performance of the whole system. In sponsored academies open for three years, for example, the proportion of pupils who achieved five good GCSEs, including English and maths, has increased at twice the rate of local authority-maintained schools. Converter academies are more likely, against the new tougher Ofsted inspection framework, to retain their “outstanding” ratings, or to improve from “good” to “outstanding” than LA schools.
Combined with this is the outstanding success of the free schools programme. I should also mention that academy chains, with their clear lines of sight mentioned by my noble friend Lady Shephard, are working particularly well, as recently outlined in an excellent study by the University of Southampton. Of course, these chains and other local groups are very much focused on schools working together locally to create a less, rather than more, fragmented school system.
On the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham’s point about local arrangements, I assure him that—certainly since I came into office—we have concentrated the academy programme on local regional clusters of schools working together, such as in his own diocese. It has worked well in the London Challenge, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington, referred.
The free schools programme has been an unqualified and outstanding success; I use the word “outstanding” advisedly. Free schools are inspected by Ofsted after only four or five terms from opening and, so far, of those free schools which have been inspected, 24% have been rated “outstanding”. This is a truly remarkable experience and the facts speak for themselves. I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is still in denial about this, but those facts are pretty powerful. The fact that we have closed one and a half free schools with 200 pupils in them—although that is significant for those 200 pupils and their parents—compares not only to the 24% “outstanding” figure but to the 175,000 new places we have created under the free schools programme.
By comparison, 73 local authority maintained schools have gone into special measures this year alone, and 38 council-run schools have been in special measures for 18 months or more. In 2013, Ofsted found that one in three local authority action plans in relation to underperforming schools were not up to standard. As my noble friend Lady Shephard said, no one is making the case for reinstating the local authority model. Indeed, Ed Miliband said exactly that himself in other place only a few days ago; although, as I have said, the 50 bureaucracies planned by the Labour Party are, in fact, a return to the local authority system.
We are committed to increasing autonomy for all schools, not just academies and free schools. Through reforms linking pay and performance, bringing teacher training closer to schools and reducing bureaucracy and box-ticking, and dramatically reducing regulation, we have made it easier for schools to focus on what is important: ensuring that children succeed. With Ofsted reporting that schools improved faster last year than at any time in Ofsted’s history, we are clearly getting it right. Autonomy must be strongly coupled with accountability and, under this Government, academies and free schools are held more rigorously to account than council-run schools.
All schools should have strong financial controls in place. However, academies and free schools have stronger and tougher financial frameworks and are held up for greater scrutiny than council-run schools. That enables swift resolution if there are any financial issues. In local authority maintained schools, it is the local authority that has responsibility for financial oversight. The frequency and depth of audit is variable and maintained schools are often not subject to the same rigour as academies and free schools, which must publish annual audited accounts submitted to the EFA. We monitor those carefully and will investigate immediately and diagnose any problems. That accountability mechanism works extremely well.
We also have the ability to issue a pre-warning notice if we have any concerns. Since 2011, we have issued 44. Over half, 26, were for the relatively few academies approved under the previous Government; 18 were for those approved under this Government. In the eight academies issued with pre-warning notices in 2011, there was an average improvement of 16 percentage points in the proportion of pupils achieving five good GCSEs in 2012. For those issued with a pre-warning notice in 2012-13, the average improvement rate so far has been 8 percentage points.
We have also recently strengthened the guidance for local authorities by putting in an expectation that they act quickly and do not wait for Ofsted to go in before intervening. We expect warning notices to be issued in instances where, for example, standards are below the floor, disadvantaged pupils are achieving low standards, or there is a sudden drop in performance.
In giving schools greater autonomy, good governance becomes increasingly important, as the right reverend Prelate mentioned. Our reforms are designed to encourage that and we are focusing governors on three core functions: the vision and ethos of the school, as the right reverend Prelate again mentioned; holding the head to account for the progression and attainment of pupils and the performance management of his or her staff; and money. Since 2012, the quality of school governance has been central to the overall inspection judgment on the overall leadership and management of a school.
We are committed to ensuring that children at primary school have the best possible start in life and have increased primary accountability in a number of ways: with the new curriculum; an increased emphasis on the importance of grammar, punctuation and spelling; abolishing the requirement for schools to use national curriculum levels; reintroducing level 6 stretch papers for key stage 2; and the introduction of phonics at every stage of teaching. That helps help children to develop faster; evidence shows that children taught to read using phonics could be “two years ahead” by the age of seven.
As my noble friend Lady Perry mentioned, in secondary school we have introduced new accountability measures to provide clear information and give a fair and balanced picture of each school’s performance. She was quite right about the failure and falseness of the exam accountability system previously. As a result of the scandal of false equivalence that operated previously, under the previous Government the number of pupils doing a core suite of academic subjects fell from 50% to 22%. All the evidence from all successful education jurisdictions around the world is that it is necessary for pupils to do that core suite of subjects, particularly those from a disadvantaged background. I am delighted to say that, under this Government, the number of pupils doing that core suite as a result of our EBacc is now back to 36%, and we expect it to rise further this summer.
As the noble Baroness mentioned, our new accountability measures include: progress 8, which will track the progress of all pupils of whatever ability throughout their school careers, and should focus schools on the attainment of all pupils rather than on what Tristram Hunt has described as the great crime of the C/D borderline; attainment 8, the percentage of pupils achieving a C grade or better in English and maths; and the EBacc. Alongside that, our destination measures will be important. The Government have also set tougher minimum standards for schools. We have raised the floor standards at primary to 65% from 60%, and at secondary to 40% from 35%.
High-quality inspection is an important aspect of the school accountability system. Building on the changes that the coalition Government put in place in 2011 to focus inspection more strongly on teaching and learning, Sir Michael Wilshaw has set his own priorities, which are helping to drive improvement. The inspection framework was amended in September 2012 and a higher benchmark has been set. When inspecting schools, Ofsted now holds them to account for the attainment and progress of their disadvantaged pupils, and the gap between them and their peers. The abolition of the “satisfactory” label was clearly an important move.
The number of Ofsted categories has also been substantially reduced to avoid confusion, and as my noble friend Lady Perry said, in future Ofsted itself will take control of far more inspections. Moreover, the regional operation to which my noble friend Lady Shephard referred is working extremely well. She also mentioned a number of cases, and I am reasonably sure that I recognise one of them. I can assure her that the department is monitoring the situation closely, and I would encourage any teacher or parent who has concerns about any matter that they do not feel is being dealt with effectively at the local level to contact the Education Funding Agency. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, referred to the Permanent Secretary’s report. I do not know whether it will be published, but I am sure that the Secretary of State will be very happy to answer any questions about it; of course, it is looking into any warnings that the department may have received in 2010 and previously.
I turn now to the excellent points made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham. Perhaps I may take this opportunity to thank him for all the work that is done by the diocese of Birmingham Educational Trust, and ask him if he would kindly pass on the department’s thanks to Reverend Jackie Hughes for her excellent work over the years and its best wishes for every success in her retirement. I also pay tribute to the trust’s academies accountability framework, a copy of which I have with me, which is particularly clear on matters like challenge and lines of accountability.
My noble friend Lady Sharp talked about the relationship between the local governing body and the centre, which is very important. The academy chain may appoint the head, but it is important that the local governing body is made aware of all the KPIs and targets so that it can advise the centre of its performance. Only today I had an interesting conversation with the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, about this in relationship to a playgroup, and I suggest that it would be very helpful to her if she talked to my noble friend about it.
I come back to the old story about non-qualified teachers, which we had again earlier today in the House. I think that noble Lords know our arguments on this. We do not think it is right to deny people the opportunity of having the best teachers, and there is no clear evidence at all that QTS is an effective arbiter in itself of the quality of teaching.
I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords for this debate, and to my noble friend Lady Perry for her comments and support. In conclusion, by creating a system that is autonomous by giving schools the freedom to innovate and upholds them to a higher level of accountability, we are giving more children and young people a firm educational foundation on which they can build the rest of their lives.
House of Lords
Schools: Teachers
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have any plans to encourage the retention and development of experienced qualified teachers in maintained schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, through our 548 teaching schools and teaching school alliances we are developing a truly school-led system providing a wide range of CPD opportunities for schools across the country. This is substantially enhancing the career opportunities for teachers. Some 74% of trainee teachers now hold a 2:1 degree or better—the highest proportion ever. Teaching is the most popular career choice for Oxford graduates and Teach First is Britain’s biggest graduate recruiter. Vacancy rates are declining and 78% of new teachers are teaching after five years, which represents a considerably lower number of career changes than in many other jobs.
Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)
My Lords, while I thank the Minister for that—encouraging on the surface—reply, will he confirm that many teachers regularly work 60 hours a week and in school holidays and find it very difficult to make time to develop their own practice? Coming from a family that is richly endowed with teachers, I see these pressures close up. I believe that he gave some figures from his department showing that 74% of newly qualified teachers now stay in the profession for five years. Recent figures showed the rate as being closer to 50%, which, if true, would certainly be a terrible waste. Will the Government ensure that boards of governors and head teachers take seriously the well-being of teachers, including the need for them to be good parents to their own children, and pay attention particularly to the need for mentoring and professional development?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is quite right; as I have said before, teaching is the noblest profession and, at this time in our history, is one of the most important jobs in the country. The figure is actually 78%, not 74%, and the recently reported figure of 50% is inaccurate. We applaud what teachers do. We know that they consistently go the extra mile to help their pupils. We take their responsibilities very seriously and we constantly exhort governing bodies to focus increasingly on CPD opportunities for teachers.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, does the Minister recall and agree that for many years the average academic attainment of those entering our Bachelor of Education degree courses was around, or even less than, two Es at A-level? The teachers thus qualified often do more harm than good. Will the noble Lord tell your Lordships what the Government are doing about those who are still in the system? I take the opportunity to congratulate the Government on the rest of the noble Lord’s first Answer.
Lord Nash
There is no doubt that teachers who may not have had a particularly good academic career can substantially raise their game through CPD. However, it is also undoubtedly true that some teachers are now dropping out of the system due to a more rigorous approach. As I say, we are seeing a much higher quality of teachers coming into the system than ever before.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that highly qualified teachers are often leaving schools through confidential compromise agreements, costing the education service literally hundreds of thousands—maybe millions—of pounds. Is this a good use of scarce education resources? Does he also agree that when compromise agreements are decided by a school they should be open to public scrutiny?
Lord Nash
It is a fact that many schools, rather than go through an extensive competency procedure, which can be highly contested, decide to enter into compromise agreements in order to move teachers on earlier. These often contain secrecy clauses, but I know that this area is being considered more widely.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, since the Minister seems to agree that good qualifications, including good degrees, are essential for good teaching, can he explain why the Government have made it legal for academies to employ unqualified people as teachers? Given this, can he assure the House that his department is monitoring the extent to which academies are doing so? How many unqualified people are now working as teachers in academies and free schools?
Lord Nash
I am, as always, delighted that we are having this discussion about qualified teachers because, frankly, if that is all that divides the parties, we have clearly nearly reached a consensus on our extensive teaching reforms. There are, in fact, fewer unqualified teachers under this Government than under the previous Government, despite the substantial increase in academies, which are able—as the noble Baroness rightly says—to recruit them. I will write to her with the precise figures on academy teachers but, as I say, we have fewer unqualified teachers overall. It would be unwise to deny the opportunity for, say, a professional actor or singer without QTS to teach in a school, or someone with a PhD in molecular biology to teach in a school—as is the case in one of our free schools—or, indeed, a teacher from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama to teach part time in a primary school.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, is it not a fact that through successive years some of the most effective teachers in some of the highest-achieving schools have not had a technical teaching qualification? What teachers need is motivation, a love of their subject and an ability to transmit that to others—not just a piece of paper.
Lord Nash
I agree entirely with my noble friend. Studies show that holding QTS is by no means the arbiter of a successful teacher, and we must remember of course that QTS training is extremely brief. A McKinsey study highlighted the importance of personal characteristics such as commitment, resilience, perseverance and motivation—and, of course, subject knowledge is very important. Reflecting my noble friend’s comments, Richard Cairns, headmaster of Brighton College, one of the most improved schools in the country, said:
“I strongly believe that teachers are born not made and I will actively seek out teachers from all walks of life who have the potential to inspire children”.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)
My Lords, way back in the 1960s, I may have been the only person in your Lordships’ House who was an unqualified teacher. During that period, the classes I was given by the head teachers of the day tended to be those with children with behavioural and learning difficulties. Can the Minister assure the House and all those parents and grandparents of children with special educational needs that their teachers will be qualified in the expertise of teaching special needs children, not thrown to the wolves as the children thrown to me were?
Lord Nash
I respect the noble Baroness’s experience. I think we have moved a long way on SEN teaching since the 1960s—I certainly hope and believe we have. Our policy is that all schools must have a qualified SENCO overseeing all teaching of SEN pupils. Successive Governments have invested substantial sums in developing the skills of teachers focusing on SEN, and teachers generally, on identifying and teaching SEN pupils.
Food Poisoning
Baroness Humphreys
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce the incidence of food poisoning among the population.
Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, the Government take food safety seriously, particularly food poisoning, which can have severe consequences for individuals and place a burden on healthcare services and the economy. A range of initiatives are in place to engage all sectors of the food chain, from producers to consumers. Last week, for example, the UK Food Standards Agency led Food Safety Week, which focused on clear consumer messages about preventing campy- lobacter infections by not washing raw chicken before cooking.
Baroness Humphreys (LD)
I thank my noble friend for that reply. She will be aware that food poisoning is the cause of 500 deaths every year in the UK. Many other cases result in long-term debilitating illnesses. In Wales it is now compulsory for all food premises, care homes and food manufacturing premises to display their food hygiene rating certificates in a prominent position, allowing the consumer to make informed choices about those premises. Do the Government have any plans to introduce a compulsory “scores on the doors” system in England?
Baroness Jolly
The food hygiene ratings scheme is one of the Food Standards Agency’s initiatives to reduce food poisoning. All ratings are published online, but access to ratings at the point of choice is particularly important. Compulsory display of stickers will strengthen the scheme’s potential to drive up hygiene standards. The Food Standards Agency worked closely with the Welsh Government to introduce the necessary legislation for this in Wales and it is actively monitoring its impact so that a case can be built for England.
Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that most chickens in this country were infected with campylobacter because of the way they were executed? They were electrocuted upside down, so the contents of their alimentary tract was spread over the whole of the chicken. That is why so many of them were infected. Are the Government looking into more satisfactory ways of dispatching these chickens?
Baroness Jolly
I thank the noble Lord for such a graphic description. Indeed, the Government are aware of that, as is the Food Standards Agency. Much research is being done throughout the whole food chain—from dispatch to the serving hatch, if you like—into ways of reducing opportunities for food poisoning.
The Countess of Mar (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware that campylobacter does not just belong to chickens? It can also be found in some 49% of dogs, and children particularly should be instructed to wash their hands after playing with their pets. The instruction to wash hands and dry them well before preparing food is a very good one.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, what assessment have the Government made of the impact of the cuts in local authority budgets that they have brought about on the availability and effectiveness of food hygiene inspections in relevant premises?
Baroness Jolly
I have no information in my brief to that effect. However, it should be said that this scheme has been adopted by all but two local authorities in England, the two exceptions being the Royal Borough of Greenwich, which is ready to implement it, and Rutland, which is somewhat anxious about the success of businesses.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
Do the Government agree with Professor Chris Elliott, whom they commissioned to review food safety in the wake of the horsemeat scandal, that the Food Standards Agency should be given new powers to tackle fraud through a food crime unit?
Baroness Jolly
I regret that I shall have to write to the noble Baroness on that issue.
Housing: Underoccupancy Charge
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Quin
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they expect to publish their interim review on the under-occupancy charge.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)
We expect to publish the interim report by the Summer Recess.
Baroness Quin (Lab)
I welcome that reply although I note that last October the Minister said that he expected the report to come out in the spring, which has now come and gone. Can he assure me that in the meanwhile, he and his colleagues will be meeting some of the many people who have indicated their willingness to downsize but for whom there is no alternative accommodation and nevertheless end up having to pay a bedroom tax that they cannot afford?
Lord Freud
There are some 200,000 smaller premises in the social rented sector available through each year. We are now seeing a good increase in the number of home exchanges. Some systems are going up and the housing partners’ HomeSwapper scheme, for instance, has now had a 25% increase partly because of the effect of this change.
Baroness Turner of Camden (Lab)
Is the Minister aware of disputed cases being referred to the Local Government Ombudsman for decisions? If so, have there been any decisions in favour of the claimant as I understand that some people have disputed the charges that have been made under the bedroom tax?
Lord Freud
I am not aware of the ombudsman process. The process of which I am aware is when people appeal to the tribunal; there have been more than 100 such cases, which have gone one way or the other—some have gone to appeal and some have been accepted.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, many older people do not want to leave the property in which they have lived for many years, and I have suggested in the past that they should be able to take in a lodger, which would help pay their costs. However, I have been told that many authorities do not allow people to take in lodgers. Is the department aware of that and is anything being done to ensure that people who wish to take in a lodger—many people are looking for accommodation—can do so in order to stay where they are?
Lord Freud
We are encouraging people to take in lodgers when appropriate for them. Housing associations and local authorities are looking at that and tend to accept that that is a way of doing it. There is some confusion between strictures against subletting, which is a different matter entirely, but lodging tends to be accepted around the country.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, the Ipsos MORI report, undertaken by the National Housing Federation in February this year, looked at 183 housing associations. It found that two-thirds of tenants affected by the underoccupancy charge were in rent arrears and 38% indicated that they were in debt. That is the equivalent of 72,000 tenants in housing associations in debt in England alone, which seems to be allied in some way to the underoccupancy charge. What assessment have Her Majesty’s Government made of the impact on housing associations of rent arrears because of the underoccupancy charge?
Lord Freud
We have a general look at the level of arrears through the Homes and Communities Agency, whose statistics show that arrears have fallen—not risen—for the past two quarters in a row. The average rent collection rate for associations remains at 99%, a very high figure, which is very much at variance with some of the stories that we hear and the data that the right reverend Prelate referred to.
Lord Richard (Lab)
The noble Lord was asked by my noble friend Lady Quin when the Government expect to publish the interim report. I may have missed it but I did not detect any Answer from the Minister as to when the Government expect to publish the report. Can he tell us why it is so delayed?
Lord Freud
My Lords, I must learn how to enunciate better. I will repeat my Answer: we expect to publish the interim report by the Summer Recess.
Lord Deben (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that, if he is going to visit and meet people who have been concerned with this, he will also meet people who have lived in overcrowded conditions for long periods of time because of the underoccupation of homes that ought to have been available for them?
Lord Freud
My Lords, that is clearly one of the points of getting a better match for our very scarce housing. There are long waiting lists for social housing and substantial overcrowding. Depending on the data at which you look, there are more than 250,000 overcrowded homes in the social rented sector. On the census basis, that figure rises to 361,000.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, can the Minister tell us whether the interim review will include an assessment of how the underoccupancy charge affects people with conditions such as Parkinson’s, which can involve night terrors and uncontrollable movements that make it completely impractical for their partners to sleep in close proximity?
Lord Freud
My Lords, for obvious reasons, I have not seen the report. It will be published but I am not aware of that kind of detail at this stage. Clearly once the report is out we can look at the issues that remain uncovered. There will be a full report, which will be published next year in 2015.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister has often complained about councils underspending the discretionary funds that mitigate the effect of the bedroom tax. Did he see the report in Inside Housing last week which stated that £7 million of the extra £20 million allocated by the Government last July remains unallocated to councils by the Government? An FoI request showed that 27 councils did not get the money they asked for mostly because the department decided that this would allow them to buy out the effects of the bedroom tax. So people asked for money, were turned down because it would have the effect that was wanted, and then it is claimed that the underspend shows that they did not need any more money in the first place. How can the Minister explain that to the thousands of people affected by the bedroom tax?
Lord Freud
My Lords, some of my more sharp-eyed colleagues here will have seen the information we put out on the discretionary housing payments for last year. That showed that there was a £13 million underspend by 240 councils and that of the £20 million bidding fund, £7 million was not spent. The £20 million was not applied for in its entirety. However, we allocated that money on the basis of parity of requirement. There was an extensive process to make sure that we gave the appropriate amounts of money to those councils.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, the Ipsos MORI review, of course, is much awaited, not least by the Master of the Rolls who, in making a judgment in favour of the Government, said that the DWP had informed him that,
“the scheme may need to be modified in the light of experience”.
When the independent review comes out and my noble friend sees it before the Summer Recess, will he agree to act upon it and take decisions to make changes to the scheme so that it fits the experience shown by his independent review?
Lord Freud
My Lords, we always look very closely at any research that is done and we will do no differently with this research.
Personal Independence Payment
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord McAvoy
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to tackle delays in personal independence payment assessments.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)
We are committed to ensuring that personal independence payment claimants receive high-quality, objective, fair and accurate assessments. I acknowledge that the end-to-end claimant journey is taking longer than expected. We are absolutely committed to improving performance, both ours and that of the assessment providers.
Lord McAvoy (Lab)
My Lords, as the Minister is aware, his own department’s figures show that it will take 42 years to clear the backlog. Yesterday in the House of Commons the Minister of State, Mike Penning, said that this was scaremongering. If that is the case, can the Minister give a guarantee as to when it will be cleared?
Lord Freud
One can do some funny things with mathematics and that 42-year figure is one of them. Clearly in the opening period of any new policy of this sort there is a ramp-up, and we need to get that ramp-up right. As I said, the position of this process is not satisfactory and we are taking a lot of steps to make sure that we get the improvement that we must have. We are pushing up the numbers of staff, improving claimant communications in this process, getting more paper-based reviews which will speed the process up, and taking a series of other initiatives to get this right.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, given the view just expressed by the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons that the introduction of personal independence payments has been a “fiasco”, and that in securing the contract ATOS gave,
“incorrect and potentially misleading information”,
does the Minister have any plans to re-examine the ATOS tender documents? Does he believe that ATOS should be able to bid again in future for DWP contracts?
Lord Freud
The build-up of PIP was done in a controlled and phased way, and that was acknowledged by the NAO. ATOS won that contract in fair, open competition and we have no plans to reopen that process.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, can the Minister tell us what assessment he has made of the level of support by Her Majesty’s Government to disabled people?
Lord Freud
My Lords, the Government remain committed to maintaining support for disabled people. We spend roughly £50 billion a year, every year, and that is held in real terms. That is a fifth higher than the EU average. The overall spend on incapacity benefits has remained roughly flat in real terms over the life of this Government, and indeed the benefits about which we are talking—PIP, DLA—have actually been going up in real terms over the past four years.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister’s assurances would be rather more encouraging were it not for the fact that, as well as this shambles of the WCA and the 42-year backlog, employment and support allowance has been delayed and proved not to be succeeding; the Work Programme has a 94% failure rate; the bedroom tax is not meeting its objectives; and at current speeds, universal credit will take 1,052 years to roll out. Is the Minister proud of these achievements?
Lord Freud
My Lords, we are transforming the welfare system in this country. We are doing it across the piece. It is all very well for the Opposition to complain about the speed at which we do these programmes. These programmes are difficult to do. They were shied away from by the previous Government. I think that Peers all round the House will be pleased to see these transformational changes go in and transform the way in which this country operates at a fundamental level. There is a level of cynicism about what is always a difficulty: getting difficult, complicated programmes through exactly to timetable. People who know how difficult projects are know that process, but this is critical work for our country.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, there is, however, an important point that I would like the Minister to comment on, following on from earlier comments made by colleagues. People increasingly say to me that in the implementation of the flagship schemes contained in the Welfare Reform Act 2012 we are beginning to look as if we have bitten off more than we can chew. That is a matter of serious concern. On the narrow point of PIP, I exhort the Minister to hasten slowly. Will he give an assurance to the House that it is more important to him to get these things right than to do them quickly? In that regard, will he look at the possibility of clearing the backlog of personal independence payment claims before the rollout of the reassessment of DLA to other parts of the United Kingdom?
Lord Freud
My Lords, as my noble friend said, we have to be careful to get the implementation right. We are aiming to do our programmes at the pace that we can do them, so if we have to slow down we will slow down. We go at the pace that works because it is one thing to not go at exactly the speed you may have planned at the beginning; it is another thing to make it difficult for people. In the case of PIP, we are looking at how we carry out the next stage of the PIP rollout, the natural reassessment process. We will extend that only when we have capacity to do so, and so far we have not made any decisions on when we will do that rollout.
European Union (Information, etc.) Bill [HL]
Council Tax Valuation Bands Bill [HL]
Deregulation Bill
Health: Patient Safety
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, I now repeat a Statement made earlier today in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State on the subject of patient safety.
“Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement to the House about a package of measures that I have announced today in order to boost safety, transparency and openness in our NHS following my earlier Written Ministerial Statement.
Just last week, the respected Commonwealth Fund ranked the UK in first place for quality of care, including safety. We compare well internationally and it is clear that we have much to be proud of. However, it is also clear that there is more to do. We must not be complacent.
It is estimated that 12,000 deaths a year in hospitals have a 50% chance of being prevented. Figures released by NHS England today tell us that there were 32 ‘never events’ in the last two months, including a throat pack and a hypodermic needle being left inside patients post-surgery. These are shocking statistics.
In the Government’s response to Sir Robert Francis’s landmark public inquiry on the poor standards of care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust, I made clear our determination to make the NHS the safest and most open and transparent healthcare system in the world.
So, today, all hospital trusts around the country will receive an invitation to ‘Sign up to Safety’. This campaign, led by Sir David Dalton, the inspirational chief executive of Salford Royal, will help us achieve our ambition of halving avoidable harm and thereby potentially save 6,000 lives. Trusts will be asked to devise and deliver a safety plan, and may receive a financial incentive from the NHS Litigation Authority to support implementation.
Mr Speaker, we are also fulfilling the pledge we made in our response to Francis to create a hospital safety website for patients. As of today, the NHS Choices website will tell us how all hospital trusts are performing across a range of seven key safety indicators including ‘open and honest reporting’. And, for the first time, the website will let patients and the public see whether a hospital has achieved its planned levels for nursing hours.
Indeed, I am pleased to inform the House that the latest workforce statistics published today show us that we have 5,900 more nurses on our hospital wards since our response to Francis.
Mr Speaker, I am proud that the NHS is blazing a trail on openness and transparency. We are the first country in the world to publish this breadth and depth of safety data.
Finally, I am pleased to announce today that Sir Robert Francis QC will be chairing an independent review on creating an open and honest reporting culture in the NHS. This review will provide advice and recommendations to ensure that NHS workers can speak up without fear of retribution. The review will also look at how we can ensure that where NHS whistleblowers have been mistreated; there are appropriate remedies for staff and accountability for those mistreating them.
Mr Speaker, I am confident that this package of measures will shine a light on poor care so that lessons can be learnt, action can be taken and harm to patients prevented”.
That concludes the Statement.
Lord Bradley (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement on patient safety.
As we said in the other place, an open learning culture across all parts of the NHS is an ambition shared across the House and builds on the work of the previous Government following care scandals in the 1990s. It is right to call for openness, transparency and accountability, but I ask the Minister how he will guard against the risk, as pointed out by Martin Bromiley, of creating a naming, shaming and blaming culture.
Secondly, the Minister has told the House that one-fifth of hospitals are failing to report properly. How does he plan to address this? Will he extend full transparency to all providers of NHS services, including the private sector?
Thirdly, the Commonwealth Fund found cause for concern on infection compared to 2010, with the NHS now ranked worst in the world for patients reporting infection in hospitals or shortly after. What is he doing to turn around this very worrying trend?
Lastly, the Secretary of State for Health talks about his new target to save 6,000 lives over three years, which we all clearly welcome. I welcome the appointment of Sir David Dalton, a person I know well, to the position of leading this initiative. However, will the Minister explain further today how this will actually be achieved with the current pressures on NHS budgets?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his welcome of the measures that we have announced today. They must be seen in the context of other measures that we have taken in the light of Robert Francis’s report, many of which have been debated in this House.
The noble Lord spoke about a culture of naming, shaming and blaming. I do not see it in that light. The key message from Robert Francis was surely that we need a change of culture in many of our NHS institutions. That is not something that can be dictated by legislation. On the other hand, it is something that we can assist in promoting by means of transparency. The whole drive towards quality is surely assisted by shining a light on poor practice where it exists, encouraging all staff in hospitals to take ownership of what their organisation is doing and then putting those things right. That culture should extend from the board right down to the lowest level of staff. This is part and parcel of the move that the NHS is trying to make in the direction of creating a better culture—one that exists in many parts of our NHS but not in enough of them.
Do we intend to promote transparency in all those providing services to the NHS? Yes, that is the intention. This would be done by means of the NHS standard contract, which in time will incorporate the necessary provisions.
As regards infection rates in hospitals, the picture nationally is in fact very good. The numbers of MRSA bloodstream and C. diff infections are currently at record lows, but there is no scope for complacency. We believe that the website that I referred to in the answer that I repeated, which will incorporate the indicator relating to infection and cleanliness, will act as a spur to hospitals when they know that their patients can see the degree of infection pertaining over the previous three-month period.
How do we intend to save the lives that we have the ambition to save? As I said at the beginning, much of this depends on openness, on transparency and clarity for the public, and indeed on staff taking ownership of problems where they exist, not shying away from them. We think of measures like the fundamental standards being introduced that will define the level below which standards of care should never fall. We think of the duty of candour that is to be introduced. We think of the new ways in which the Care Quality Commission, with its new chief inspectors, is approaching the task of assessing the quality and safety of institutions. All these things combined should be seen as part and parcel of the picture.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, a 2012 report by the American Department of Health showed that 86% of reportable events were not reported, partly because of staff misperceptions about what constitutes patient harm. Will the Minister reassure the House that both the Government and the NHS regard one in five incidents going unreported as unacceptable? What will the Government do to ensure that all staff understand what needs to be reported and do so in a truly open and transparent culture?
Earl Howe
My noble friend makes a series of very important points. Clearly, a balance has to be struck here. It would become self-defeating if every single mistake, even one that had no bearing on patient safety, had to be reported by every single member of staff. The system would be overloaded. We are keen to ensure that those incidents that result in potential harm, real harm or—worse still—death are reported, exposed and dealt with. Of course the National Reporting and Learning System, which was originally part of the National Patient Safety Agency when the previous Government set it up and is now housed at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, has the task of collating safety incidents from trusts and drawing lessons from them. That is every bit as important a process as it ever was. It will be the task of NHS England to draw those lessons together and incorporate them in its commissioning guidance. My noble friend has raised that issue and we have a task ahead of us that will take some time to achieve; but I believe that this is a welcome start.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, looking back on it, was the Nursing 2000 initiative not a bad mistake because it turned nursing into an all-graduate profession, with degrees supplied by the second-rate social science departments of the former polytechnics? Are the Government doing anything with the training of nurses that reflects what the noble Lord’s colleague at education, Mr Gove, is doing with the training of teachers, about which we heard in the first Question today? Is there a new emphasis on practical training and on getting back to matron and the discipline of the ward?
Earl Howe
It was only recently that the Nursing and Midwifery Council revised the curriculum for the training of nurses. I am sure that the noble Lord will be pleased to know that that curriculum is broadly divided 50:50 into practical training and training in the classroom, which was the balance historically. I believe that nurse training is now set fair for the future. The noble Lord is right to raise concerns about Project 2000, which many people felt did not quite address the needs of nurse training. However, that programme is substantially different now from what it was in 2000.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the arch-moderniser, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson. In the whole of my noble friend’s Statement, and indeed until the noble Lord raised his question, not a word was mentioned about the training of the staff who actually care for our patients. We have a situation in which, unless you are a medic, you are not entitled, even if you are a qualified nurse, to have resources spent on you in order to continually update your professional development. In terms of preceptorship, there are no resources; in terms of mentorship, there are little additional resources; and there is virtually no resource to train healthcare assistants. Will my noble friend agree that although the move to have 9,000 more nurses is incredibly welcome, we need to put training at the very heart of the safety agenda, because unless we train we will not get high-quality staff?
Earl Howe
I agree with my noble friend; it would be difficult to disagree with him. Training is essential if we are to have high-quality staff. That is why we have protected the training budget, which is now hosted by Health Education England, whose job it is to ensure not just that there are adequate numbers of each type of professional in the health service but that the quality of the training is as we would all wish. It is the task of the local education and training boards to assess the position at a local level and, informed by the NHS providers that are under their wing, to respond to the needs of those providers.
Student Visas
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement made by my honourable friend the Minister for Immigration, Mr James Brokenshire, in the House of Commons earlier today. The Statement is as follows.
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on the abuse of student visas. Since the last election, the Government have taken action across the board to reduce and control immigration. We have introduced a cap on economic migration from outside the European Union, we have reformed the family visa system and we have eliminated much of the abuse of the student visa system we saw under the previous Government. The result is that net migration from outside the EU is close to its lowest levels since the late 1990s, while net migration is down by a third since its peak under the party opposite.
The Government have always said that even in light of the reforms we have introduced, we need to keep each of the main immigration routes to Britain under review, we need to remain vigilant against abuse of the student visa system, and education providers need to meet their responsibilities.
That is why I can tell the House that, since the start of February, immigration enforcement officers, with the support from the National Crime Agency, together with officials from UK Visas and Immigration, have been conducting a detailed and wide-ranging investigation into actions by organised criminals to falsify English language tests for student visa applicants. They have also investigated a number of colleges and universities for their failure to make sure that the foreign students they have sponsored meet the standards set out in the Immigration Rules.
Since the reforms we introduced in 2011, it has been a requirement for all student visa applicants to prove that they can speak English at an appropriate level. All students in further education or at a university which relies on English language testing who want to extend their stay by applying for a new student visa have to be tested by one of five companies licensed by the Government. One of those companies, the European subsidiary of an American firm called Educational Testing Service, was exposed by the BBC’s “Panorama” programme earlier this year, following systematic cheating at a number of its UK test centres. Facilitated by organised criminals, this typically involved invigilators supplying, even reading out, answers to whole exam rooms, or gangs of impostors being allowed to step into the exam candidates’ places to sit the test. Evidently, this could happen only with considerable collusion by the test centres concerned.
Having been provided with analysis from the American arm of ETS for a number of ETS test centres in the UK operating in 2012 and 2013, officials have identified more than 29,000 invalid results and more than 19,000 questionable results. As they still have to receive test analyses from ETS for other testing centres that it operated in the UK, it is likely that the true totals will be higher.
Officials from immigration enforcement and UK Visas and Immigration have not found evidence to suggest there is systematic cheating taking place in the tests carried out by the other providers. As soon as the allegations of systematic cheating were first made, we suspended ETS testing in the UK, put a hold on all immigration applications from those in the UK using an ETS test certificate, and made all applications from overseas subject to interview by UK Visas and Immigration staff. In April ETS’s licence to conduct tests for immigration purposes ended, and two weeks ago, we formally removed the company as a test provider in the Immigration Rules.
Because of the organised criminality that lies behind the falsified tests, the National Crime Agency has been brought in to work alongside immigration enforcement officers to pursue criminal action against the perpetrators. Immigration enforcement has begun work to identify anybody who is in the country illegally as a result of the falsified tests, so that they can be removed. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is also helping the investigation by scrutinising pay and tax records. A criminal investigation has been launched into the role of ETS Global Ltd. More generally, immigration enforcement is working to identify, pursue and prosecute those involved in facilitating this activity, and to investigate links to wider organised crime. Arrests have been made and I expect that more will follow.
I should be clear that proof that a visa applicant can speak English is only one test for somebody seeking to study in Britain. Other requirements include proof of academic qualifications, attendance at college or university and compliance with the Immigration Rules. If these student visa applicants had to cheat to pass an English language test, it is highly doubtful that many of the colleges and some of the universities that sponsored them in numbers were fulfilling their duties as highly trusted sponsors.
As I said earlier in my Statement, UKVI and immigration enforcement officers have been investigating many of the colleges and universities I am talking about because of wider concerns about their conduct. The evidence they have provided of what is going on in these institutions is cause for serious concern.
The work undertaken by HMRC has identified a number of overseas university students earning more than £20,000 a year, despite the rule that they must not work more than 20 hours per week during term time. Overseas students at privately funded further education colleges are not allowed to work at all, yet one college—the London School of Business & Finance—has more than 290 foreign students who worked and paid tax last year. One university student identified by HMRC had been working a 60-hour week for six months.
UKVI identified people allegedly studying in London while their home addresses were registered as restaurants as far as away as Ipswich and Chichester. Students sponsored by Glyndwr University so far identified with invalid test results provided by ETS number more than 230, rising to more than 350 if you add the scores counted as questionable. The comparable figures for the University of West London are more than 210 sponsored students with invalid scores, rising to more than 290 when questionable scores are included.
At certain private further education colleges, as many as three-quarters of the file checks completed by UKVI officers were a cause for concern. At one college, a staff member told UKVI officers that they were encouraged not to report students’ absences or failures because doing so would reduce the college’s income and jeopardise its right to sponsor foreign students. The Government are not prepared to tolerate this abuse. So I can tell the House that this morning the Home Office suspended the highly trusted sponsor status—that is, the right to sponsor foreign students—of Glyndwr University.
In addition, we have suspended the licences of 57 private further education colleges, a list of which I will place in the Library of the House. We have told a further two universities—the University of Bedfordshire and the University of West London—that they are no longer allowed to sponsor new students, pending further investigations which will decide whether they, too, should be suspended.
Other universities are involved in the continuing investigation and further action may follow, although, because of the steps they have already taken to improve their processes, including voluntarily ceasing overseas recruitment to London sub-campuses, we will not at this stage remove their right to sponsor foreign students. Because much of the worst abuse we have uncovered seems to be taking place at London sub-campuses of universities based in other parts of the country, I can also tell the House that the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education will examine these London campuses to see whether further action should be taken against their parent universities.
The Government do not take such action lightly. However, we are clear that this kind of irresponsibility cannot go without serious sanction. We have already removed some 750 bogus colleges from the list of those entitled to bring foreign students to Britain and of these almost 400 we now know were linked to those who obtained invalid ETS certificates.
We have tightened up the rules for individual students. We have reduced the level of immigration to Britain, in part by cutting out the abuse in the student visa system, but we have always said that we must remain vigilant against abuse. The steps I have outlined today show that we will not hesitate to take firm action against those students, colleges and universities which do not abide by their legal responsibilities and resolutely pursue organised criminality to bring those responsible to justice. I commend this Statement to the House”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, the most important criterion of any immigration and visa system is its integrity. Governments should always take swift and effective action to stop any abuses of the system and must always be vigilant to prevent abuse. The scale of abuse outlined in the Minister’s Statement is absolutely shocking and it is right that action is taken to tackle such abuse. Indeed, the Labour Government closed 140 colleges between April 2009 and January 2010. My questions are on the practicalities and implications, rather than the principle.
As the Minister said in repeating the Statement, following the BBC “Panorama” programme’s investigation in February the Government announced that they had suspended language tests run by ETS. Can the Minister clarify the timescale of who knew what and when? When were Ministers made aware of the scale of the abuse? Was that before or after the BBC investigation? If they knew before, why was action not taken earlier? If they did not know before, how is it that after four years in government the BBC knew about it before the Government did? The longer this goes on, the greater the culpability of the Government in not tackling it.
The Minister referred to criminal proceedings. Can he tell us who those proceedings will be against and how long those investigations will take? Will they include proceedings against the 48,000 people who fraudulently obtained language certificates? Do the Government know who they are and where they are? The Statement says that arrests were made but how many have been made to date? With regard to the universities, what discussions and consultations have there been with those universities where action has been taken? What are the implications for lawful, legitimate university students and institutions?
The Government’s independent inspector, John Vine, issued warnings about the system’s abuse in 2012. However, it appears that no serious action was taken until the BBC investigation, so this is a crisis created on the Government’s watch. The Government have talked tough but done very little and while this abuse was festering, we had the nonsense of an Immigration Bill that did nothing to tackle the abuses we are talking about today but proposed actions detrimental to law-abiding universities and their genuine students. In the interests of national security and the integrity of the system, and in the interests of those universities and students that abide by the rules and bring huge benefit to this country, the Government must restore confidence.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I accept that the noble Baroness is right to point out the seriousness of this situation but I do not think that she is right to try to single out the actions of this Government in that respect. We were taking action to investigate the whole scale of abuse in London colleges before the ETS fraud was revealed through the “Panorama” programme. At that point, we realised why it was that we had found such large-scale abuse going on in London colleges as a result.
I cannot say to the noble Baroness that I welcome her words on the Immigration Act. Much of the focus of that Act was designed specifically to deal with the problem of student abuse. I am mindful of those occasions on which the noble Baroness has called for students to be removed from net migration figures. Does this not show how right the Government are to seek to tighten up in this area, because of the failure of the previous Government to tackle the problem at all? The truth of the matter is that we came in with an immigration process that was totally incapable of examining the out-of-control flow of immigration into this country. A little bit of humility on the part of the noble Baroness might help this particular problem.
She asked about criminal proceedings. I am not prepared to talk about them because of their nature, except to say that it is quite clear that criminality has been involved in this case. I hope that I have the support of the noble Baroness in the Government’s attempt to make sure that the abuse of the system that has been exposed by our investigations into London colleges and by the BBC “Panorama” programme is effectively dealt with. We are putting responsibility where it lies—which is on the colleges, to make sure that they keep orderly houses and discourage irregular use of the student visa passage for working and illegal immigration into this country.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister shares my and many people’s anger and shame that so many innocent students have been duped and have had cheating promoted to them as if it were a British value—which clearly it is not. Can the Minister tell the House whether the individual students caught up in this will have a chance to retake the tests before immigration action is taken against them? Can he also say what positive steps the Government are taking to promote the sector, which we all agree is such an important export? We know that a factor in students choosing to come and study here is whether they feel welcome or not.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I will start with the last suggestion made by my noble friend because it is really important. Despite having to deal with this problem— I think the whole House will understand why the Government have had to deal with this problem—we recognise the enormous asset that we have in the higher education and further education facilities in this country. They are global assets and we want them to be available to the world. But they must be conducted under rules which reflect the fact that people come here to study and not as a short cut to involvement in working.
We have had a lot of debates in the House. I think that some of the best have been on this subject, but sometimes I have been the only person saying that students should remain within the net migration figures. I hope that noble Lords who thought differently will be thinking along my lines now and seeing how important it is. I have emphasised that we want the brightest and the best to come here, but they should do so with their sponsorship in order and without the criminality that has been revealed by this particular investigation.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick (CB)
My Lords, I have a question as to the order of events referred to in the Statement. In the first place, the investigation into these important matters started, we are told, at the beginning of February. There is also a reference to the BBC “Panorama” programme, which was also at the beginning of the year. Which of these two events came first? Was it the “Panorama” programme which stimulated the investigation? If so, should it not be given credit for it?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I hope that I have paid tribute. The Statement did, in fact, pay tribute to the “Panorama” programme. It has done the country huge service in revealing this abuse. I asked the very same question when I was being briefed on the issue earlier today. There was indeed an investigation by immigration enforcement—UKVI itself had initiated an investigation of the London colleges. It appears that the London-based colleges have been causing trouble, in particular where the universities are established elsewhere and have branches in this country.
We did not have suspicions about English-language testing until it came up as a result of the “Panorama” programme. The two things are complementary and reinforce the action that the Government have taken in investigating the matter.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, on what date was the subsidiary of ETS given a contract to carry out this work? What assurances were sought from these private companies when they were hired to carry out this work that they were competent to do it? Will the Minister admit that he is muddling up two completely different issues when he suggests that this has something to do with the category under which students should be placed, whether part of the migration statistics or in a separate category for students? That has nothing to do with the issue that we have been discussing today, the appalling lapse in standards by a company presumably hired by this Government, which the Minister has told the House about.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
ETS was licensed in 2011 to carry out the English-language testing that we brought in at that time. ETS has been a long-standing supplier of educational testing services to the Government. Its appointment in such a role predates our period in office. Five companies were selected by a process of competition to perform this task, and ETS was one of the successful companies. In all fairness, we had no reason to suppose that it would be undertaking this task fraudulently.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that this issue has been going on for at least a decade? This is about the fifth time that I have stood up on this issue. Are not his actions greatly to be welcomed? Is it not really worrying to discover that time and again our newer universities and colleges, on the whole, are at fault? Previously it was London colleges, and now I hear that my home county of Bedfordshire is under deep suspicion. Will my noble friend tell us what action will be taken when he has carried out his investigations to ensure that senior personnel at those universities who are, or are supposed to be, in charge are fully reprimanded and, I hope, removed from their posts?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, how universities deal with this is largely a matter for them. I believe that I was right to draw the attention of the House to those measures which we eventually agreed in the Immigration Act to deal with this matter. It should make it much easier to monitor and deal with in future, but we have to deal with things at present. I emphasise that the vast majority of students here are genuine and are here to study. We want to make sure that we give them our support. We want to make sure that the vast majority of educational institutions are genuine and doing their best for their students’ education. We will invite the Department for Education, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, the Scottish funding agencies, Universities UK and the National Union of Students to join a working group on how we offer support to genuine students who find themselves in situations not of their making as a result of the measures that we are taking today.
Lord Morgan (Lab)
My Lords, it is very pleasing that the Minister managed to make some sympathetic remarks about overseas students. I thought that the initial Statement, which, I appreciate, was read in the House of Commons, was deeply depressing, seeing students as a threat and not an opportunity or enrichment of this country, and seeing the issue in terms of immigration and not of educational policy. Is not the real explanation of this problem to do with privatisation? We are not talking about universities; we are talking about a whole range of privately funded colleges and institutions, many of them in London, which do not observe the strict academic and educational standards of our universities, of one of which I had the privilege of being a vice-chancellor. The institution that is under criticism is a hived-off institution to deal with English language teaching. I hope that the Minister, who I know to be a very progressive-minded man, will take the opportunity to affirm that real universities observe the highest standards in inquiring into the educational and personal background of students. It is really quite unfair of the Statement made in the House of Commons to confuse them with a number of far inferior institutions.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am sorry that the noble Lord has taken that view of the Statement. I think that it described why we were taking action this day to deal with particular institutions. I stayed for the questions after seeing my honourable friend Mr Brokenshire make his Statement, and he was at pains to emphasise that our relationship with universities is very important to us, because £2.8 billion—or is it 2.8%?—of the British economy is in the educational sector. I shall not rise to the fly that the noble Lord has cast across me about privatisation. I do not think that that matters. The truth of the matter is that all education institutions, whether public or private, must conduct themselves in a proper fashion. That is what we are seeking to emphasise. However, as I think I made clear earlier, I believe in the universities of this country. They enhance our lives and prosperity and enable us to have a presence in the world that we would not have without their international role.
Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for once again reassuring us with his usual balance and judgment of the situation. We are all appalled that there should have been exploitation in this way. My noble friend referred to the duping of students. Some of these students would have been duped, not knowing any better about what they should do and relying on what they seemed to think was authoritative advice. What steps will be taken to strike Educational Testing Services off the list of approved organisations for this purpose in future, and can he tell us what other sanctions might be exercised to ensure that these crucial agencies satisfy the requirements that the Government ask of them?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am not an arrogant sort of person, as my noble friend will know, and I think that there are lessons for the Government to learn from this situation. It is right that we should seek to learn these lessons. I agree with her that many of the individuals involved may well have been perfectly innocent of the circumstances in which they now find themselves, of being illegally in this country, having applied through one of these bogus entry systems, which contain in them a germ of criminality, as I said earlier. How that aspect is dealt with will be a matter for the courts to decide. Meanwhile, as I say, I am quite prepared to accept that there are things that the Government can learn from this experience, and there is a need to ensure that we play our part in supporting universities in their job.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
My Lords, the Minister very properly makes the point that the vast majority of foreign students are perfectly genuine entrants into the United Kingdom. However, there are two issues, one of which is the bogus student. I applaud the Government for their action, but I hope that they do not send an unfortunate message, which they do not intend to send, with regard to the general welcome of students into the United Kingdom.
The other issue is that of the genuine student in relation to the classification of immigration. As I see it, the situation is this: over the past two years, the Prime Minister has said very clearly that he wishes to see annual immigration reduced to a figure below 100,000. I think that is a fair estimate of what he said. At the same time, it has been said time and time again in both Houses of Parliament that genuine students are nevertheless to be regarded as immigrants. That is the classical and historic way in which they have been regarded, and I believe they were regarded in that way by the previous Government. In light of the fact that the number of genuine students whose genuineness is not in any way in dispute is in excess of 100,000 per annum, how can the two objectives ever be served—in other words, keeping immigration below 100,000 and at the same time welcoming every genuine non-EU student? At the moment there is a dichotomy. What do the Government intend to do about it?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I think that I have made our policy clear—namely, to encourage genuine students to this country. I do not see any fundamental difficulty with that, and I am not in favour of moving the goalposts on this issue. The Government have their objective of reducing net migration. The noble Lord suggests that that might be in conflict with a policy which encourages genuine students to come here. I do not believe that the two are incompatible. I think that it is possible to achieve both and it is certainly the Government’s aim and ambition to do that. However, to do that, we need the co-operation of the university and college sector. No gathering of individuals contains more people associated with universities and colleges than perhaps this House. I appeal to everyone who is involved in university courts, is a vice-chancellor or is involved in any way whatever to emphasise the Government’s determination to maintain the importance of the sector but also to emphasise to those involved in university administration the importance of applying their mind to the consequences of illegal immigration to this country and of playing their part in seeking to eliminate it.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that my experience of validating the polytechnic sector for 10 years led me to complain that there was no system of quality control in higher education, as opposed to quality assurance, which is really just academics cosily scratching each others’ backs? Does not this story call into question the usefulness of our Quality Assurance Agency? How could all this go on right under its nose? Is it not time that we set up a system of higher education quality control, which would have many wider benefits as well?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The noble Lord will understand that a university’s funding is dependent upon it satisfying the funding agency, HEFCE, on the quality of education being provided. I have great faith in the Quality Assurance Agency. As a result of today’s announcements, we will use it to check out further those colleges which are still the subject of our concerns and anxieties following the inquiries. Therefore, I do not share the noble Lord’s views on this issue.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, should it not be obvious to academic institutions when students do not have a proper command of English? If they do not exercise caution in this regard, is it not inevitable that they will lose their highly trusted sponsorship status?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I agree with my noble friend. That is why we are particularly concerned that the institutions themselves failed to take proper regard of the fact that some of their students were not capable of speaking English properly and had insufficient command of the language, and we know that in some cases the students concerned were not really studying at all but were out there working. The HMRC figures have clearly demonstrated this, and that is why we are taking this action.
Baroness Prashar (CB)
My Lords, what positive steps are being taken to ensure that innocent students at these institutions do not suffer unnecessary hardship and are not left stranded? If that happens, it will send a negative message about how much we welcome students. It is important that steps are taken to ensure that innocent students do not suffer.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The noble Baroness will know that previously we had to suspend the sponsorship status of London Met, and we worked closely with the university. We are doing the same now because it is not in our interests to upset the studies of those who are here and clearly want to continue them. We want those students to feel that they can carry on. That is our objective and we will be doing that. Meanwhile, we have to say to the colleges and universities I have mentioned that it is in their hands—it is their responsibility to take the necessary measures to make sure that they run an orderly establishment.
Scotland: Independence
(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Tankerness
That this House takes note of the constitutional future of Scotland in the light of the referendum on 18 September.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, there are 40 speakers for today’s debate. If Back-Bench contributions are kept to around eight minutes, the House should be able to rise at the target time of 10 pm. This advisory time does not apply to the movers of both Motions, my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness and my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton, or to the opposition winder, the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness) (LD)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who are attending and intend to participate in this important debate. With some 85 days to go to the referendum, it is important that your Lordships’ House has an opportunity to express views on this most fundamental question facing the people of Scotland.
I welcome the fact that the debate is linked to the House of Lords Constitution Committee report on the constitutional implications of the Scottish referendum. I thank the committee for this report, not least the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, who chaired the committee. I look forward to the speech of my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton, who now has the distinction of chairing that committee, and to the speeches of many of its members who are here to take part. The report is a very thorough and important contribution to the referendum debate and took evidence from a broad range of witnesses, including respected academics and Ministers from both the United Kingdom and Scottish Governments. The United Kingdom Government have until 16 July to respond to this report, and I can confirm that we will publish our response in advance of that date. I do not wish to pre-empt what will be said by my noble friend Lord Lang and others who wish to reflect on the report, but will respond in my closing remarks to the points they make.
As I indicated, it is now less than three months— 85 days—until the people of Scotland take the most important decision a country can ever be asked to take—whether we decide to stay in the United Kingdom family, or to leave and go it alone. I passionately believe in Scotland being within the United Kingdom, not because of dogma, nostalgia or ideology but because of what the United Kingdom means in the here and now, and what we can continue to achieve together as we go forward into the future. I believe in the contribution we have made over the past 300 years, along with our friends and families across England, Wales and Northern Ireland—our common effort to create and share something bigger that serves us all well. Together we can go on creating more, delivering more, and quite simply being more than we would ever be as separate states. Perhaps for too long Parliaments and Governments have allowed to go unspoken the contribution that Scotland makes to the United Kingdom; perhaps they have been equally silent on the benefits Scotland gets from being part of the United Kingdom. The referendum has focused our minds on what these benefits are.
Those of us who reside in Scotland will receive a booklet through our door entitled What Staying in the United Kingdom Means for Scotland. The booklet is going to every household in Scotland because we want everyone in Scotland to have the opportunity to make an informed decision in September, ensuring that voters no longer feel they are uninformed on the case being made by the United Kingdom Government. It is a booklet that sets out the facts in clear and simple terms, covering currency, pensions, trade and defence. We believe that the evidence is overwhelmingly clear. The evidence is also overwhelmingly positive: Scotland is better off staying in the United Kingdom and having the best of both worlds. We have more opportunities and greater security as part of the United Kingdom, while also having a strong Scottish Parliament with responsibility for important matters such as health, education, justice and transport.
As part of the United Kingdom, the powers of the Scottish Parliament will increase: we are already delivering the largest transfer of financial powers in 300 years, as set out in the Scotland Act 2012. Those powers will make the Scottish Parliament accountable for raising revenue, as well as spending public money. More powers will follow. That is the firm commitment of all three pro-United Kingdom parties in Scotland—not just by the separate commitments that each party has made, but by their united pledge to deliver further powers in the event of a no vote. This firm commitment to devolution, shared by both the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, is no doubt something that may be reflected on in this debate. I see that my noble friends Lord Strathclyde and Lord Purvis of Tweed are down to speak; they have made important contributions to their respective parties on this issue.
The important point about the booklet we are sending to every household is that it is not based on mere assertion or speculation, which so many of the Scottish Government’s proposals have been based on in this debate. Their 670-page White Paper included only one page of costings and projections, based on just one year’s financial information. In sharp contrast, our material draws on evidence from the Scotland Analysis series. I welcome the fact that the Constitution Committee’s report gave proper credit to that series, which concluded last Thursday with the launch of the summary paper by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. That paper—number 15 in the series—is the conclusion to a series of papers that has been widely lauded as a comprehensive and detailed analysis of Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom. You might choose to call it “project fact”: more than 1,400 pages of analysis, citing hundreds of independent experts and organisations. The series has provided the evidence base for the positive case I wish to outline—the positive case for Scotland remaining in the United Kingdom.
I first highlight the positive economic case. Scotland is the wealthiest part of the United Kingdom outside London and south-east England. Scotland has the highest employment rate of all the nations in the United Kingdom—it is even higher than that of the United States of America. Scotland has a lower unemployment rate, at just 6.5%, than the UK as a whole, at 6.9%. Scotland is part of one of the six richest economies in the world. All this, and much more, has been achieved as part of the United Kingdom—because of the United Kingdom, not in spite of it. Scotland’s economy is not held back by our position in the union. That is an unfounded assertion that those seeking independence regularly repeat.
Let us be clear: being part of the larger United Kingdom economy provides Scotland with jobs, stability and security. It provides a recovering domestic market. In 2013 Scotland exported £50 billion of goods and services to the rest of the United Kingdom—four times more than Scotland’s exports to the rest of the world—and imported £63 billion of goods and services from the rest of the United Kingdom. It is a domestic market that saw, in 2011, 33,000 people of working age move from other parts of the United Kingdom to Scotland, and another 35,000 move in the opposite direction. It is estimated that some 30,000 people travel in and out of Scotland to work each day. Why would we want to risk the protection that the UK economy gives not only Scotland, but England, Wales and Northern Ireland? Why would we want to put an international border in the middle of all this?
Critically, why would we want to lose the formal use of the United Kingdom pound? Let us be absolutely clear: in the event of independence, there will not be a currency union. I do not believe that that would be in the interests of Scotland or the continuing United Kingdom. Scotland would have no control over mortgage rates, and would be binding its hands on tax and funding for vital public services.
I did a Q&A session with some law undergraduates at Aberdeen University last autumn when the question of the currency came up. I made the point that the problem with a currency union would be that there would be no Scottish control over mortgage rates as well as limitations on tax and public spending. I said I could not understand why any self-respecting nationalist would want to sign up to that. At the end one of the undergraduates came up to me and said, “I am a self-respecting nationalist and I agree with you”.
The continuing United Kingdom would surely not put its taxpayers at risk of bailing out a separate state and its banks. It is inconceivable that Parliament would pass it or that the people of the continuing United Kingdom would accept it. That is why all three of the main political parties have ruled it out. It is economic issues such as this, which impact on our daily lives, that affect the decisions of voters, and for many, personal issues, such as whether we would be better or worse off in an independent Scotland. That question once again provides us with a positive case to vote no. By remaining part of the United Kingdom, people in Scotland will benefit from what has been labelled the “UK dividend”, which is worth £1,400 per year in lower taxes and higher public spending to every Scot.
This £1,400 derives from the clear economic benefits that Scotland gains from being part of the UK: a strong fiscal position; a large economy able to manage the volatility of declining oil revenues; stable borrowing costs; policies which are costed within the current economic climate; and a broad tax base, able to effectively deal with an ageing population.
I am not claiming, and the Government have not claimed, that Scotland could not or would not be able to be a separate state—of course it could. But it is important, too, to face up to the realities and acknowledge them. We must combat the many assertions so often alluded to by the Scottish Government. We must not allow those who raise reasonable questions or concerns to be silenced by intimidation or fear.
It is not only the economic case that demonstrates why we are truly better together. I am sure that during today’s debate we will hear arguments covering a full range of topics—the European Union, for example. The UK exerts its influence in Europe on behalf of Scotland and all parts of the UK on issues that matter to people and businesses in Scotland, such as budget contributions, fisheries and agricultural subsidies. This influence is exerted in Brussels, Strasbourg and across all member states. It is influence which ensures that Scotland has a loud voice at the top table, and will continue to do so as part of the UK.
It is a different story for an independent Scotland. First, there is the question of application. All 28 member states need to agree the process and the timescales. There is no automatic entry or special procedure for Scotland. There are European Union-wide rules that plenty of others have had to follow, so why should Scotland expect to receive special treatment? Perhaps more crucially, there is the question of the terms of membership. No one should assume that Scotland would be able to negotiate the same favourable terms of EU membership which the United Kingdom currently enjoys: an opt-out from the euro; an opt-out from the Schengen area; and the UK’s budget rebate, which is worth more than £3 billion to the United Kingdom taxpayer each year.
Let us recall that no other member state has negotiated its own rebate. Instead, as a new member state, Scotland would have to contribute to the United Kingdom rebate like all others. Let us be clear that the rebate could not be shared between states; it is the United Kingdom rebate, and a vote to leave the United Kingdom would be a vote to lose this. However, a vote to remain part of the United Kingdom would be a vote for each household in Scotland to continue to save money as part of the UK’s rebate—a vote to keep the United Kingdom’ s opt-outs and a vote to retain a place of influence at Europe’s top table.
One of the other issues that I have encountered in your Lordships’ House and around Scotland is the implications for the defence of Scotland, and the continuing United Kingdom. That is important in two particular respects. The United Kingdom has the fourth largest defence budget in the world—£33 billion to £34 billion annually, behind only America, Russia and China. Crucially, Scotland benefits and contributes to the full range of these defence capabilities. Scotland benefits by having the security of the United Kingdom defence forces fighting for our common values and interests, wherever needed, across the world—both in combat and peacekeeping activities.
Scotland contributes to this through its 11,100 Regular Armed Forces based in the country, rising to 12,500 by 2020, alongside thousands of reservists. This is all supported by a thriving defence industry employing around 12,600 people. Many of these jobs are at HM Naval Base Clyde. We need to be clear—and again to avoid the spread of assertions from the Scottish Government and those who would urge us to vote for independence—that companies based in an independent Scottish state could no longer be eligible for contracts that the United Kingdom chose to place domestically for national security reasons. Other than in world wars, the United Kingdom has not built a complex warship outside the United Kingdom since at least the start of the 20th century. Where they could continue to compete, Scottish yards would be pitching for business in a competitive international market dominated by major economic powers. That is not, as some would say, scaremongering: it is a statement of fact. It is important that we get that across.
In addition to the strength and bravery of our defence forces, the United Kingdom is a soft power superpower. Our culture, education, business environment, values and heritage help us to bring influence throughout the world and help us to use that influence for good. The United Kingdom is the second largest donor of international aid in the world—aid administered from East Kilbride in Scotland. By 2015, this United Kingdom department, based in Scotland, will have helped to immunise 55 million children against preventable disease; will have helped to save the lives of 50,000 women in childbirth and a quarter of a million new-born babies; and 60 million people will have access to clean, safe water, thanks to the United Kingdom’s aid programme.
Together, we have championed democracy and the rule of law around the world. We campaigned against slavery in the 18th century and drafted the European Convention on Human Rights in the 1950s. Together we have resisted invasion and conquest. We did not fall for the ideologies which blighted so many lives in the 20th century but together made sacrifices in opposing them.
However, it is not only our heritage and our history. A more recent example is the United Kingdom’s Preventing Sexual Violence initiative. This was the core theme of our presidency of the G8 in 2013, leading to a new United Nations Security Council resolution and a United Nations General Assembly declaration on sexual violence within conflict, which of course led to the summit hosted by the Foreign Secretary and Angelina Jolie earlier this month. The United Kingdom was to the fore among the states which launched the campaign for the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, which was finally adopted last year.
I am not claiming that an independent Scotland would walk away from these values that it has shared with us over the past three centuries—far from it. I expect it would probably sign up to them. However, it would lack the clout and influence to bring about such initiatives and, rather, as a consequence of independence, would possibly reduce the United Kingdom’s ability to promote justice in the world.
When we say that Britain is a force for good in the world and that it punches above its weight on the world stage, it might seem like a soundbite but it is true. We are an influence for good in the world and we do punch above our weight. This has been recognised. Although they have said that it is a matter for Scotland, what Britain achieves together has been recognised in recent weeks by President Obama, by Hillary Clinton and even by his Holiness the Pope, who all admire the strength of the United Kingdom and believe that we—both an independent Scotland and the continuing UK—would be weaker without each other. We should be mightily proud of our role across the globe, a role that we play together as a result of being a United Kingdom. Together, over three centuries, we have made one of the great states of the modern world; we continue to be a force for good in the modern world; and I am confident that together we will continue to be so for many years to come. I beg to move.
Lord Lang of Monkton (Con)
My Lords, I would very much like to contribute to the main debate today but my first duty and privilege is to speak to the report from your Lordships’ Constitution Committee on the constitutional implications of the referendum on Scottish independence. I am grateful that we are able to debate the report so soon after it was published, and to the many expert witnesses who gave evidence to us.
This is my first speech as chairman of the Constitution Committee and, before addressing the report, I put on record my thanks to my predecessor, the noble Baroness, Lady Jay of Paddington. I know I speak on behalf of the whole committee in saying how effective and skilful she was in the chair. The committee’s success in recent years is in large measure down to her.
I earnestly hope that the work embodied in our report on what might need to happen in the event of a yes vote will turn out to be redundant. However, the committee felt that there had been relatively little consideration of what the constitutional implications of such a vote would be. It is well to be prepared for the worst while striving to prevent it from arising.
It emerged from our inquiry that certain legal principles would govern the aftermath of a yes vote, some of which are founded in international law. Perhaps the most important is that the rest of the United Kingdom would retain the personality of the existing UK and thus become the continuator state. This would mean that it would retain the treaty obligations and membership of international organisations of the existing UK. For example, it would remain a member of the EU, the UN and NATO and would not have to apply to them anew. Scotland would become a new breakaway successor state. It would have to seek membership of international organisations and, where it does not already have them, create its own institutions. That was the overwhelming view in the evidence that we heard and we agreed with it. Whether by international precedent, share of population and territory or by recognition by other states, there is no room for doubt; all legal principle and convention point to that fact. No realistic alternative has been offered, not even by the Scottish Government.
This conclusion leads directly to the question of the division of assets and liabilities between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The most important established legal principle would be that they should be shared equitably between the two states. Fixed or immovable assets, such as government or military buildings, would automatically become assets of the state in which they were located. However, moveable assets, such as military equipment, would be subject to apportionment through negotiation. Similarly, the apportionment of liabilities, such as the national debt, would also be subject to negotiations. All this is already well recognised, but the status of the UK as the continuator state has particular importance where its institutions are concerned.
The precedents are clear beyond doubt: the institutions would remain with the United Kingdom. Whether it is the Bank of England or the National Lottery, the nation’s intelligence services or the BBC, the Supreme Court or the UK’s worldwide Diplomatic Service, its research councils, all its administrative and regulatory services and countless more institutions, all would remain with the United Kingdom. There would be no obligation on the UK Government to bring them forward for negotiation. A vote to leave the UK is a vote to leave the UK’s institutions. It is essential that those voting in September’s referendum understand what is at stake. That is why the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he made it irrevocably clear that a shared currency would not be agreed to, was on strong legal grounds and was able to do so without qualification.
I turn now to the significant implications of independence for the constitutional institutions of the UK. Evidently, legislation would need to be passed by this Parliament to facilitate Scottish secession from the union. That legislation would need to end Parliament’s legislative competence over Scotland, and it is likely that extensive consequential legislation would also be needed. In the period between a yes vote being delivered and the date of actual independence, Scotland would still be in the union although it would be known that independence was on its way.
We were taken by surprise when the Secretary of State for Scotland told us that:
“Unless and until the people of Scotland vote otherwise, the UK Government will continue to act on their behalf”,
and when a Foreign Office Minister said:
“If Scotland votes for independence, from that time on ministers in the UK Government will have a responsibility for people of the rest of the United Kingdom”.
Surely it cannot be right that from the moment of a yes vote, many months or possibly years before an actual date of independence, the UK Government would cease to act in the interests of the people of Scotland. I hope that my noble and learned friend will be able to clarify the Government’s position on this at the end of today’s debate. It would mean that for that transition period the UK Government would not take into account the interests of Scotland when making policy on reserved matters, and Scotland would not be represented internationally. This could leave Scotland in constitutional limbo.
We therefore recommended that the two Governments should reach an agreement immediately after any yes vote to clarify the international representation of Scotland, and that during the transition period the UK Government should take long-term decisions on reserved matters primarily or solely affecting Scotland only after consulting the Scottish Government. I think that your Lordships will agree on the logic and common sense of that; it seems to me to be inescapable.
The impact of independence on the House of Commons would also be profound. It is widely accepted that the 59 MPs representing Scottish constituencies would have to depart the Commons. The committee concluded that they should depart on the date on which Scotland secedes from the United Kingdom. Until then, their constituents would still have a right to representation at Westminster. Legislation to this effect would be necessary.
Although those MPs would remain Members during that period, it also seemed clear to us that they should not participate in parliamentary business that does not affect Scotland. As one of our witnesses said, that would be like,
“the West Lothian question on steroids”.
It may be that the Commons could make internal arrangements to address the matter or that Scottish MPs excuse themselves from votes on non-Scottish business. Whatever the answer, we think that the matter should be resolved quickly should there be a yes vote. It should certainly be settled and enshrined before the 2015 general election.
As your Lordships would expect, the committee turned its mind to the implication of independence for your Lordships’ House. Most Members of this House hold peerages of the United Kingdom. We do not represent territories. As this Parliament would remain the Parliament of the rest of the UK, Peers of the United Kingdom would continue to have the right to sit in it. However, under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, all Members of this House are deemed to be,
“resident, ordinarily resident and domiciled in the United Kingdom”,
for purposes of certain taxes. Unless that law were amended, it would mean that Members of the House who live in Scotland, currently estimated at more than 60 Members, would either have to pay tax in the rest of the UK or they would have to retire from the House on the date of independence.
Independence may also affect the six Members of the House who sit solely by virtue of a Scottish peerage. It would need to be decided whether they should be entitled to continued membership of the House on the basis of a Scottish peerage alone. However, these are matters that need not be decided until after 18 September, when I hope that such decisions will become unnecessary.
Turning to consideration of the negotiations that would follow a yes vote, it seems obvious that just as the seceding state of Scotland would negotiate in its own best interests, so the sole objective of the negotiators for the rest of the UK would be to secure the best outcome for the people of the rest of the UK. All other considerations flow from that. We heard different suggestions as to who should be represented on the rest of the UK’s negotiating team. We concluded that while it would be important for the Official Opposition and devolved Executives in Northern Ireland and Wales to be consulted during the negotiations, the actual negotiating team should most effectively be small and composed solely of representatives of the UK Government. That would, incidentally, follow the precedent of 1922 and would seem to offer the best prospect of successful negotiations within a reasonable time.
Related to that, we reached the conclusion, supported by our witnesses, that Scottish MPs, whether Back-Bench or Ministers, should not be on the negotiating team for the rest of the UK. Their duty as MPs would be to represent their Scottish constituents. That would conflict with the objective of the rest of the UK negotiating team to secure the best outcome for England, Northern Ireland and Wales. Nor did the committee think that Scottish MPs should play any part in debating or approving the negotiations; again, there would be a clear conflict of interest. Were there to be a yes vote, we recommended that the UK Government should put before Parliament a proposal to put these matters beyond doubt at an early date.
It would also be undesirable for either one or both of the negotiating teams to be unable to start work because of avoidable legal challenges. We therefore recommended that soon after any yes vote, a Bill should be introduced to this Parliament that would devolve power to the Scottish Parliament to make provision about a negotiating team for Scotland and to create a legal basis for the UK negotiating team. Such a Bill need not name the negotiators. The intention of it would be simply to put the legal basis of their position beyond doubt.
The committee also considered the timetable for negotiations. The Scottish Government have set out their proposed timetable, which would see Scotland becoming independent on 24 March 2016. We heard mixed views on how realistic this would be, but the key point is surely that the date has no formal status. It is an aspiration of the Scottish Government but the negotiations would take as long as they took. There is no constitutional principle involved and there would be no obligation on either side to meet a specific target date.
I hope that in producing this report the Constitution Committee has provided some clarity on what a decision taken by Scotland to vote for independence would mean in the short term for the constitution of the rest of the United Kingdom. Longer-term constitutional damage is harder to assess.
By way of an antidote, I turn from contemplating what would need to happen if there were a yes vote to the wider and more immediate debate itself and the need to press the arguments for voting no. I reflect that 700 years ago today we Scots won a great victory against overwhelming odds over an invading English army. It changed our history but brought us neither security, order nor prosperity, all qualities that give substance to the word “freedom”. It did not end the fighting, which went on. Just over 200 years later, we were the invading army and England won, but still the fighting continued. The lessons of Bannockburn make sense only when considered alongside the lessons of Flodden. Only in 1707, after the Treaty and Acts of Union that created one country—Great Britain—had abolished English and Scotland as separate states, did lasting peace break out, and with it prosperity, intellectual flowering and national security. Since then, except for Culloden when Scots fought on both sides, we have always stood steadfast together against common enemies and seen them off. Together we have prospered in peace and security.
Next week Her Majesty the Queen will come to Scotland to launch the biggest ship and the greatest defence vessel ever built in the United Kingdom. No part of the UK could have done it alone. That aircraft carrier, HMS “Queen Elizabeth”, is designed to serve the cause of peace, security and freedom for the next generation of all of us in this country and beyond. It is 100% British and a triumph of co-operation, to be launched at Rosyth but bringing together the workmanship of thousands of skilled workers there, on the Clyde, on the Tyne, at Portsmouth, at Birkenhead and in Devon. Nothing better exemplifies the extent to which all the peoples of the United Kingdom are better together. There is our future security. What a contrast it is to the alternative of a separate breakaway Scotland, isolated and unable to defend its own shores, let alone the vast areas of open skies and seas to the north and west. Not only would secession jeopardise Scotland’s own security, it would also blow apart the highly integrated nature of the UK’s defences, in which Scotland plays such an important role.
The referendum in September is not just about Scotland’s future; it is about the future of the whole United Kingdom. In striving to save Scotland for the union, we would also be saving our United Kingdom.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, the report of the Select Committee on the Constitution on the constitutional implications of the referendum on Scottish independence is a welcome addition to our debate today and to the debate that will take place over the coming months in Scotland. The noble Lord, Lord Lang, has introduced that report with the clarity that we would expect from him, and the whole House will welcome his appointment as the chairman of the Constitution Committee, given his history and his commitment to the issues on which he has spoken today and on other occasions. This is an informative, thoughtful and stimulating report, and I agree with many of the recommendations contained within it. I believe that it provides a strong framework for preparation and a guide to the judgments that will be required following a possible yes vote in September. I hope that the Government will respond within the two-month timetable that has been requested by the Committee, because if there is a yes vote in Scotland in September, we will need cool heads and steady hands to deal with the situation that emerges.
I also congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, the Advocate-General for Scotland, on his opening speech, which was, as we would expect from him, a positive case for the United Kingdom in these times. No one is more trusted, in my view, on home rule and devolution in Scotland than the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace. I am delighted that he is leading our debate today, and I hope that he plays a more prominent role in the campaign over the summer months.
I want to confine my remarks to three particular issues: first, the campaign; secondly, the choice; and, thirdly, the future. There are just under 100 days to go before the referendum on Scottish independence. I take no pleasure in seeing the prediction that I made come true—I may even have made it in your Lordships’ House—that, as the day came closer, the gap between the two sides in public opinion would come closer, too. Today, I am certain that we will hear speeches across your Lordships’ House that will be almost unanimously opposed to the principle and practice of Scottish independence, but at this early stage in the debate I want to say that there are good people on both sides of this debate in Scotland today. We should not allow the bad behaviour of some to diminish the passionately held views of others, who seek answers to the problems that they see in a complex world. All of Scotland deserves a better and higher level of debate than we have seen thus far.
About 250 years ago, Voltaire described Scotland as the place where, across Europe, we all look for our ideas of civilisation—dear knows what he would think today if he had followed this debate over the past few months. I urge the leaders of the yes campaign to do two things in particular: first, to make a real effort to stamp out the culture of bullying and intimidation that exists not just on the internet but in Scottish public life today; and, secondly, to discuss seriously the legitimate concerns people have about the option of Scottish independence and to answer questions more factually and accurately than perhaps has been the case so far.
Those who are in favour of Scotland’s membership of the United Kingdom need to raise their game, too. In a university abroad about six months ago, I judged a debate between two teams of students, one defending Scotland’s membership of the United Kingdom and one promoting Scottish independence. Those in favour of Scotland’s membership of the United Kingdom had read all the evidence and papers—many of them produced by Her Majesty’s Government—and become so convinced of the case that they went to the pub at lunchtime, became complacent and, despite having all the arguments, lost the debate comprehensively to those who were more focused, determined and clearer about their aspirations for the future of Scotland.
In the spirit of friendship to the campaign, I want to say three things. First, united campaigns win over divided campaigns. The lessons of 1979 and 1997 in Scotland are that divided campaigns do not succeed and united campaigns win. Secondly, if the Better Together campaign to retain Scotland’s membership inside the United Kingdom is to win, it is vital that it broadens its engagement with people outside the traditional groups of political leaders who currently dominate the campaign. It must engage with those who, through the 1980s and 1990s, fought for Scottish home rule and devolution and then participated in making it successful in the early years of the new Scottish Parliament. Thirdly, and most importantly, it needs to outline a positive vision for the future of Scotland inside the United Kingdom, campaigning not to protect the union and the established order but for a new order—a reformed United Kingdom with a new Scotland actively participating within it. The choice is not between the old United Kingdom and some more autonomy for Scotland but between home rule or devolution for Scotland as it exists today within the United Kingdom and independence or a separate state. We need to clarify that choice over these coming months, not detract from it.
The United Kingdom is the most successful voluntary political union in the history of the world. Within that, Scotland has managed to secure a level of autonomy that has seen Scotland as a nation improve and develop since 1999. We have seen decades of population decline reversed. We have seen two economic shocks—not one—where the UK helped and made all the difference. The first was in the early years of devolution, when electronics manufacturing—which the noble Lord, Lord Lang, did so much to bring to Scotland in the 1980s and 1990s—moved east and left Scotland with a real crisis of employment and economic growth. We have also seen improvements in Scotland’s health—for too long it was the sick country of Europe—and a vibrancy in our culture. There have been significant, huge improvements in things such as recycling and renewables because of devolved government attention.
That is the case for devolution and home rule within the United Kingdom; it is the case for a modern Scotland inside a United Kingdom that is more diverse and celebrates that diversity. If the case is made over the coming months not for a United Kingdom that is a single state but for a United Kingdom that is made up of a whole range of cultures, histories, traditions and futures pulling together in the national interest, then I believe that the people of Scotland will make a positive choice to stay and build a better United Kingdom for future generations—one that can protect our environment, protect our security and deal with economic shocks but seize economic opportunities, too; one that can enhance our quality of life, build a fairer society and do so as part of a community of nations.
Lord Stephen (LD)
My Lords, as has been said, this is a vitally important issue. It is the biggest issue facing the future not only of Scotland but of all of us here and all of us in the United Kingdom. Thursday 18 September is a very important day.
A great deal of very good work has been done by the committee and I commend the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, and the members of the committee on many aspects of this excellent report. Very good work has been done also by the Secretary of State for Scotland, Alistair Carmichael, and my noble and learned friend the Advocate-General. We now have a very solid and comprehensive list of reports from the UK Government setting out the case for keeping Scotland in the United Kingdom.
The leaders of all the Scottish political parties who oppose independence also deserve very significant praise. Willie Rennie, Johann Lamont and Ruth Davidson have done exactly the right thing by confirming the commitment of their parties to future constitutional change. Particular praise should go to my noble friend Lord Strathclyde and to the Conservative Party for the radical set of proposals that has been produced after, if I may say so, a few decades of slight reluctance.
It does political parties no credit whatever when individuals within them start to attack each other or suggest separate campaigning. Working together, as in the campaign to join the European Union back in the 1970s, is what impresses people; and what convinces them is the guarantee that there will be radical new powers for the Scottish Parliament in the event of a no vote in September, and when that guarantee is delivered by individuals such as Charles Kennedy, Gordon Brown and Ming Campbell and—if I may use the names by which they are known and more widely respected in Scotland—Annabel Goldie, John Reid and David Steel. These are the individuals who can be trusted to help deliver the no vote on 18 September.
In contrast with those names is the face of nationalism. When I first met Alex Salmond I sat next to him at a lunch in Aberdeen. I was a young councillor; he was a candidate. I was talking about Scottish politics and the Socialists, meaning, believe it or not, the Labour Party at that time. He checked me on that occasion and asked me to confirm which party I meant. Then he said, “Always remember, Nicol, there are two socialist parties in Scotland: the Labour Party and the SNP”.
Alex Salmond does not say that any more. At that time he may have been right; some nationalist parties are socialists. Many are right-wing and some are in the centre ground of politics. Some nationalist movements believe in producing a bigger state—bringing together the state of Germany or the state of Italy. Some believe in smaller states: Bosnia, Croatia, the Czech Republic or Scotland. Each is very different—one might say chameleon-like—apart from one thing. They will do whatever needs to be done to deliver the nation state that they believe in.
Therefore socialist nationalism of the 1980s—“We are the inheritors of Red Clydeside”, they used to tell us—has changed to modern, civic, soft nationalism. Alex Salmond has changed too. He is now moderate, smiles, is nice to the Opposition and keeps his temper—so they tell us. He does that not because that is the real Alex Salmond but to deliver nationalism, independence, separation.
What should be our response? There is a lot of talk of patriotism. I must confess to being instinctively uncomfortable with patriotism in politics. There are people who like to counter the SNP by saying, “I am just as patriotic as you, Mr Salmond”. In debate, it works quite well, but for me, patriotism is a bit like nationalism: it comes in many forms, not all of them good and positive; some of them are very negative. Patriotic politics, just like religious politics, can be volatile and nasty. We have seen that in recent years, we have seen that in recent days. We must avoid a volatile and nasty campaign.
The cybernats, the attack dogs of the nationalist movement, are not positive people. They can get very nasty. Their attacks on JK Rowling last week were nothing short of disgraceful. I am pleased that the Lord Advocate is considering prosecution of some of the more extreme haranguing that she received. However, it goes right to the top. The First Minister’s special adviser, still working for Alex Salmond to this day, attacked the mother of a disabled child who supported the Better Together campaign. The First Minister can do little better than say that there have been faults on both sides. That is not the sort of leadership that we should be looking for in this campaign. That is the dark, divisive side, the unacceptable face of nationalism.
In being endlessly positive about the good reasons for keeping this country in the United Kingdom, we should not forget the nature of the challenge we are facing. It will be crafty, clever campaigning against us. Everyone knows that economics will be at the heart of the campaign. The perceived wisdom is that if people believe that they will be better off by a few hundred pounds, it could swing the pendulum of their vote either way. On such does the fate of a nation hang. Surely the future of one of the most prosperous and successful nations on this planet should be decided on better grounds than that. We are told by the nationalists: “Risks? None. Dangers? None. Negatives? None. Threats? None”. Authoritative academic reports are rigged, muddled or misleading. I have twice been promised through my letterbox thousands of pounds more if I vote for independence. That is the nationalism that we face in 21st century Scotland.
I believe that we should be looking for a better way forward. At my heart, I am a liberal and a democrat. For me, those are enduring values. Nationalism is not what drives me; nor is patriotism. I believe in the values that put people and communities first. I believe in decentralisation of power, not in separation. I very much welcome the initiative by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and my noble friend Lord Purvis to take the initiative to try to achieve decentralisation of power right across the whole of the United Kingdom.
The people of Scotland and the people of the United Kingdom are best when we are internationalist in our values—values of interdependence and working together. Those are the values that should drive us in the 21st century, not the politics of nationalist division that blighted so much of the 20th century. The people of Scotland and the United Kingdom, working together, have done great things. We have produced great scientists, great poets, great politicians, great entrepreneurs, great economists and great people. That is positive politics, the politics of hope, the politics of what might be. That is why we should say loudly and decisively, “No thanks”, to independence on 18 September and yes to a new Scotland in a better, reformed United Kingdom.
Lord Wilson of Tillyorn (CB)
My Lords, it is very good to have this double-barrelled debate. One sentence in the gracious Speech on such a fundamental issue did not really seem a sufficient springboard for discussion.
I am one of those many Scots, in the past and the present, who have spent a lot of their career and working life outwith Scotland, but I feel myself immensely fortunate that, on retirement from public service 20-odd years ago, I was able to return to Scotland and have a number of different jobs in different areas of Scotland in the many years since then.
One of the most striking things on returning to Scotland in the early 1990s was that deep, deep sense of alienation from London institutions, from government and from Parliament. That struck one enormously. I therefore believe that the vote on devolution and the vote on re-establishing a Scottish Parliament was the right thing to do. Indeed, if anything, it should have been done rather earlier.
Now, there is a real sense that Edinburgh as a capital city has flourished since that period of devolution. Of course, Edinburgh has always been a marvellous city, but now you feel a greater sense of self-confidence in the artistic world, as well as in the political world. You can take the development of a huge number of cultural facilities—the Scottish National Gallery, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of Scotland, Our Dynamic Earth and so on—as examples of what has been happening, or you can take a much more prosaic figure. I checked on the number of passenger arrivals at Edinburgh Airport. In 1992, when I returned to Scotland, there were 2,500 arrivals per year. The latest figures I got were for 2012. The number was well over 9,000—a far greater increase than at any other airport in Scotland.
Of course, all this is not simply due to devolution and the establishment of a new Parliament. However, I suggest that it is part of it. I therefore rate devolution and the revival of the Scottish Parliament as a success. Of course, it takes time to establish a new parliament and for its members to get used to using it effectively. It has, however, been done pretty well. So, too, has the work of the present Scottish Government. One does not have to agree with all of their policies and not even with their main raison d’être to recognise that there are many hard-working, dedicated and effective Ministers dealing with the issues facing Scotland.
The question now is: why go further? Why go from an increasingly high degree of autonomy to independence? I can see why, for some people, it is attractive—maybe more so for young people who think, “This is exciting. It is not just a dull continuation of what was going on yesterday. We can experiment with new things. Perhaps I can play a greater role”. The awful thing, however, is that—to misuse that well known phrase—it is not just for Christmas. It goes on, and a vote for independence cannot easily be reversed: it would take decades at the very least.
I do not see this as a rather sterile argument about whether Scots are going to be £1,000 better off or £1,400 worse off, although the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, said that this might be a key issue, and I accept that. I see it far more as a question of whether it is right to dismantle a union which has been of such enormous value to Scotland and to the other nations of the United Kingdom.
The excellent report on the constitutional implications of the referendum—which were described just now by the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton—shows how complex many of the issues are. There are also many, many practical issues in setting up an independent state. You cannot help asking: is it really worth the effort of doing all this?
I shall mention one or two of the issues. Why set up a completely separate foreign service when at the moment there is a Scottish Government representative within a number of important British embassies, such as in Peking? Why set up completely new intelligence services? It is not dead simple. Why go through the trauma of setting up a separate Scottish army when existing Scottish regiments, and the Royal Regiment of Scotland, derived from such famous earlier regiments, have served both Scotland and the United Kingdom so well? Why replace the British Council—I should declare an interest as a former trustee and chair of its Scottish committee—with something different when the British Council serves Scotland so well around the world? Is it worth doing all these things? Surely it would be a great diversion from what is really needed to make Scotland continue to prosper, and what also, as other noble Lords have said, enables the United Kingdom to play such a major role in the world as it does at the moment. We have all benefited from the unity of the United Kingdom and from diversity within that unity.
I have one final point. I suggest that it is a great pity, to put it mildly, that the question is, “Should Scotland be an independent country?”. Most research shows that people like to say yes when they are asked a question; they do not really like to say no. It is therefore a great pity that those of us who take a positive view of the massive benefits of the union will have to tick a negative box. When I come round to putting a tick or an X, whichever it has to be, with my hand I will be doing that in the no box. But in my head and heart I shall be saying yes to the continuation of a union which has meant so much to Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom, yes to diversity within the union and yes to continuing the devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament, to bring effective government and the raising and spending of money closer to the people who are directly affected.
Lord Strathclyde (Con)
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham has regrettably been called away but I very much hope that we shall hear from him again on another occasion.
I am a unionist. I believe that because of our shared culture, economy and geography the people of these islands are better served by being part of the governance of the United Kingdom rather than being divided. I am Scottish and British; I have no difficulties with any of that. I wholly support my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness when he listed all the great things that Scotland has achieved over the past 300 years as part of this extraordinary union, rather than in spite of it.
However, there is a voice that is missing in this afternoon’s debate: the voice of Scottish nationalism. I know that this will sound strange, coming from me, but there is nothing like the power of debate. I do not actually know whether anybody is going to speak up in favour of breaking up the United Kingdom—perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, may be tempted to do so—but we need to hear another view. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, and his noble friend Lord Wigley will forgive me if I say that on this occasion, Welsh nationalism is not enough.
I very much regret that in my time in government, I did not succeed in getting Scottish nationalists into this House. I urge the Scottish National Party to nominate one of their number to sit in this House, and if not I urge Her Majesty’s Government to invite a Scottish nationalist to come and sit here. I can tell them from experience that the invitation of this honour is rarely refused. We all know that there are eloquent and capable Scottish nationalists—I will not name them for fear of damaging their chances of coming here or of embarrassing them—who would make excellent Peers even if we disagree with their views.
I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton has taken over as chairman of the Constitution Committee. He brings an experience, a knowledge and, if I may embarrass him for a moment, a wisdom that is shared by very few: that of being a former Secretary of State for Scotland, with all the complexities of that, and of being a Secretary of State for a UK-wide department in the Cabinet. I am sure that that experience will be brought to bear during the course of his chairmanship and that we will all be the richer for it. The strength of his report is to highlight the long and difficult process of division. The report is dry as dust and all the better for it. Let no one be under any illusions about the huge complexities of disentangling the British constitution.
As the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, pointed out just now in his examples, there are many things that few of us have thought about which would need to be disentangled and reinvented—and for what? We really are guddling about in the entrails of the ties that bind us. It would be much worse than any divorce that any of us have witnessed.
Last year, the leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, Ruth Davidson, invited me to chair a committee on the future governance of Scotland. The premise of this commission was a simple one: in the event of a no vote, what should be the position of my party in Scotland? Our analysis was also very simple. First, we said that the Scottish Parliament is an immensely powerful body. It has not always used the powers that it has available, but it is a very powerful body within the United Kingdon.
Secondly, the Scottish Parliament can spend an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money, but it does not raise any money. Therefore, our primary recommendation —to try to avoid that grievance culture that is sometimes apparent between Holyrood and Westminster—was that the Scottish Parliament should be responsible for raising income tax, setting the rates and the bands within Scotland, so that anybody earning money in Scotland should be paying income tax, and that income tax would go to the Scottish Parliament and should be spent in Scotland on the priorities of the Scottish Parliament. It is a substantial and visible tax paid by many, and an attempt to bridge the fiscal gap: the difference between what the Scottish Parliament raises and what it spends. I believe that this will begin to ensure a process of greater accountability.
We also made recommendations on improving legislative scrutiny within the Scottish Parliament and improving the checks and balances. But we also concluded—and this has already been apparent in the course of this afternoon’s debate—that the United Kingdom is no longer at ease with itself. The referendum campaign has exposed some serious misunderstandings about the United Kingdom and its role and about the role of this Parliament and those who sit in it. It has exposed many people who feel cut off from the processes and happy to accept that silvery-tongued line from Alex Salmond and others. The union has been threatened like never before.
I am not one who is hugely in favour of royal commissions and constitutional conventions. They have not always succeeded in the past. But in rediscovering the glue that holds us together, we should use the new, existing institutions that have been created over the course of the past 15 years. So, the final recommendation of my committee’s report was that we should create a committee of all the Parliaments and Assemblies of the United Kingdom to consider the developing role of the United Kingdom, its Parliaments and Assemblies and their respective powers, representation and financing.
The noble Lord, Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale, made some useful points precisely about this and it is important that we should try to get this right. If we do, we might just be able to create a stronger centre and a stronger acceptance of what the union Parliament is for—the House of Commons and House of Lords here at Westminster—with strong bodies in the countries and regions of the United Kingdom: in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This prize is definitely worth voting no for and building on the tremendous institutions that we already have.
Lord Richard (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, once again. We have not done it for a few years since he departed, so I take great pleasure in following him—and I agree with a great deal of what he had to say.
This is a debate about the effects of the Scottish referendum result on the rest of the United Kingdom. I therefore hope that it is not totally inappropriate that someone who is Welsh should now comment. I declare an interest at the outset: I am as passionate about Wales as Alex Salmond is about Scotland. I have equal respect for the history, traditions and culture of Wales as he probably does for those of Scotland. Additionally, I have to recognise that Wales has a distinction that Scotland lacks; namely, a working, living language. I also believe firmly and deeply that Wales is a nation. It is not a glorified county council: nor is it really a geographical region. Its past and the way in which it has jealously guarded its culture and way of life give it a national character.
Having said that, I am none the less convinced that the future of Wales lies within the United Kingdom and not outside it. The advantages of Welsh association within the UK are apparent. Over the years it has brought Wales relative prosperity and a standard of living which I do not think we could conceivably have achieved had we been an independent country of merely some 3 million people. The United Kingdom has given us a degree of stability and economic protection that would be jeopardised in the event of independence.
It is not for me, as a Welshman, to enter into the details of the debate on the Scottish campaign. I shall say only this: the note produced by the Library of the House of Lords should perhaps be compulsory reading for all the combatants in this debate. It is comprehensive and accurate and, as far as I can judge, it takes a neutral view. It clearly demonstrates—this has emerged in the course of the debate so far—the extraordinary complexity of the process of Scottish independence. The number of institutions that would have to be amended, changed or removed and the amount of institution building that would have to take place inside Scotland if it were to come out of the United Kingdom mean that it would be an extraordinarily complex and a very detailed and daunting prospect.
As for the benefits that the Scottish National Party claims will inevitably flow from independence, the claims are excessively optimistic, to put it mildly. They seem to be based on a Panglossian view that everybody else is going to be nice to an emerging Scotland. I do not think that that is necessarily true for a moment. I do not think it is true of the rest of the United Kingdom that we will be particularly nice to an emerging Scotland that has just rejected us. As far as the European Union is concerned, it does not follow that it would welcome Scotland in with open arms. I can think of a number of countries that almost certainly would not welcome Scotland in with open arms. There would have to be a fresh application to join, there would have to be detailed negotiations and there would have to be a transitional period before Scotland could become a full member. During that period, a lot of the benefits that at present come from the EU to Scotland would presumably cease—because they go to the United Kingdom, not to Scotland. I suspect that the agricultural subsidy that goes from Brussels to Scottish farmers would have to cease during that period of association. I cannot believe that is very much in the interests of Scotland.
Nor does the economic arithmetic seem to fit. Trying to look at it as objectively as I can, the Scottish case seems to be based on a series of economic assumptions, almost all of which are on a best-case basis rather than a worst-case basis. If everything goes right, perhaps it will work. But in this world, you cannot guarantee that everything is going to go right with this sort of process, as complex and difficult as it will be. It therefore seems to me that there are dangers in this whole process.
However, the matter does not rest there. I am in favour of devolution. Indeed, a committee on the powers of the Welsh Assembly, which I had the honour of chairing in 2004, still forms the basis for my thinking on this matter. It is the next stage after the referendum that is important. It is said that one consequence of a no vote could be a change in the relationship between Scotland and the rest of the UK. Together with many others, I believe that a no vote would result rather in further consideration of the constitutional framework of the United Kingdom as a whole.
One interesting thing that seems to be happening is the gradual emergence of a consensus that the present constitutional structure of the United Kingdom is no longer fit. Too much power is concentrated at the centre and too little has been transferred to the nations and regions of the UK. It is a mess, grossly asymmetrical and, frankly, increasingly ineffective. Various suggestions are being made on the issue of the further devolution of powers to Scotland in the event of a no vote. All the major parties now seem to be in favour of more powers being transferred from Westminster to Holyrood.
In parentheses, I make the point that, if they are transferred to Holyrood, they certainly need to be transferred to Cardiff and Belfast. I do not believe that the priority in the event of a no vote should be just to consider the devolution of further powers; it should be to have a long, hard look at our existing constitutional structures, which would have to include an examination of the possibility of developing regional or representative structures within England. At present, in the quasi-federal system that seems to be emerging, one of the main problems is the size of England in relation to the other nations. The exact position of London and the other major cities after any change in the constitution is also profoundly difficult to clarify.
These are great and difficult issues, but something has to be done. We really cannot continue with this lopsided concentration of powers, held together by allegiance to the Queen and a rather looser one to the Westminster Parliament. The West Lothian and Merthyr Tydfil questions are not going to go away; indeed, they are perhaps becoming more, not less, urgent. If they are going to be joined by the Marylebone conundrum—consideration of the powers that London may have in future—something has to be done.
There is strong merit in the idea of establishing a major inquiry into those constitutional issues. Whether it is called a convention or a royal commission matters not greatly, but it needs to be wide-ranging in its agenda and comprehensive in its membership. It will require intense deliberation and may take some time. It may end up with a proposal for a written constitution or it may not—I do not know how it would come out. These would be uncharted waters, but so they were for the Americas in 1776. What is important is that we should now start this process, and the Scottish referendum will give us that opportunity.
Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow a Welsh voice in this debate about the future of the United Kingdom, which is what the debate is about; it is not just about Scotland. I entirely agree with the concluding words of the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and I shall come back to them in a moment.
One thing that I have found dispiriting about the public debate in Scotland so far is that it has concentrated too much on whether it will be cheaper or more expensive to get out of the union. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, is quite right that it is missing the point to argue about £1,000 here or £1,400 there. We all know that divorce is an expensive business, but if it is the right thing to do we must bear the cost. My belief is that it is the wrong thing to do and, therefore, the cost is irrelevant. What we ought to be arguing about—and I welcomed the speech of my noble and learned friend, because he concentrated on this—is the benefits of the union and the concept of a reformed union after a no vote in September. I think that that is the right way to go.
There have been a lot of debates about how long it would take for Scotland to become independent, if there were a yes vote. I do not believe for a second that the nationalist Government are right to say that it can be done in six months; that is preposterous, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Richard, has just spelt out. One cannot sort out the currency, membership of the European Union and defence structures all within six months. An academic said last week that it would take 10 years. That is perhaps a little excessive, but certainly it would take some time and during that awkward period between a yes vote and actual independence Scotland would be in some kind of limbo; we should be clear about that.
However, if there is a no vote, we should be positive about how we move forward on the back of the declaration by the three political parties in Scotland. My great guru in these matters was Jo Grimond, who wrote many years ago:
“I do not like the word devolution as it has come to be called. It implies that power rests at Westminster, from which centre some may be graciously devolved. I would rather begin by assuming that power should rest with the people who entrust it to their representatives to discharge the essential tasks of government. Once we accept that the Scots and the Welsh are nations … we must accord them parliaments which have all the normal powers of government, except for those that they delegate to the United Kingdom government or the EEC”.
It has always seemed to me that that is the better starting point for discussing what should happen after 18 September.
I am glad to say that we have some new converts to the cause of a federal or quasi-federal constitution. Gordon Brown, with all his experience as a former Chancellor and former Prime Minister, wrote a very powerful essay in the New Statesman last week, which states:
“No one can now ignore the basic fact that the United Kingdom is no longer and will never again be the all-powerful centralised unitary state of the constitutional textbooks. With one parliament, two legislative assemblies and a high-powered London authority taking powers from the centre, Britain is not the unitary state we were taught about at school”.
He is right about that. He goes on in the same essay to say:
“The system of sharing across the UK creates a form of equality between the citizens of the four nations that no other group of countries can match for its depth and sophistication and this is arguably the defining characteristic of the Union today”.
These are wise and profound words, of which people in Scotland should take account.
An intriguing, additional argument has been put forward by Alan Riley, professor of law at City University —namely, that the advantage of the UK having a written constitution is that of protection against mission creep from Brussels, which so exercises politicians and press alike. He writes:
“A British version would, like the German law, set out the major institutions of the state, set out principles and enumerate fundamental rights. The British Supreme Court would then be able to police the borders of the union’s jurisdiction”—
that is, the European Union’s jurisdiction—
“in a similar fashion to the German courts”.
Again, I think that that is a powerful argument for looking forward to some form of written constitution and the development of a quasi-federal constitution for our country.
I find that many people in Scotland on the yes side argue about the advantages historically of the Scots making their mark in the world. That is undeniable—for example, the Jardines and the Mathesons in the Far East. However, they forget that many of the Scottish heroes of whom we are most proud were dependent on mutual support from English organisations. For example, David Livingstone’s remarkable exploits were carried out on behalf of the London Missionary Society, while the Selkirk-born Mungo Park, who died on the River Niger, relied on the support of the African Association in London. This is true of our inventors as well, of whom we are all very proud. Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin but developed its use at St Mary’s Hospital in London. James Watt developed his steam engines in Bristol and Cornwall and John Logie Baird developed his television in Hastings. These people, of whom we are so proud and whom the nationalists talk up, were all dependent on the mutual support of the United Kingdom for the work that they did.
In my first general election manifesto when I was party leader, I called for reform of the House of Lords, but my wording was carefully chosen. I stated:
“The House of Lords should be replaced by a new, democratically chosen, second chamber which includes representatives of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom, and UK members of the European Parliament”.
If you look back to the Bryce commission of 1918, which recommended that a reformed House be indirectly elected by Members of the Commons, here is the possibility of a reformed senate—an upper Chamber of this Parliament—being elected by Members of the Commons, the European Parliament and the devolved Assemblies, and being a real, quasi-federal institution. That is why I welcome what my noble friend Lord Strathclyde had to say about what could happen after 18 September—a coming together of such people into some kind of constitutional convention or commission, in which this House could play a distinguished part in the future.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)
My Lords, I am glad to follow my fellow Knight of the Thistle, as the third of three members of the Order of the Thistle speaking in this debate.
We should not be in any way defensive about the fact that this debate is taking place here in the Lords and that there is no representative of nationalism and separatism here in the Chamber. After all, the SNP was once a republican party, it was once against NATO and it was once a socialist party. It has changed its stance on a whole series of issues, so it should accept any invitation given.
A lot of issues will be covered in the debate and I could say many things, but I want to focus on the future of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent in the light of the proposals being put forward by the Scottish Government for the referendum. In the document published last week, a draft constitution for an independent Scotland, the Scottish Government, the SNP, made it clear that the,
“timetable for removal of Trident would be a priority for negotiations, with a view to achieving removal within the first term of an independent Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government would also propose, for the permanent constitution, a constitutional prohibition on nuclear weapons being based in Scotland”.
They are therefore now proposing to make the expulsion of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent a fixture in a written constitution for Scotland.
Some 8,900 people work at Faslane, in and around Her Majesty’s Clyde submarine base—plus there are a lot of other people in the supply chain, all of whom are endangered by this proposal. In addition, Britain’s position in the world, perhaps even the safety of the world, is prejudiced by this casual approach to the independent deterrent. So that is going to be in the written constitution—quite neat, is it not? In doing that, the SNP will remove from future generations the right to take a vital defence decision in any subsequent parliamentary debate. What price democracy and the right of the Scottish people to make a choice?
The draft constitution published last week will apparently be the subject of “consultation”. Sadly, we all know what that means in the new Scotland. Presumably that will be it. Therefore, based on one current SNP policy—indeed, obsession—there will be no turning back. Perhaps another referendum will be proposed to anchor this embryonic constitution. There is nothing about that in the document but I recall that, when I proposed a referendum on behalf of the Labour Party in 1996 to anchor the devolved Scottish Parliament in this land, the SNP howled me down.
This approach to the deterrent is strange on at least two counts. First, the four most recent opinion polls in Scotland on the subject show, at worst, a split view and, at best, a majority of the Scottish people in favour of retaining the nuclear deterrent. Polls have been commissioned by the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Ashcroft, and, only a few weeks ago, the Sunday Post newspaper; all showed a majority in Scotland supporting Britain’s deterrent. Last week, the Herald revealed that the British Social Attitudes survey confirmed all those polls. For the SNP to claim that the overwhelming majority of the Scottish people are against the deterrent is just plain wrong; to now use a constitutional trick to weld in a ban on the deterrent is a democratic outrage.
The other contradiction in the SNP’s policy relates to being in NATO. NATO is a nuclear alliance. That is in its fundamental strategic concept, accepted by all its members, which says that as long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will “remain a nuclear alliance”. The Herald said quite perceptively in its editorial a week last Friday:
“There is also the question of the SNP’s stance on Trident: would the US and Nato be relaxed about one of the nuclear powers being cut in two? President Obama’s comments would suggest he is worried”.
Since then he has been joined in his apprehension about the break-up of Britain by Mrs Hillary Clinton, the Pope and the Prime Minister of China. Are they all wrong and only Alex Salmond is right?
The Herald’s sister newspaper, a quite independent newspaper called the Sunday Herald, which has now declared itself for independence, wrote in an editorial last April that,
“there is a world of difference between a state rejecting nuclear weapons for itself, and a state disarming a reluctant neighbour. That is Salmond’s scenario”.
It went on:
“For Salmond to have credibility on this, he must produce evidence Nato would side with Scotland over the UK on Trident”.
I do not think that the paper has seen any evidence—I wrote to the editor asking whether he had—because there is no such evidence at all.
I negotiated the entry into NATO of seven new eastern European countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. For them there was no picking or choosing. They and all the existing members of NATO accept the principle and the practice of a nuclear alliance. There are assuredly some non-nuclear members of NATO, but there are no anti-nuclear members of NATO—nor could there be. There were difficult negotiations and talks on the Baltic states, with President Putin; on Slovenia, which was having a referendum; and on Slovakia, whose previous Prime Minister and possible future Prime Minister at that time were bitterly anti-NATO. A host of other complications were involved in that process. I know that entry to NATO is neither easy nor automatic. One vote against is a total veto.
Putting the position much more eloquently than I can is Mr Patrick Harvie, who, as the Scots among us will know, is the former leader of the Scottish Green Party, now one of the parties in alliance for a yes vote. He said last year:
“The idea that we sign up to a nuclear alliance, the implication of which is to ask other countries to deploy nuclear weapons on our behalf, and then have a debate about whether they should be moved from the Clyde is a nonsense”.
That is exactly right. There is a dishonesty at the heart of the SNP’s policy on Trident, so it resorts to ever more extreme gimmicks—such as this constitutional ban—while all the time seeking to reassure the public that Scotland will, after separation, continue to enjoy the collective security of NATO, the most successful defence alliance in history. It is neither credible nor honest and it is unworthy of a Scottish political party.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity for those of us from other parts of the United Kingdom to express our views on the implications for all of us of the proposal for Scottish independence. I also warmly welcome the Constitution Committee’s report, which had the foresight to set out the consequences for all of us should the Scottish people vote yes. This area has been largely swept away under the carpet because people have not felt it appropriate to face up to some of these matters lest that encourages the yes campaign, et cetera. Given the significance of the proposal in front of us, it would have been foolhardy for Parliament not to have at least looked at the long-term consequences of the proposal for the rest of us.
I am bound to say, and this was brought forward earlier in the debate, that what has puzzled me most about the campaign for independence has been the assertion that because Scotland probably has a higher GDP than the rest of the United Kingdom, that should be the plank from which to launch independence. Surely the logic of that argument is that it is best deployed by those who want to stay in the United Kingdom. It is precisely because of Scotland’s membership of the United Kingdom that it is in the position that it is in. If there was a union that was clearly failing the people of Scotland economically, Scotland would not have the economic position that it has. Indeed, it may argue that it was in a better place before the union, but the fact is that the union came about precisely because of a financial crisis. Therefore, what has happened in the intervening years has been an improvement.
However, I believe that we ain’t seen nothing yet. There is much more opportunity for greater improvement. The noble Lord, Lord Lang, in a previous contribution earlier this year set out why we could review the constitution of the United Kingdom and what unionism could look like in the future. That is an element that has been lacking in the debate so far. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, in a previous discussion, raised the question of the European Union, and I know that this matters a great deal to many people in Scotland. The noble Lord said—I think I recall correctly—that perhaps the United Kingdom Government should assist the Scottish Government and have an early negotiation to see whether it is possible to help the people of Scotland formally. I do not detect that there is an appetite for that in the Government, and indeed why would the United Kingdom Government want to take on that role? An independent country negotiates its own treaty; it does not subcontract that out to somebody else, least of all to the Government of the country it has just sought to leave. Therefore, I do not think that that will happen.
Things are happening in other countries in the European Union. In Catalonia, there is growing demand for independence from Spain, but it is inconceivable to me that the Spanish Government—and they are not the only ones—would encourage and clear the path for Catalans to leave and become independent. Therefore, taking into account the self-interest of other members of the European Union, I do not see that they will be in the mood to clear the path and make it easy for Scotland to enter the European Union under favourable terms in the short term. That is a huge issue. It has been glossed over but, as has just been mentioned, all the links and dependencies that Scotland has in the European Union could be thrown into jeopardy.
To deal with other issues that are not specifically economic, the union is not all about arithmetic. I take my own region of Northern Ireland as an example. We are hewn from the same rock as the people of Scotland in many cases, and we have much in common. We have an industrial heritage and we suffered in many cases from the downstream consequences of that heritage. We have soldiered together for centuries. We share different religious and sporting traditions, and we share our geography. Our history is so intertwined that the idea of separation fills many of us with dread.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, said, of course Scotland could survive on its own. I think that it would survive with a much lower standard of living, but of course it could survive, and the Scottish people have the right to take off in that direction. However, I must say to them that there are downstream consequences for the rest of us. On behalf of my party, the Ulster Unionist Party, and as our name suggests, I appeal to the people of Scotland not to leave us. We are partners and share many of the same aspirations. We are literally kith and kin. We would not be well served by their departure. I hope that they will stay with us. As the noble Lord, Lord Lang, so eloquently put it, we can work together to mould a stronger and better union.
The people of Scotland ran this country in the previous Government. The Prime Minister was a Scottish MP, as was the Chancellor from the commencement of that Government until the end of it and the Secretary of State for Defence, as well as the Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Department of Health and other departments. The people of Scotland, through their representatives in Parliament, were in the commanding heights of the previous United Kingdom Government only a few years ago. They invited President Obama to come to the G8 in Scotland. Prime Minister Brown was at the centre of attempts to solve the financial crisis. In other words, Scotland, like many of our regions, including that of our Welsh colleagues, punched way above its weight. That will not be possible, with the greatest of respect, in an independent Scotland. Stay with us; work with us; and the next 300 years will be far better than the last.
Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Strathclyde referred to the Scottish Conservatives’ Commission on the Future Governance of Scotland report. I understand that it has had widespread coverage in Scotland but very little down south. That is a pity because it is well worth reading. It sets out proposals for a strengthened Scottish Parliament in the context of a no vote in the referendum, based on the strong Conservative principles of responsibility, transparency and accountability. It is particularly interesting in the context of accountability, with its proposals in relation to income tax and the closing of the fiscal gap.
I want mainly to concentrate on the Select Committee report. There have been many reports over the past year or more from the UK Government, the Scottish Government and both Houses of this Parliament on the many crucial economic, fiscal, defence, currency and international issues that the referendum involves. How much I agree with all the excellent points so well expressed by my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace and his opening comments on that. This report is the first proper analysis of the constitutional and parliamentary issues, as my noble friend Lord Lang made clear in his outstanding speech. It is clear from the report how crucial they are. The report is a riveting and impeccable analysis and I warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, and her committee on it.
I wish to stress three points. First, if there is a yes vote, it is extremely unlikely that the negotiations can be completed by May 2016. It took our Economic Affairs Committee nine months to complete its early analysis of the economic implications. Since then it has taken both Governments about a year to do the detailed reports on all the issues that need to be covered.
It is clear that on the currency issue Scotland will not be able to retain the pound, but much flows from that for the negotiations. It is clear that Scotland will have to negotiate on entry to the EU and the eurozone. That will take time, with an uncertain outcome. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, has just made clear the position on NATO. On everything else the negotiations will be massive and complicated, as the noble Lord, Lord Richard, pointed out. They are far-reaching in their implications and with parliamentary approvals required. Meanwhile there will be a UK general election in the middle and no certainty as to the outcome of that, possibly involving a change in the UK Government’s negotiating position on key issues, as paragraph 93 points out. There is therefore the possibility of reopening parts of the negotiations already working towards agreement; paragraph 116 of the report makes the points on that very well. I agree with the report and my noble friend Lord Lang today that any negotiations should take as long as necessary and should not be foreshortened in order to meet a deadline set by one party to those negotiations.
Secondly, there is the position of the Scottish MPs prior to independence. It is, as the Secretary of State for Scotland stated in paragraph 101 of the report, blindingly obvious that no Scottish MPs could be part of the negotiating team for the rest of the UK, nor could MPs from Scottish constituencies be involved in voting on any measures concerning the outcome of the negotiations, nor indeed in holding the negotiators for the rest of the UK to account. As paragraph 135 of the report makes clear, and this is worth repeating:
“We conclude that MPs for Scottish constituencies should not be involved in holding the negotiators for the rest of the UK to account, nor in voting on any measure which ratifies the outcome of the negotiations. In the event of a ‘yes’ vote”—
this is the key point—
“we recommend that the Government put before Parliament a proposal that would put this matter beyond doubt before the 2015 election”.
I agree with that.
This brings me to my final point. It is clear to me that Scottish MPs elected to the UK Parliament cannot continue to serve in that Parliament after independence day, so I agree with the report on this point. I note the observations in paragraph 66 by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who will be speaking later, that under current legislation all MPs are elected to serve a full term and that:
“Previous changes to representation, the franchise or the distribution of seats have come into force at the subsequent general election”.
In this case, I believe that that would not be tolerated by voters in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. As my noble friend Lord Lang pointed out, it would be the West Lothian question—although I would put it as “the West Lothian question in spades”. Legislation to remove these Scottish MPs after independence would be essential. What would the SNP Government say if there were many MPs from English constituencies in a Scottish Parliament, perhaps even holding the balance? This could have profound implications for the rest of the UK Government at that time and involve the possible disruption of another early election at a time when, given all the economic, world and security issues facing us, we would least want it.
We have tended to focus on all the other substantial issues of an independence vote so far. We owe a debt of gratitude to the Select Committee for bringing out so clearly and so compellingly issues that are just as important as the economic and defence ones. I was born and brought up in Scotland and I owe so much to the values, benefits and attitudes that my Scottish education gave me. At a time of such turbulence and challenge in the world today, given the huge constitutional upheaval and parliamentary changes of a yes vote so well identified in this report, and given especially the benefits to Scotland and the rest of the UK that have been so well articulated by the Minister today, I profoundly hope that the United Kingdom will stay united.
Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, made an important point in his speech on the Loyal Address: that this House should have more general debates on a whole range of subjects, whereas we seem to spend so much of our time discussing the lacunas—important lacunas—in undigested House of Commons Bills. I therefore welcome this debate to discuss the enormous constitutional implications of the possible break-up of the United Kingdom. It is blindingly obvious that if there is a yes vote, there will be substantial implications for England, Wales and Northern Ireland too. Yes or no, the case for a constitutional convention to look at the role of the nation states within the United Kingdom becomes stronger every day.
We, the people of England and Wales, have not had the opportunity of a referendum although we, too, are much affected by it. The Prime Minister took it upon himself to sign the Edinburgh agreement in direct negotiations with Mr Salmond. I was reminded the other day that the Act of Union and the treaty concerned the union of two Crowns: the Crown of England, which included Wales, and the Crown of Scotland. I believe that it was a grave mistake for the Edinburgh agreement not to provide for consultations with the citizens from the other parts of the union. I particularly regret that the people of Wales—some of whom I had the honour of representing for more than 40 years in the Commons, and serving as their Secretary of State for nearly six years—were not given the opportunity to play a similar role to the Scots in the contemplated divorce in the constitution of which they, too, are an important part.
Come to think of it, my ancestor, Morgan Jenkin, who in 1706 was farming in Cardiganshire, was not consulted either. Our extended family still farms in broadly the same area, of which I had the honour to be the lord lieutenant. I thought that with the coming of universal franchise and democracy, we had moved on.
As the architect of the original Welsh devolution proposals, with our Government, which after many years of blood, sweat and tears, were agreed to by both Westminster and the people of Wales, I can be quite sure that whatever the result in Scotland, there will be repercussions for Wales, and that the present Wales Bill now going through Parliament will have to be looked at again. We may indeed be driven to look radically at federalism for all the countries of the United Kingdom.
From my point of view, however, the top priority must be for the Government to deal with the Barnett formula, which is unfair in Wales and which Governments of all parties have failed to address. With the independence of Scotland, the Barnett formula will, I suspect, be irrelevant.
I turn briefly to the West Lothian question, which the McKay commission sought to answer. Not unexpectedly, the matter is gathering dust in Whitehall’s pigeon-boxes despite the original coalition agreement. The Government have not responded to the committee’s report, but I welcome the Minister’s statement today that we can expect a reply by 16 July. Given that the two debates have been conflated together, I might have thought that there would have been a little effort to expedite the reply to meet the needs of this debate.
It is unfortunate that insufficient thought was given at the time of the Edinburgh agreement to the closeness of the date of the Scottish referendum and the fixed date of the general election in 2015. Looking at it in terms of the interests of the Westminster Parliament, I do not know why our Prime Minister agreed to the closeness of the two dates given the possible effect on the remainder of the country. If the referendum were to go one way then, as we have just been reminded, the 59 elected Scottish MPs will be in the strange position of having been elected to serve for the whole of the Parliament—as I think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, reminded the committee—but then be expected, on independence, to vacate their seats at Westminster. They could not in any shape or form continue at Westminster following independence. The implications for the colour of the incoming Government in 2015, and for the coming months until independence, are enormous. These should have been thought out in agreeing to the dates of the events—the election on one hand and the referendum on the other.
The report makes a very important point at paragraph 63. It states:
“In the event of a ‘yes’ vote, the status of MPs for Scottish constituencies in the period between the referendum and independence day should be resolved quickly, and certainly before the 2015 general election”.
The report rightly points out in paragraph 44 that,
“legislation to facilitate Scottish secession … may not need to be extensive”,
but that consequential legislation would. The amount of legislation needed for the change in the role of the Lord Chancellor was chickenfeed compared with the extensive consequential legislation that will be needed in the event of Scottish independence. These are the problems that will have to be faced. I regret that those who drafted and—much more importantly—agreed to the Edinburgh agreement did not consider these real problems as deeply as they might have.
My earnest hope is that Scotland will not cross this particular Rubicon. If it did, it would be an enormous loss to the continuing contribution of the Scottish people, to the benefit of us all, to our work at Westminster and elsewhere, which has lasted for 300 years. I am grateful to the Constitution Committee for drawing our attention to this series of vital issues, only a few of which I have been able to touch on. I suspect that many more important issues will emerge in the coming months.
The Earl of Glasgow (LD)
My Lords, I have been so impressed by all the speeches so far in this debate that I feel that my shortened contribution may seem superfluous, but I am so concerned about Scotland’s fate that I felt it my duty to take part. As the date of the referendum draws closer my concerns grow stronger.
A year or so ago we Scots were assured that no more than 30% of our countrymen would actually vote for independence in a referendum and so we did not concern ourselves unduly. Many of the English displayed a deignful indifference and seemed almost unaware that this fateful referendum was coming up. But now, at last, most Englishmen have come to appreciate that the possible break-up of the United Kingdom will affect them profoundly as well, in spite of the fact that they will have no say in its outcome.
We have all got to wake up to the fact that the cunning and some say dirty tricks of Alex Salmond have made the prospect of an independent Scotland a real possibility. Yet the idea of Scotland actually leaving the union is not just frightening, it is unreal. It is almost impossible for me to contemplate the break-up of the United Kingdom. How could it possibly benefit the Scots? Earlier speakers have pointed this out so well.
My countrymen, who have had a disproportionate influence on world affairs over the past 300 years, will become no more influential than the republican Irish. Which of the world powers is going to care about what Scotland thinks? Without Scotland, how much less will the world powers concern themselves with England —or with whatever is left of the United Kingdom; I do not want to denigrate the importance of Wales and Northern Ireland—and how much less still if, two years later, it votes to leave the European Union?
How will independence affect the identity of Scots like me who feel both Scottish and British? With a home in Scotland can I no longer be British? Will I be stopped at the border every time that I travel between England and Scotland? What will happen to all those Scots who live and work south of the border? Will their place of birth still be their home, or will they become foreigners in their native land? In any event, I imagine that we will all have to be issued with new passports.
The SNP is promising much to the Scots if they vote for independence, but why does Mr Salmond assume that it will be in power if Scotland does vote for independence? What will happen if Scotland votes for independence but a Labour Government win the Scottish election? Will we still, for instance, have to scrap our nuclear submarine bases? What about the pound as Scotland’s currency? The pound is a British currency. It does not make sense to me.
Total Scottish independence simply does not make sense and yet it seems that Alex Salmond has persuaded a large number of Scottish people that it does. Nationalism drives them on and yet nationalism, as has been proved so often in the past, is a dangerous and sometimes sinister thing. This was well pointed out by my noble friend Lord Stephen. Nationalism divides people as well as countries and breeds bitterness and hatred, which have already crept into the SNP’s referendum campaign. Salmond’s declaration that an independent Scotland will be a friend to England may be his honest belief, but that is not the way that some of his followers see it. Now is surely the time when we need nations to work more closely together, not to split up. Of course more devolution for the Scottish Parliament and more control by Scotland of its own affairs make sense, but the break-up of the United Kingdom does not. It is nothing short of madness.
As I said in my earlier speech, a week ago, my ancestor, the first Earl of Glasgow, was one of the architects of the Act of Union in 1707. In the decade before that, England and Scotland were close to being at war with each other, particularly over the English colonies in the Caribbean. The union bound them together and resulted in what Simon Schama described as,
“the most successful multinational partnership in modern history”.
What possible reason is there for seeking a divorce now? Surely the SNP’s objection to a Conservative coalition Government with whom it might not agree is not a good enough reason.
It seems to me that even the most ardent Scottish nationalist can appreciate that it is in his country’s best interest to retain his bigger and more powerful neighbour as a partner rather than returning to the days before 1707 when it was his rival. I pray that my fears about the break-up of the United Kingdom will not be realised and that the Better Together campaign can talk sense into the 20% or so of my fellow countrymen who appear not to have decided how they are going to vote. I would like the Government’s assurance—not just that of my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace, of whom I have no doubt—that they are doing everything in their power to save the United Kingdom.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
My Lords, I was struck by the litany quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, of Scots who grew, and made good, through the union, living or working outside Scotland. As I rise, the pride of English footballing prowess is trotting on to the pitch to play the might of Costa Rica. It seems appropriate to recall Mr Archie Gemmill, who 36 years ago today scored the finest World Cup goal ever—at the time. Had he stayed in St Mirren, had he stayed in Paisley, had he not come under the influence of the genius Mr Clough, would he have attained the heights that he did? If Sir Alex Ferguson had stayed in St Mirren, who sacked him I believe, would he be the legendary figure that he is now? I really hope that we are not forced to choose between being Scottish and being British. If we are, both sides will lose.
This is an excellent report and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, for introducing it. I want to speak only on the premise, which is the premise of the report, that Scotland opts for secession. I hope and believe that Scotland will not opt for secession. What I would have said on the assumption that Scotland chooses to remain in the union has been very well said by the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord Richard, and I have little to add to that.
On the premise that Scotland opts for secession, I agree with almost everything in the report. I pause on paragraph 97, where the committee recommends that the necessary negotiation between Scotland and the rest of the UK before independence should be conducted, on the rest of the UK side, by a team from the Government alone. Speaking as a member of a disenfranchised diaspora of Scots, I see certain defects in the Edinburgh agreement: the franchise, the threshold, the question. There is something to be said for having an all-party team negotiating in that situation. I register that as my one doubt about the recommendations of the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Lang.
I hope that in response to the plea made by the noble Lord, Lord Lang, the Minister will assure us that the Government’s policy on international representation is not as described in the report at paragraphs 47 and 49. The committee recommends that in the period between a vote for secession but before the act of secession,
“an agreement be reached between the two governments immediately following a ‘yes’ vote to clarify the basis of such representation for Scotland in the period between that vote and independence day”.
That follows quotations from two Ministers who appear to be arguing that at the moment when the Scots vote for secession but before the moment of secession the United Kingdom Government will no longer be interested in representing their interests abroad.
That cannot be right, as the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, said. If a Scot is in trouble abroad, he will be entitled to UK consular protection. If a Scottish company needs support, it will be entitled to the support of the UK Government. While the Scots remain UK taxpayers, they are entitled to receive the support and assistance of the Government at home and abroad. If an issue arises in the EU of particular relevance to Scotland—for example, fisheries—in the period after the vote but before secession, the UK Government must devote all their efforts to ensuring the best possible deal for the Scots. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us that that would indeed be the position of the Government. The Minister knows his Burke:
“Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom”.
It would be mean, petty, vindictive and wrong to take the line attributed to the two Ministers in the report.
I will make one cognate point, which is the one that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, kindly mentioned that I have made before. Supposing we were in a situation in which Scotland has voted for secession, it is my view—and I know the Minister had doubts about it when I put it to him before—that a responsibility would fall on the UK Government in the period between the vote for secession and the act of secession. We all know that despite the bluster and bravado of the Scottish Government’s White Paper, Scotland could not just pull up another chair at the EU table and carry on as if nothing had happened. We know that we are in Article 49 territory. We know that there would have to be an accession negotiation. We also know that, legally speaking, Scotland cannot even apply until it is a sovereign state—in other words, after the act of secession. Scotland cannot sign a treaty until it is a sovereign state and that treaty would not come into force until it had been ratified by the Scots and all the other member states. I remind the House that Belgium has seven legislatures that would be required to approve the Scottish accession treaty.
It follows that there are two potential periods of hiatus: first, after secession but before a treaty has been signed; and, secondly, during the ratification period. We cannot say, “That is the Scots’ problem”. We cannot just shrug our shoulders and walk away from it. With every respect to the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, it would be mean, vindictive and narrow-minded—let us remember our Burke—and while Scotland is outside the European Union we, the rest of the UK, would be responsible for manning the customs frontier of the European Union, which would be in Belfast Harbour. Goods coming from Scotland would have to be examined and customs duties charged. We would be rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall. That would be the responsibility of the United Kingdom Government, not of the Scots, who would be outside asking to get in.
It might not be possible to do what I hinted before and am hinting again that we should try to do. The lawyers in Brussels might well say, “No, we stick to the letter of the law. We will not hear the Scottish case for accession until Scotland is a country”. That would be in line with past practice but of course we are in uncharted waters because no member state has ever split before. It is possible to think of a member state, or perhaps several, which would have an interest in ensuring that the Scottish accession was as prolonged, complicated and difficult a process as possible. It might not be an easy task but it is one that the United Kingdom Government would have to attempt.
Let us not exaggerate the difficulties. The accession negotiations themselves would be relatively simple, on three preconditions, because Scotland is in good standing under EU law now—all EU laws apply in Scotland. It is absurd when one gets a spokesman from No. 10 saying that Scotland would have to take its place in the queue behind Montenegro and Macedonia. That is clearly nonsense and we should avoid saying such things.
Three preconditions would have to be met. First, the divorce terms would have to be agreed. You would never persuade the Brussels machine to get in the middle of a debate between Holyrood and Westminster. The terms would have to be agreed and they would have to cover, for example, the currency question. With respect to the Minister, there is no question of the Scots being obliged to join the euro. Scotland is not qualified and will not be qualified. It would fail all four of the tests that you have to pass before you can join the euro. But the Scots would need to be able to tell us, through their advocates in Brussels—if we were taking on the task—what currency they were proposing to use because the Commission and the member states would ask. All that would have to be settled.
The second precondition is that the First Minister of Scotland would have to abandon the ludicrously ambitious aims he sets out in his White Paper. The Minister spoke to the issue of the budget rebate, in my view completely correctly. It is not possible if you are knocking on the door as an applicant to say, “I am afraid I do not want to pay the club subscription”. I do not think you can do that. If you are knocking on the door from outside—no rebate.
Thirdly, it would be necessary for all other member states to acquiesce in this entirely new process: an informal prenegotiation of the future terms of membership for a country that is not yet a country. There is absolutely no precedent for any such thing and, as I said, one can think of several countries, one in particular, which might choose to object. Trying to persuade them not to press these objections would be a task for UK diplomacy in the period between a vote for secession and the act of secession.
It may or may not be possible but I would like to hear the Minister—this time; he was very sceptical the previous time I mentioned it—address whether it is not actually what we should be trying to do. Not only does he know his Burke, he knows his Burns. If there were to have to be a parting of the ways—and I hope and believe there will not—it would be very important that auld acquaintance should not be forgot because we really do not want to have to rebuild Hadrian’s Wall as the EU’s frontier. I really hope that we do not get there but if we do, magnanimity will be extremely important and the Government should act in the spirit of Burke. Let us hope we do not get there. The union is so much more—so much greater, so much bigger and better—than the sum of its parts.
Lord Elder (Lab)
My Lords, I wish to make a number of points by way of intervention in what is already proving a fascinating debate. I have been involved in one way or another in virtually all the stages of the development of devolution over the past 20 or 30 years: the constitutional convention, of which I sat endlessly on the executive; the White Paper production when I was in the Scottish Office; and, more recently, the Calman commission.
The Calman commission reported almost exactly five years ago. I am sorry that the main recommendations in it, which were really quite substantial changes to the tax powers, have still not been implemented. I absolutely understand that time was needed to set up the new system. But I think it would have changed fundamentally the context in which the current discussions are taking place if that transfer of power and responsibility to the Scottish Parliament had already been achieved. I am sorry that that is the case.
I am not opposed to further changes to the Scotland Act. But in a sense I am going against party leaders who seem to be saying now that there should be a new set of proposals. I am, with a very small “c”, a rather conservative person. My own view is that there were really substantial changes in Calman and we ought to see how they bed in before we start launching ourselves into further proposals. I am not opposed to changes, but for goodness’ sake let us make sure that we see what the next stage looks like.
The present nationalist Government seem to want to deny the Scots a look at the new scheme in practice before going for full independence. I regret that. Indeed, as far as tax powers are concerned, we should remember that the important tax powers in the original Act—and they were explicitly backed by a second question in the referendum and so backed by the Scottish people—were allowed to drop by the SNP Government, because they thought that they were inconvenient to their narrow political case. They wanted to prove that the Scottish Parliament had fewer powers than it actually had, so they let some of them drop. I regret that. It was always a mistake. It was always a miscalculation. We should not let them forget that.
As far as the rest of the political parties are concerned, there has never been a bar to further movement. I would not wish to imply that I do not want to see further movement, but I want to see where the present very substantial changes go before we go down that road.
Secondly, there seems to be an unwillingness by the SNP Government to consider that Scotland will not get everything it wants. I hesitate to venture into areas where people who know a great deal more about this than I do have already spoken, but the idea coming out of the SNP Government that Scotland will be able to get what it wants in the UK, what it wants in Europe, what it wants in NATO, without any negotiation and without anyone being able to question it, seems to me to be quite wrong.
Let us take the EU. I hesitate to venture into this immediately after the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard—but nothing ventured, nothing gained. If the only issue were Scotland, it is perfectly possible to see how some kind of accommodation might be reached. But I am reminded of going with the late John Smith more than 20 years ago to a conference in Athens. I remember getting off the plane in Athens, I thought in my innocence that I had covered all the bases and made briefs on everything that he could possibly be talking about—international development, expansion of Europe and all sorts of things. We got down to the bottom of the steps at Athens airport to find a phalanx of about 50 photographers and journalists, all of whom wanted to know one thing. Mr Smith had been involved in devolution in Scotland; could he give his views, please, on the Macedonian question? Mr John Smith’s views subsequently expressed to me of this were sadly not particularly printable. I thought it was a splendid performance that he put up because it really did sound as though he knew everything about the Macedonian question—a class act, as ever.
It seems to me, if you were a commissioner in Brussels, looking about and you saw Scotland, you saw Macedonia—both of them—you saw Catalonia, and you saw the Basque country, and you were sitting in Brussels in a country that until very recently almost did not have a Government because it was split in two, you would worry a great deal about setting in constitutional process a system that enabled countries to split without any kind of consequences. It seems to me that that is not a remotely credible option.
As to NATO—again, I hesitate to venture into things that my noble friend Lord Robertson has discussed—the idea that you can somehow pick and choose the terms on which you go into what is a nuclear alliance is frankly absurd. Failing to answer some of the questions on that is a major failing of the nationalist position. And do we really expect the UK to take an entirely benign view of everything Scotland does? The Chancellor’s recent comments on this have been criticised by some in Scotland, but it seems to me to be self-evidently the case that if you are going to be a different country, you must expect to be treated differently. You cannot expect a Westminster Government to respond, “All right, we’ll have a separate country but we’ll treat it no differently”. That just seems to me to be absurd. At least that is now out in the open and understood.
Thirdly, I want to say a brief thing about more powers. Most of the party leaders have said, yes, they will look at advanced powers. Care should be taken here. I have consistently argued for a proper degree of independence within the United Kingdom, within the European Union, and beyond. With its own tax powers in addition to all the rest of the powers Scotland already has, we are just about there. I repeat that I am not ruling out more powers. I am just saying that we should see where we are when the full package is in place before we go any further.
Finally, we need to be realistic. For all that appears in the Scottish Government’s White Paper, most of the serious questions remain unanswered: currency, monetary policy and European membership are still left hanging in the air. There is a Panglossian air about the SNP view. With independence it thinks that all will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. I fear that the world is a much more complicated and difficult place than that—much more complicated and difficult than it is prepared to admit. If I am right, post-independence will be far too late to find that out.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Elder, who makes a great contribution to this House. He does not speak very often; I wish that he would speak more often than he does because that was a very thoughtful contribution. He is one of the architects of devolution, to which I was opposed, so it is a great pleasure for me to find myself completely in agreement with what he has said today about extra powers for the Scottish Parliament.
I believe that 95% of the Scots do not even know the additional powers that have been provided under the Scotland Act, which enables the Scottish Parliament to invent completely new taxes and set whatever level of income tax it chooses. So I agree with him: let us get across what we have done before we start thinking about doing any more. In fact, let us not talk about that at all now. This debate in Scotland is about whether or not we are going to remain in the club that is the United Kingdom, not about the rules and nature of the club.
I have something in common with Alex Salmond: both he and I took exactly the same position on an important constitutional matter. We were both opposed to devolution. I was opposed to devolution because I thought that it would provide a platform from which the SNP would be able to go about breaking up our United Kingdom. Alex Salmond was opposed to devolution because he shared the view of the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, that devolution would kill nationalism stone dead. It has not worked out that way.
Now we are in this constitutional mess. You have only to listen to the number of speeches around this Chamber because we have gone about piecemeal constitutional reform. So I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, that now we are in this mess, we cannot unilaterally look at extra powers for the Scottish Parliament; we have to look at the United Kingdom as a whole. It is complicated and therefore we need to have some sort of convention. That part of the report by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, I entirely endorse.
I will be voting on 18 September for Scotland, for partnership and for a prosperous and secure future. I will be against inward-looking separatism and against the dissolution of Britain. I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, who is not in his place but is a bit confused, that nationalism and patriotism are not the same thing. Patriotism is a noble thing. It can apply to people of all views and no views. I suggest to the noble Lord that he might like to look at George Orwell, who wrote a very famous essay that makes the distinction between nationalism and patriotism. That should sort out his views on that matter.
“United we stand, divided we fall” is a cliché but it is true. It is true of families, companies, political parties—as my noble friends are only too aware—and companies. It is also true of countries. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, reminded us in his brilliant speech that the union was formed to save Scotland from bankruptcy after the collapse of the Darien scheme. Some 300 years later, in 2008, Scotland’s First Minister wrote a letter of congratulations to Sir Fred Goodwin for doing the deal that brought down the bank and almost bankrupted our country; indeed, it would have been bankrupt but for the union that is the United Kingdom. There were £40 billion of losses by the Royal Bank of Scotland alone—one-third of Scotland’s GDP. Where would we have been if Alex Salmond had got his way? After 300 years’ experience of the triumphs and disasters that we have had as a United Kingdom, what kind of madness is it that cannot see that the United Kingdom needs Scotland and Scotland needs the United Kingdom?
The brilliance of the Act of Union was that it enabled Scotland and England to work in partnership, as my noble friend Lord Lang pointed out on this anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn. We started to work together rather than against each other. Scots talent and ingenuity flourished on a global scale, protected by the wooden walls of the Royal Navy. It is utter nonsense to suggest that Scotland somehow lost control of its own affairs as a result of entering into the union. In the past 150 years, almost half the Prime Ministers have been Scots or of Scots descent or represented Scottish constituencies: Aberdeen, Gladstone, Bute, Rosebery, Balfour, Asquith, Bonar Law, MacDonald, Bannerman, Douglas-Home, Brown and Blair. These people—who were not all Tories, noble Lords will have noticed—made a fantastic contribution to our country. For three centuries we have worked together.
Now we have the NATO alliance, which provides security not just for us but for our allies, and the nuclear deterrent, which has delivered peace in our time. The alliance helped to set Europe free from communism. That is why President Obama and Hillary Clinton intervened, extraordinarily, in the debate; it is about not just our security but the security of the west. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, was mocked by the nationalists for a speech in which he underlined the importance of that question.
The only certain thing in this world is that uncertainty and the unexpected will happen. Who will pay the bill for removing Trident? I have heard estimates of as much as £30 billion—that is a lot of money. Will it be shared between Alex Salmond and us? Some 10,000 jobs are dependant on Faslane. There are defence jobs on the Clyde and at Rosyth. Does anyone here believe that an independent Scotland will have its navy built in England? Of course not, so why does Alex Salmond assume that England would be any different and have its ships built in Scotland? What about the service men and women who have served our country so loyally? To maintain their careers, they will have to opt to be in the British Army as mercenaries fighting for a foreign country or alternatively join Alex’s “Dad’s Army”, with all that that means for the reduction in professionalism.
Some 800,000 Scots live in England and 40,000 English live in Scotland. I say to the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, that yes, they will be made foreigners in their own country. Their own children and grandchildren will be disenfranchised of their birthright. Bleaching the blue saltire out of the union jack will be a caustic and messy business. My noble friend Lord Steel says that divorce is always expensive. Divorce should never be entered into lightly and it is certainly never easy. It is particularly awkward if circumstances force you to continue living next door to each other for ever more.
Alex Salmond’s White Paper tells us that we can have it all ways. We can keep the Queen, yet the leader of the yes campaign tells us we will need a referendum on whether to become a republic. We can stay in Europe if we need to, yet we have heard from people of experience like the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, that that is not quite so easy. Of course, we have heard from the Spanish Government on that, too. We can stay in NATO, a nuclear alliance, and be a nuclear-free zone. We can maintain our public services and be utterly dependent on the price of oil and the spending and investment decisions of multinational companies. We can keep financial services even though that will mean doubling the cost of regulations, which for one company alone, Standard Life, amount to £45 million a year. We can keep our banks even though their balance sheets would be 12.5 times the entire GDP of Scotland, and we can do that without any systemic risk or any risk of higher interest rates. We can save the money from North Sea oil and put it into an oil fund, and we can spend it at the same time. We can keep the pound without actually getting agreement from the English, who will guarantee Scots bank accounts and savings, and at the same time will have no interest in how much Alex borrows, spends or taxes.
Although 80% of our companies employing more than 250 people are outside Scotland, we can dismiss their increasingly vocal concerns as scaremongering. We can ignore the President of the European Commission, the President of the United States, the Governor of the Bank of England, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, the Secretary-General of NATO, the Prime Ministers of Denmark, Sweden and China, the ratings agencies, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the CBI and the trade unions, and make a great leap in the dark. Salmond, a gambler, asks us to gamble our children’s future in a campaign—irony of ironies—funded largely from the proceeds of gambling. We owe it to our children to preserve this great legacy of theirs that is the United Kingdom and reject the separatists who, like Esau, would give up our birthright for a mess of pottage.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased once again to follow the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I will not follow his line of argument, although I agree with almost all of it. I am also not going to use this opportunity to advocate once again the case for a constitutional commission or convention because that case has increasingly been accepted. My noble friend Lord Richard and a number of others indicated that today.
No, I will spend the whole of my speech on one thing and one thing alone: paying personal tribute to someone I have known for almost 40 years, someone whose cunning and chutzpah are unrivalled in British politics, someone who—by his skill, ability and yes, his courage—has turned himself from a little-known Royal Bank of Scotland oil economist into the First Minister of Scotland with a vice-like grip on the SNP, the Scottish Parliament and all that is happening in Scotland today. You may wonder why I will do this. The reason is very simple. Over the past decade, no other person has had more influence on what is happening in Scotland —and the United Kingdom as far as constitutional matters are concerned—than Alex Salmond. Yes, he has a great team—Kevin Pringle, Stephen Noon and many others—but he brought these clever people in and has made sure that he has this control. His combination of cunning and gall has outfoxed politicians in both Holyrood and Westminster, resulting in this referendum that could break up the United Kingdom—as someone else said earlier, the most successful economic union the world has ever known.
Let me elaborate on the astonishing way Salmond has done this. First, in the election of 2007 the SNP won only one more seat than Labour. They were a minority Government and they won that last seat by 40 votes. Yet even before that, Salmond had a plan to announce himself, as soon as he had one more seat, as the First Minister of Scotland. He had hired a helicopter to fly him to the gardens of Prestonfield House Hotel, where he had set up in presidential style a podium to announce that he was going to be the First Minister. There was no discussion, as we had at the last general election in the United Kingdom; no Queen to go to, to say, “Can I get together with other parties and form a coalition?” There was nothing like that at all. In fact, if you read Five Days in May by my noble friend Lord Adonis, you will see that people in our party were worried after the last election that someone else might “do a Salmond”, as it was called. When he did that our party—for instance, my noble friend Lord McConnell —was so shell-shocked, and other parties so taken aback, that they accepted it. Therefore, through chutzpah alone, Salmond announced himself as First Minister of Scotland; and all of us in other parties were left open-mouthed.
We come then to the Edinburgh agreement, on which my noble and learned friend Lord Morris did a wonderful demolition job. I will add to that: why did winning the Holyrood election, getting 44% of the vote, give the mandate to Alex Salmond to have the agreement with Cameron that there was going to be a referendum? We, the Labour Party, controlled the majority of Westminster seats in Scotland. It did not get 50% of the vote; he assumed that there was a mandate and Cameron accepted that. We all accepted it; I say to my noble and learned friend Lord Morris that we should not just blame the Prime Minister. That means that we ended up with Salmond choosing the question—all right, it was amended slightly by the Electoral Commission—choosing the date and choosing the electorate. He had total control over what was happening. He did that through his cunning. That is why we must admire him; that is why I pay a personal tribute to him.
Look at what is happening now. The first point I want the Government, all noble Lords in this Chamber and everyone in the Chamber down the Corridor to learn is that, once again, Alex Salmond is threatening to do exactly the same thing with this draft constitution. As my noble friend Lord Robertson said, it includes the question of getting rid of Trident. What does that have to do with the constitution? It includes things such as vital social services. What does that have to do with the constitution? Why is he drafting a constitution? It is because in the—I hope—unlikely event of a yes vote, he wants his constitution to be the agenda: he wants to set the agenda. He is already saying that the Holyrood Parliament will decide all these things. As the Minister has indicated on many occasions, constitutional affairs are a reserved area. Yet if Alex Salmond has trumped us on two or three occasions previously, is he not going to do it again, unless we are ready to make sure that he does not, in the unlikely event of a yes vote?
I will take no more of noble Lords’ time except to say that we must not underestimate Alex Salmond. I think that we are on course to victory—we have the right arguments—but we have to be very careful indeed. One of the things said by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, which I agree with, is that united we stand, divided we fall. Over the next 85 days we have to put every effort into this campaign. We must not underestimate Alex Salmond, because his cunning, chutzpah, skill, courage and gambling instinct could undermine us once again. We need to be united to make sure that he does not use those to break up this United Kingdom.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)
My Lords, the debate was opened with great éclat and great positivity by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who spelt out for the whole debate the advantages of union partnership created over 300 years. It does not need me or anyone else in this debate to enlarge on what he has said because he has said it with historical accuracy and great understanding.
This whole House has demonstrated its hostility to the separation of Scotland. However, we have to recall that we are not just faced by a vote on the status quo or separation. We are facing the need to visualise and express, in the remaining 85 days, our alternative vision for the development of the United Kingdom. We have gone through a period of time following the recession that has made many people feel distinctly uncomfortable that this has not been the best period for Britain, nor indeed for other countries. To some extent, overcoming the problems of the recession has taken over the political debate and has not given voice to the requirement for a better United Kingdom.
I welcome the constitutional report: it is very detailed, real and logical. The speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Lang, expressed it extremely clearly. However, we now need not just to express the union of views about fiscal taxation, which was done recently by the leaders of the three principal United Kingdom parties in Scotland, but to express a view about the structure of decision-making, how it can become more effective and closer to the citizens of the country, and how we can realise this goal. The report produced by the team of which the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was the chairman, was a valuable suggestion; its concluding recommendation was that we should get the Governments within the country together to discuss how best to restructure the powers. If we are going to capture the imagination of the electorate in Scotland they have to understand that it is not just a continuation of what we are facing at the moment.
Last week the Financial Times suggested in its first leader that we should have a federal country. That was a surprising recommendation from that portal, but it is certainly a possibility. Indeed, it has been recommended by a number of noble Lords in this debate. I suggest that we need to indicate now that we want to see a convention established into which the input will come not only from existing Governments at all tiers, but from representatives of business, the trade unions, civic society and religion across the country, so that we can see how the people can better determine their future. Some of those who are undecided in the Scottish referendum campaign seem to be affected by uncertainties. If we had such a convention, it would enable people to have input into the outcome. That is extremely important if our democracy is to express itself with constructive consensus.
I have served on a couple of conventions, including the Convention on the Future of Europe. What I noticed about that was, how, when people got together at the beginning of that convention, their ideas were not necessarily aligned but gradually, within the space of two years, they got together and much of what was recommended has been implemented, despite the referenda in France and the Netherlands.
I believe that if we were to announce now that that is our alternative intention for United Kingdom governance, that would reassure many people who do not like the situation we are in, and give some satisfaction to those who feel that the choice is between the status quo and separation.
Lord Birt (CB)
My Lords, the United Kingdom is an extraordinary crucible of ideas, learning and creativity. Part of our strength is that, although we can speak with one voice when fighting totalitarianism or at the opening night of the Olympics, we are also heterogeneous; we can celebrate difference and speak in harmony with many voices.
I am as proud to be a Liverpudlian—I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, did not mention Bill Shankly—as I am to be British. I am proud of that willingness to challenge convention that inspired Alan Bleasdale, Ken Dodd and the Beatles, but I recognise, too, just how enriched I am by Yorkshire’s writers and artists, by Northern Ireland’s poets or by the new powerful contributions that post-war immigration to the UK has brought us. Through the multiplicity of all those subtly different voices and accents, we can also hear something that we have in common: something distinctively British. That is something that the rest of the world can and does recognise too.
No part of the United Kingdom has made a greater contribution to the whole than the people from Scotland. We have heard that in abundance today in this remarkable, eloquent debate. The list of those who have made contributions is too long to repeat, but perhaps I may be allowed to mention some: Adam Smith and James Boswell, JM Barrie and Arthur Conan Doyle, Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson, Muriel Spark and Carol Ann Duffy, Ian Rankin and Alexander McCall Smith, Ludovic Kennedy and Andrew Marr, Billy Connolly and David Tennant, Armando Iannucci and Irvine Welsh. I note that Irvine Welsh once said that he loved the “density and complexity” of Jane Austen and George Eliot. That can be no surprise, for they are all part of the same British literary tradition.
One reason for Britain’s exceptional creative and intellectual vitality is our genius for founding institutions which channel and foster our national talent. None of those bodies is more effective than the BBC. Illuminatingly and tellingly, the BBC was founded and critically shaped by a young Scot of vision, a can-do engineer and a curmudgeonly son of the manse, John Reith. It was that bold Scot who bequeathed the BBC an enduring conviction, a stubborn commitment to excellence and a lasting set of values.
As we have heard today, there would be many consequences if Scotland were to become independent, but let us be clear what they would be for the BBC and for broadcasting in Scotland and in the rest of the United Kingdom. First—I do not think that this has yet been properly recognised in the debate today—the BBC, like other national institutions, would lose 10% of its income. The recent brand-new obligations placed on the BBC to fund the World Service, S4C and other activities from the licence fee will in short order take a further 15% out of the pot currently utilised for funding TV, radio and online services. In the space of just a few years, if Scotland became independent, the BBC as we know it would effectively lose one quarter of its funding. Changes to BBC services would be unavoidable.
Secondly, the BBC buys programmes of distinction from other countries—most notably recently from Scandinavia. Even with its diminished revenues, the BBC would no doubt buy some programmes from an independent Scotland but, as with other countries, only programmes in the “outstanding” category would be purchased.
Thirdly, a smaller BBC would no doubt make some programmes in and about Scotland, as it does now in other countries, but that would be exceptional, unlike now, when, as a matter of policy, a proportionate slice of its budget is spent in Scotland on programming for the whole of the UK. If Scotland were independent, I am very sorry to say that it would no longer be much reflected on our screens and airwaves in the rest of the United Kingdom.
Fourthly, the new Scottish publicly funded broadcaster —the SBS—would have about a tenth of the BBC’s current budget. Like other countries with populations of about 5 million, the SBS would tailor its programmes and services to its limited means.
Fifthly, like other broadcasters, I expect that the SBS would want to acquire programmes from the BBC, not least those loved intensely by Scottish audiences. The BBC is, thankfully, independent of government, so whatever is said wishfully by some, the BBC will have no alternative whatever but to act in the interests of its licence fee payers and to seek the best possible commercial terms for the sale of its programmes in Scotland, not least because of the aforementioned financial impoverishment that it will just have suffered.
Finally, as for the availability in Scotland of the BBC’s continuing services for the rest of the United Kingdom, there will of course be some transmission spillover at the border, and BBC channels and services will certainly be accessible more widely in Scotland, but encrypted and available only on commercial terms.
Those who will vote for independence identify and expect many gains, but I suggest that many of the advantages that the most creative and inspiring talents in Scotland have enjoyed for 300 years—of making a massive impact on a big stage to global acclaim—will simply be lost.
If Scotland votes for independence, the rest of the United Kingdom will lose too, for in all sorts of different ways the UK will make a lesser contribution to the wider world. Our status and standing will be diminished. Worst of all, we will suffer the loss of the Scots at the very heart of our affairs as admired and appreciated allies, collaborators and friends.
Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)
My Lords, first, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lang, and his colleagues on the committee for an excellent report. In particular, I fully endorse paragraph 117 on the proposed timetable for completing negotiations on independence by March 2016. It is a fact that the reorganisation of the police force in Scotland took 19 months—one month longer than for national and international agreements to take place. What a fantasy. Therefore, the weight of decision-making has to be in favour of sorting out these problems, however long that takes. I agree with that.
I was in Barcelona with a number of colleagues a few weeks ago, and I had the opportunity to speak to the mayor, Dr Xavier Trias. They are very European in Barcelona. They want a referendum in Catalonia, but they realise that if there is a vote in favour of independence, negotiations with the European Union will, to use Dr Trias’s phrase, be “very, very, very difficult”. If that is the case for Catalonia, it is also the case for Scotland. The First Minister has indicated that everything has a certainty about it, whereas we are entering a very uncertain world. That was made plain by his former economic adviser, Professor John Kay, when he came to the Economic Affairs Committee. He said that the negotiations will be difficult and will take many, many years.
However, the most important date for us is 19 September, the day after the referendum, because, irrespective of the outcome, nothing will be the same again. If it is a yes vote, the future will be irrevocably changed for England and the rest of the UK. The global reach and authority of the UK will be diminished.
It has been quite sad to see that the rest of the UK has been allowed to almost sleepwalk into this referendum. It is just a matter for Scotland, they say. However, this is not just about Scotland, with only Scots involved. If there is a yes vote, an important part of every one of us will be lost for ever. If there is a no vote, there will be a demand for more devolution and decentralisation. Therefore, my message today is that the entire UK should engage in this debate from now on, and it should be a central participant in any campaign.
Sadly, devolution for Scotland has, for years, been implemented as a process, not an event. In fact, it is even described as that by one of our former Labour First Ministers. However, if we continue along this path, it will produce such constitutional imbalance that, unplanned, it may implode politically. The ad hoc nature of the approach to constitutional reform has not served any of us well. It has to give way to a systematic, coherent and executed UK programme. Whitehall does not now work in the best interests of the whole country. All of us see that. We should take time—perhaps many years—over how we approach this constitutional change and ask fundamental questions. For example: what is Parliament for? How best do we centralise and ensure that we get symmetric devolution and decentralisation throughout the country so that we strengthen the sinews of the nations of the United Kingdom? Will a royal commission be the way to do this? Will that cede authority and control, or does there need to be a co-ordinating committee to make sure that there is the political charge and political responsibility to ensure that, part by part, we have a coherent approach to our constitutional change?
Mention was made of the former Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair. I am sure that history will show him as one of the most constitutionally reforming Prime Ministers ever. However, I have yet to find a substantial speech by him on constitutional reform. That is because, in many ways, like the Calman report, it was given away, it was bagged, and we moved on to the next agenda. We should learn from that and ensure that there is change in that respect.
I mention the need for seriousness, and that is very important. I certainly did not see that when, two weeks ago, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and the First Minister traded fantasy figures on the monetary benefits of voting yes or no in the referendum. Alex Salmond promised an independence bonus of £2,000 per household on voting yes, while Danny Alexander, with absolute certainty, heralded £1,400 per Scot if they voted no. I suggest that snake-oil salesmen could not have bettered these efforts. It was compounded by the disgraceful Scotland Office PR on 4 June outlining:
“12 things that £1,400 UK Dividend could buy”.
Included in the 12 things were:
“An overseas holiday for two with cash left over for sun cream … Experience 636 joyful caffeine highs … Share a meal of fish and chips with your family every day for around 10 weeks, with a couple of portions of mushy peas thrown in”,
or:
“Go for one haircut a month for over 3 and half years … you can go for significantly more if you’re a man”.
That should never have appeared on an official PR document emanating from government. It has trivialised and degraded the economic argument, and that has to be the one message that the Minister takes back so that that approach is disowned in future. As for the First Minister’s figures, to achieve this dividend of £2,000 he says they will transform the economy by increasing productivity by 1%. That has been a conundrum for 40 years, and that too rests in fantasy land.
However, I am worried by the degree of rancour and bitterness in Scotland. I am not just talking about JK Rowling. This referendum will be accompanied by profound psychological wounds, and they will not be restricted to Scotland. How do we prevent a “neverendum” if there is a no vote? I was recently in the company of a senior SNP politician who said that if it is a 60:40 vote—60 no, 40 yes—this story is not finished. We have to ensure that everyone on both the yes and no sides signs up to a declaration that, whatever the outcome, they will respect the integrity of it and work for the benefit of a better United Kingdom or an independent Scotland. Given that present-day politicians and the political process are already held in low enough regard by an increasingly disillusioned public, that is the least we require before 18 September. A serious and co-operative way forward for the common good must start on 19 September.
Lord Crickhowell (Con)
My Lords, during the debate on Scotland held here on 30 January, I said:
“With children and grandchildren who have blood and genes drawn almost equally from Wales, England, Ireland and Scotland, I say with particular fervour that I dread the possibility of a divorce at the heart of the United Kingdom family”.—[Official Report, 30/1/14; col. 1392.]
As a Welshman I had joined with those who had made the positive case for the retention of the union.
Today, as a member of the Constitution Committee that produced the report so admirably introduced by my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton, I want to say something about the comments that it has provoked. One of the nastiest features of the yes campaign has been the flood of insults thrown at those who take a different view. I suppose it was inevitable that the SNP would lash out at the House of Lords and a report by one of its committees. A leader in the Guardian said that the SNP ignored the substance of the report and that that was a mistake. The report, it suggested,
“is a serious attempt to look at some of the central legal and procedural implications of a yes vote”.
The committee,
“took evidence from some formidably well-informed witnesses”.
Exactly. This is not a report which sets out to make a political, economic or social case one way or another; we have left that to others. What we have sought to do is to explore the constitutional implications of a yes vote, and we have identified a number of important issues that need to be resolved between a yes vote and Scotland actually becoming independent. All our conclusions are based on the evidence that was presented to us. We heard from academic experts, the UK Government and commentators on Scottish politics. We received a wide range of written evidence, including from the Scottish Government. The SNP critics have taken particular exception to our conclusion that MPs representing Scottish constituencies should not negotiate for the rest of the UK, hold those negotiators to account or ratify the outcome of the negotiations. That conclusion was based on the views expressed by our witnesses, most powerfully by Professor Alan Boyle, professor of public international law at Edinburgh University. The very fact that this matter has already provoked strong reactions suggests that we were right to propose that, in the event of a yes vote, the Government should, in advance of the 2015 general election, lay before Parliament a proposal that would put this matter beyond doubt.
SNP MPs have been equally hostile to our view that there is no constitutional principle by which the Scottish Government’s timetable should bind the UK Government. We say:
“The UK Government should not put the interests of the rest of the UK at risk by attempting to stick to that timetable. Any negotiations should take as long as necessary”.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, has doubted our conclusion in paragraph 97 regarding the Government acting as the negotiator. We attempted to deal with the criticism that he made in paragraph 98, where we proposed that there should be close consultation with the Official Opposition and the Governments of the devolved Assemblies.
The Constitution Committee has not been alone in reaching evidence-based conclusions about the Scottish referendum. Starting in 2012, the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh began a series of 11 seminars where presentations were made and discussions held. The record has now been published. On reading it, I was struck by the way in which the evidence closely matched the evidence that we received. Even the most passionate nationalists can hardly dismiss the conclusions of the British Academy, which was established in 1902 and is the UK’s expert body that speaks for the humanities and the arts, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which was established in 1783 and is an enduring memorial to the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century, representing all academic subjects as well as the arts, culture, business and enterprise.
Among the factors that the study by these distinguished bodies exposes are what Donald Rumsfeld described as known unknowns. These make nonsense of many of the certainties contained in the Scottish Government’s White Paper, among them the timetable to which I have referred. Negotiations that would follow a yes vote with the UK Government, with the EU and with NATO will all feel the impact of elections—and the outcomes, as we have heard during this debate, are highly unpredictable. The complexities of the issues on which negotiations will have to take place are vividly described in five pages of the introduction.
Professor Vernon Bogdanor pointed out during the constitutional seminar that the Scottish nationalists have various aspirations for an independent Scotland, such as shared currency and social union, but that an independent Scotland would have no right to these things. It could only propose them and see whether the rest of the UK would agree to them in negotiations. A yes vote in the referendum is a vote to become a citizen of another country, distinct from the UK, after which it would not be possible for Scotland to pick and choose which aspects of the union it wished to enjoy. An independent Scotland would have to negotiate for those things that it now enjoys as a right. A yes vote is a vote for uncertainty.
With all the political parties now offering more devolution for Scotland and Wales, another huge question has to be addressed. Our own special adviser, Professor Tomkins, pointed out at the same seminar that if there is a no vote the interesting question will be: what happens next? He suggested that in the event of a no outcome, what needs to happen is for the future of Scotland’s constitutional position to be put in the context of the whole of the UK. He argued that the voices of the Governments and peoples in Northern Ireland, Wales and the north of England have to be brought to the table. At the moment, he observed, there is no table for these voices to be heard; one has to be built.
I am sure that Professor Tomkins is right but I would go further, as have many speakers in this debate today. We should not be awaiting the outcome of the referendum; we should be beginning to construct a table for the voices to be heard. At Questions yesterday the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, suggested a constitutional commission to examine further devolution and decentralisation. Others have suggested a convention. My noble friend Lord Strathclyde suggested a committee representing the Parliaments and Assemblies of the whole United Kingdom.
Whatever method we adopt, we need to pursue with vigour a holistic solution to what is now an urgent problem. The more that this Parliament makes it clear that this is a question that is being considered with urgency, and that finding a solution will be a high priority for the next Government, whoever forms that Government, the more likely it is that the people of Scotland will want to remain within the union and play a major part in fundamentally reshaping it—in shaping the new, reformed United Kingdom referred to by the noble Lords, Lord McConnell and Lord Stephen—rather than see it happen without them and face alone the huge uncertainties outside.
Lord Gordon of Strathblane (Lab)
My Lords, somewhat more than 50 years ago I presented a series of programmes on Scottish television called “Scots Abroad”, which broadly celebrated the wholly disproportionate role that Scots had played in the building of the British Empire and, subsequently, the Commonwealth—whether by colonisation, occasionally by conquest or by administration. Scotland also benefited hugely from the existence of the Empire markets. My native city of Glasgow simply would not have grown from a small village to one of the fastest-growing cities in the world in the 1800s were it not for the demand for ships, railway engines et cetera, all of them manufactured in Scotland.
In the world of ideas, too, the golden period is known as the Scottish Enlightenment, as has already been referred to. Indeed, I remember meeting in America a scholar at the Smithsonian who had no Scottish connections or background but who entitled his book How the Scots Invented the Modern World—along with almost everything in it. It was entitled The Scottish Enlightenment when it was republished in this country. Neil MacGregor, the very distinguished director of the British Museum, subtitled a talk there: “When the Scottish Enlightenment encountered London globalism”. Both are important because those were wonderful Scottish ideas, and nobody is pretending that they are other than Scottish, but they would not have had the world stage without the British connection. That is really the lesson that those of us who will be voting no want to get across tonight.
The UK now exercises its power through soft power. Just as the whole country was genuinely proud of the way that London handled the Olympics, I hope that we will have equal cause for pride in how Glasgow will handle the Commonwealth Games in just a few weeks’ time. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has already given the litany of Scottish Prime Ministers and senior government officials. Anyone who claims that Scotland has been a downtrodden nation for the past 300 years really cannot pretend to serious consideration.
Scottish traditions and institutions have also been allowed to flourish very freely by the union settlement of 1707. We all think of devolution as beginning in 1999, but it did not. We have had administrative devolution since 1885. In 1999 came democratic control over that—with all the positives and negatives that that brings, let me tell you. What is being proposed now, I think, is adding fiscal powers. By and large I support that. I genuinely support the points that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, made in his speech, because I believe that politicians will be more responsible if they are responsible for raising the money they promise to spend.
However, I would urge a couple of caveats about devolution. I am in favour of subsidiarity, but there are some issues where we do not like the idea of a postcode lottery. There are some issues that we want to be handled the same throughout the country. I would say that pensions is one of them. I want everyone in the UK to enjoy the same right to a pension. I would probably say health and welfare as well, but they could be argued about. There are other issues where you may want devolution, but the practicality of achieving it on a very small island with a land border is somewhat limited. You may want, for example, to have a higher customs duty on drink and tobacco north of the border, but unless you institute a border post, people will just drive down in pantechnicons and bring up booze.
Likewise the position of the economy—and Alex Salmond knows this. This is why he wanted a third option, because at that point he was honest enough to recognise that independence is impossible with a currency union, which he regards as desirable. That is why he wanted the third option. He now says that Scotland needs more immigrants and the Scottish Government would aim at having 27,000. Nothing is stopping the Scottish Government having more immigrants at the moment. The trouble is that immigrants do not go where Governments direct them. They go where the jobs are. That is why they all went to Glasgow in the 1850s. They came from the Highlands and Islands, Ireland, and England, let alone abroad, simply because Glasgow was the workshop of the Empire at that point. The idea that somehow you can have a currency union with separate economic policies is unthinkable and Alex Salmond knows it. It surely is preposterous to suggest that a foreign country will have more influence over Bank of England policy than one that is an integral part of the same country—yet that is what the Scottish people are being asked to swallow.
The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, earlier referred to the Darien scheme. By a strange, uncanny coincidence the losses of the Darien scheme in modern terms, I am told, would have been roughly the same £40 billion that RBS cost us. The interesting thing is that the Darien scheme was promulgated by a Scot, William Paterson, who had also founded the Bank of England. It is undoubtedly true that the English Government were less than helpful, because we were two separate countries at that point. A lot of Scots Nats say that it was the Darien scheme that led to Scotland having to go into a union almost unwillingly—“bought and sold with English gold” and all those phrases. But, in fact, it almost proves the Better Together point. Had we been part of the union, the Darien scheme might have foundered anyway, because it was a malaria-ridden swamp on the Isthmus of Panama, but on the other hand, at least lives would have been saved had we had England as a partner rather than a rival and formal enemy.
I really hope that Scotland votes no, because even then, at the time of the Darien scheme, we would have been better together. The alternative of a weakened Scotland exercising even less influence on a diminished England means that the UK as a whole will be sidelined from the world’s stage. I regard that as a tragedy for the whole world, because I think that, with all its faults, Britain is still a beneficial influence in the world and I am very proud of the part that Scots have played in making that so.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I am the 23rd speaker in today’s debate and the 23rd male. Of the 40 speakers who will be taking part in the debate, with the notable exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Adams of Craigielea, who I was grateful to for taking part in my debate last week, 39 will be male. That is neither representative of this House nor of the country and I hope that all our groups may reflect on why that is the case today.
There will be a genuine tinge of sadness for me when I cast a vote in the referendum because I will effectively be asked to choose between two things that I love. I will also be asked, in a negative way, to affirm support for what is a remarkable coming together of peoples, histories and cultures in our union, as we have been debating this afternoon. Equally, there will be many fellow voters who will simply be elated by the opportunity to vote in that referendum; they hold sincere views and I respect them for that. However, my sadness will be tempered by a quiet pride that this union, without resorting to state terror, armed conflict or repression from government, would allow itself to be democratically dissolved because that was the democratic will of people who had chosen a different path from the one that we here would choose, as we have been discussing today. They would be doing it democratically and through a ballot. They want a different path for their country.
I have not been able to see the deadly disputes around the world since we have been having our debate on Scotland without reflecting on how we are carrying out our process differently. That is something that should give us pride. Scottish Nationalists seek to take credit for this and say that it is a peculiarly Scottish characteristic in this debate, but it is actually a remarkable thing about our United Kingdom that through tough times of great national peril where the very existence of our union has been threatened by foes from abroad, through times of imperial expansion when we have seen our position in the world grow exponentially, through times of famine or economic crash at home and through times of remarkable economic growth due to international trade—with all our shared history—we still have a compassionate and profound position that, if people within one part of our nation choose that they do not wish to continue to be part of it, this union will end. The Constitutional Committee of your Lordships’ House shows the process that could commence if that were the view.
I share the position of one of the four Knights of the Thistle who have been taking part in the debate today, the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn: I will cast a no vote.
Lord Purvis of Tweed
And two more to come. I do not know what the collective noun for Knights of the Thistle is; maybe a contribution later in the gap could tell us what it is.
I will be casting my no vote and endorsing a bigger and better vision, which is that Scotland can have an opportunity and a thriving future as part of our union. Part of the positive future in rejecting independence is founded also on my commitment to do what I can in working with colleagues across parties in this House and in other Parliaments in Wales, Northern Ireland and the regions of England to help to bring about a refreshed union. Why do I feel that the union needs to be refreshed? Noble Lords have already highlighted some of the reasons in the debate today. We remain a too centralised state and this has skewed decision-making. We established national legislatures but we did not establish fiscally accountable Governments. This has skewed decision-making in the nations. We have not created a coherent narrative for the reasons why our services for all the UK should be for all the UK, such as pensions, macroeconomics or single-market policies, and why we believe it is better that some policies should be decided at a national level.
Without a proper narrative explaining why that is the case, as the noble Lord, Lord McFall, warned us, we will be perpetually in an ad hoc situation with regard to devolution. I agree profoundly with my noble friends Lord Stephen and Lord Steel of Aikwood, who quoted Jo Grimond saying that devolution is power retained in this place rather than a proper decentralisation of power to the nations, and then to the regions, by the fact that they are there in their own right for better governance rather than just because it suits this Parliament at any given time.
The noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord Richard, commented that we will benefit from this Parliament being a more representative of the nations and the regions within England. I agree with them. My noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness ably presented the strong opportunities for Scotland in continuing in the UK, and I need not rehearse those arguments. I hope that all of us will be reinforcing them with passion and gusto over the next 85 days.
What is the future of our union and how can we express it so that people outside Parliament are enthused by it and feel that it is representative of them and that they can play an active role within it? In many respects, the case for many aspects of this union is made by the SNP, which, even with independence, wishes to continue to be part of it: the head of state, the currency, the BBC and pensions are all unions that it wishes to leave but rejoin, most likely on poorer terms. The noble Lord, Lord Birt, referred to a former constituent of mine, Sir Walter Scott. In his “Marmion” he said,
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!”.
That sums up the SNP’s position on the unions in this land. It is worth pointing out to the noble Lord, Lord Lang, that “Marmion” was about Flodden Field.
I have put forward a proposition for a conference of the new union to take place shortly after the general election in 2015 to complement the conference on the new Scotland that my right honourable friend Alistair Carmichael has announced will commence after the Scottish referendum. The purpose of the conference on the new Scotland is to bring together those who have already published their proposals for what further powers should be provided to the Scottish Parliament, for making the Scottish Parliament a permanent part of the United Kingdom’s institutions and for this Parliament permanently to cede authority over legislating on what are currently home rule areas. I believe that a conference on the new union should take place in a similarly consensual way after the general election to address the relationships between the nations, Whitehall institutions and the Westminster Parliament. It should last no longer than six months and should therefore be focused and inclusive. It should be government sponsored, with the intention that it will result in legislation that can be presented within the next term of the United Kingdom Parliament, and it should focus on entrenching the legislatures in the United Kingdom, making their legislative capacity permanent and making the relationship between them and our institutions here in Westminster and Whitehall decided not unilaterally here but by a bilateral process with them. Importantly, it should also address issues concerning the governance of England.
Without such a conference of the new union, without it being focused and without it being the intention, on a cross-party basis, to deliver legislation, we will perhaps continue to be searching for the overriding narrative for supporting the union. Unless we do it, up to 40% of the people of one nation in this country will continue to believe that their views and future aspirations are not being addressed by the union. I passionately believe in the union but equally I believe very strongly that work needs to be done to make sure that it respects and is representative of their views.
Lord Haskins (CB)
As a Protestant Irish nationalist from the county of Parnell, I feel that I am straying into a family feud that has some quite bitter feelings about it. I share the view expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that it is a pity that perhaps only one Member of this House will state the nationalist case. If I were in Scotland, despite my nationalist background, I would have to vote no.
I want to talk today about the implications for England, in the north of which I have lived for 50 years, of what will happen. Whatever the result on 18 September, things will never be the same again and the constitutional consequences for England will be profound. More and more devolution to the Celtic nations means more and more problems for England, leaving England with the most centralised system of government in any major democracy, a point that Scottish nationalists are not slow to point out.
Economic and political power outside London has been drastically eroded over the past 70 years. One hundred years ago, the vast majority—70% to 80%—of the top 100 companies had their headquarters outside London. Today the figure is less than 10%. Until the Second World War, health, education and a host of other public services were the responsibility of local government. Today, local government empties the bins and carries out a narrow range of administrative duties under the close scrutiny of Whitehall, though Ministers are still quick to blame local authorities when things go wrong. Because the role of local government has been so severely diminished, the quality of local political leadership has declined. It is a perfect Catch-22. Oh, for the days of Joe Chamberlain and his like.
The big companies have followed the trend and migrated en masse to London. In so doing, they have lost their sense of civic pride and local community engagement, which was such a feature of Victorian Britain. Who can forget the remarkable achievements on behalf of their local communities of the Cadburys in Birmingham, the Rowntrees in York, Rank in Hull, the Lever brothers in the north-west and the banks in East Anglia, Bristol, Edinburgh and elsewhere? I remember the sad day when Cadbury relocated from Birmingham to Berkeley Square. Clearly the game was up. The municipal buildings built around the country by the Victorians are a magnificent manifestation of partnership and commitment between local government and business. The railway network was created by the efforts of local business entrepreneurs, not central government. Britain’s local structure of government was the envy of the world. Today it is a shadow of its proud past.
Why did this happen? In part, it was a sign of progress on two fronts. RA Butler’s Education Act 1944 established national standards but, while the national Government established strategy, it was left to local authorities to deliver. Over time, Whitehall has steadily eroded localism so that today it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that, relying on the regulatory powers of Ofsted, Michael Gove has 23,000 head teachers reporting to him. Nye Bevan’s NHS structures were even more centralist. When Herbert Morrison, a former leader of the GLC and a great champion of local government, argued that the day-to-day administration of the NHS should remain the responsibility of local government, he was overruled by Mr Bevan who famously asserted that Whitehall needed to hear the rattle of every bedpan that fell on the hospital floor. To be fair, Bevan and Butler wanted to establish consistent, higher standards across the country, but in so doing they undermined an equally important requirement: accountability. The NHS is unmanageably large and short on accountability, as is the school organisational structure.
Ironically, but for different reasons, the Conservatives and Labour both pursued this greater centralisation, Labour because it believed that the state knows best and the Conservatives because they believed that the town halls were a hotbed of Trotskyites. It is so different elsewhere in the big democracies. The US, Germany, Australia, Canada and Spain all operate quasi-federal systems of government, and big corporations do not flock to Washington, Berlin, Canberra, Ottawa or Madrid. Boeing is in Seattle, McDonald’s is in Chicago, Siemens and BMW are in Munich and Airbus is in Toulouse and Hamburg.
In the English regions outside London, it is my guess that 80% or 90% of decisions affecting the local economy are taken elsewhere, either in London by Whitehall and businesses located there or internationally. The centralised so-called controls of the banks are a far cry from the local bank manager who knew his customers and the local economic conditions.
The quality of administration in Whitehall is poor. When I worked in the Cabinet Office a few years ago, I was struck by the contrast between the effectiveness of the civil servants in Edinburgh and London. In Edinburgh everyone knew each other, discussions were open and decisions were arrived at expeditiously. In London people worked in dysfunctional silos, and had poor interdepartmental communications and woefully slow decision-making processes. People paid lip service to collaboration.
So, post-18 September, things will have to change. However, do the politicians have an appetite for change in the light of a number of failed attempts at local government reform? The Heath Government changed the boundaries but little else. Then Major changed the boundaries again, but little else. The Blair Government went for nine regions and, although the economic structures, the regional development agencies, were not bad—I declare an interest as a long-time board member of Yorkshire Forward—the plan to create democratically elected assemblies never got off the ground. The present Government scrapped the RDAs and replaced them with local enterprise partnerships, more modest in size and ambition. I chair the Humber LEP.
Irrespective of past failures, reform must once more be on the agenda post-18 September, and here is what I would do. First, there are far too many local authorities in England—400 of them. They should be reduced to 80 or 90, as was suggested by Redcliffe-Maud in the 60s. I would gradually increase their responsibility for delivering public services, including health and education, but only when they had proved their competence. Secondly, there are too many LEPs—39 of them. I suggest that economic development boundaries should be drawn around large cities, with a few quasi-rural exceptions such as Cumbria, Devon and Cornwall. This would result in fewer than 20 LEPs with an average population of nearly 3 million people. Thirdly, I would treat the south-east as a special case. About 20 million people live east of a line from Peterborough to Portsmouth. They are, for the most part, heavily under the influence of London. Their local government arrangements should reflect that dependency.
It is much more difficult to reverse the centralisation and globalisation of big business, but if the big Whitehall departments were to be devolved to the regions—BIS to Birmingham, the NHS to Leeds, Education to Manchester, Defence to Bristol, DEFRA to York, DWP to Newcastle—might not the big companies, keen to be close to where the power is, follow suit? Of course, none of this is likely to happen. Today’s politicians and business leaders lack the vision and risk-taking inclinations of their Victorian forebears. Besides, they love the metropolitan life of London. Still, perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer, after his great speech yesterday, will prove me wrong. The status quo is not an option after 18 September and, if we do not take action soon, we are storing up grave political and economic problems for England in future.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I feel that this is rather the graveyard slot. Those who have delivered their speeches have departed to refresh themselves, while a few are waiting to enlighten us. Having listened to every single speech, as has my noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness, to whom I pay a real tribute for his stamina and resilience, I might be tempted to go and have a little refreshment later myself.
Whether I am driving along the lovely lanes of Lincolnshire, as I was last week, or driving in Scotland, where I spent the whole of the war as a young boy, growing up—
Lord Cormack
Not the First World War, like the noble Lord opposite; I cannot claim to rival his longevity. But whether I am driving there or in Scotland, I feel, in the words of Walter Scott, already quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis:
“This is my own, my native land!”.
I am British. My family comes originally from Scotland. My elder son, known to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is settled in Scotland and I do not think will ever leave, and my eldest grandchild will have a vote on 18 September. I deeply regret that I shall not have one. But I very much hope that she, along with the other enfranchised 16 year-olds, will vote a resounding no, and I am confident that she will. She spent some time with us a fortnight ago and we were talking about this. In her school in Edinburgh, they had had a poll of all the girls, and 90% had voted no. In the boys’ school next door, she was slightly disappointed that it was only 88%. That gave me some real encouragement. Like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, I regretted the way in which Mr Salmond wound the Prime Minister around his finger in getting the 16 year-old vote, but I had some reassurance from what she told me. When I asked her why, she said, “Because we don’t want to cut off our opportunities”—and that, in a sense, is what it is really about.
I have talked before in this House about the difference being between remaining in a Great Britain or in a little Scotland. Of course, Scotland could be independent and go it alone, but we would be deprived—and I believe that my friends and family in Scotland would be deprived—if they did that. I profoundly hope, as I think virtually everybody who has spoken in this debate hopes, that they will not.
Only 9.1% of the population of the United Kingdom lives in Scotland. I will not repeat all the lists of Prime Ministers, economists, scientists and writers who have been referred to this afternoon. But if any part of any country has punched above its weight, Scotland, which is a nation, has punched above its weight in the United Kingdom—and I want it to continue to do so.
In 1984, I had a very interesting experience during the long Summer Recess from the other place. I spent a semester at the University of Austin in Texas. It was the time of the presidential election and a number of the cars that were driving around had a little sticker on the back that said, “Secede”. I said to my Texas host, “Some of them talk as if they mean it”. “Oh”, he said, “that’s just the heart expressing itself—the head knows that it would be total madness”.
Much as I respect those who have a different point of view, I hope that those who are contemplating voting yes in September, and still more those who have not yet made up their mind, will reflect on what a great country this is—and it is a great country because of the contribution from Scotland, which is way beyond its percentage of the population. I very much hope that there will be a resounding vote on 18 September, and that the people of Scotland will say that, yes, they want to remain part of the United Kingdom. I do not want my granddaughter to become a citizen in a foreign land, and she does not want her cousins—the children of my other son, who live in London—to be foreigners, with different passports.
Somebody talked about borders. I had the great good fortune to be the chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee in the last Parliament, and I saw the difficulties created by a border there. Unless you have absolute similarity between taxes and revenues, what it does among other things is to encourage organised crime, which is a very real cross-border problem between the Republic and Northern Ireland. I rejoice at the settlement, and I am not one of those who feels deeply unhappy about Her Majesty receiving Mr McGuinness; we have made enormous progress. But the fact is that there are two countries on one island and there is a border, and that creates problems. We do not want to have that here.
We have to recognise that we are exceptionally fortunate. My noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, whom I regard very much as a friend in the context of this and many other issues, pointed to the brilliance of Alex Salmond. I referred to that before in this House. But we need to have robust debate, and what he has been saying is very misleading. We have had many examples, quoted during the last three and a half hours. Salmond’s approach really is that of eating the cake and having it, to put the phrase the right way round. I have often thought, particularly over the past few weeks, of the reputed remark of the great conductor Richter to the third flute, “Your damned nonsense can I stand twice or once, but sometimes always, by God, never”. The people of Scotland are being misled. As my noble friend Lord Forsyth said, they are being asked to take a leap into the dark. It is a step into the unknown.
Of course, many have talked about changes that will come about. Like my noble friend Lord Forsyth, I was against devolution but that is all over now and we have to make it work, and make it work even better than it has done—of course we have. However, it would be a constitutional and a political tragedy if we were all in this United Kingdom plunged into the uncertainty that a yes vote would create. I devoutly hope and pray that it will be a no vote and an emphatic one, and that we can more warmly embrace each other across the border. I hope that it will not become an international border, and that we can continue to recognise the enormous importance that Scotland has and the enormous contribution that it makes to this United Kingdom of ours. Long may that United Kingdom flourish.
Lord Maxton (Lab)
My Lords, at this stage of the evening there is always a temptation to start debating rather than delivering a speech, particularly if you have been at the other end of the Corridor, where Members debate much more than they do here. However, I wish to give the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, a collective noun—perhaps a “prickle” of thistles might be appropriate.
Along with many others, I will not discuss the report on which this debate is configured, partly because I live in Scotland and have a vote in the referendum. I hope that the cameras will pick up the badge I am wearing, which says no. I will vote no and I believe that we will win the vote on 18 September, which happens to be my late father’s birthday, and therefore the report will become irrelevant, however good it may be and however well it may be received.
I do not know from where the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, draws his opinion that the polls are narrowing, because the latest opinion polls in Scotland show that the polls are widening, not narrowing towards independence. Certainly, all the serious polls are now saying that. I assume that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, was referring to a private school in Edinburgh when he addressed that issue. However, pupils in school after school in Scotland have debated this issue, have voted on it and, time after time, the result has been a resounding no. The 16 to 18 year-olds who Mr Alex Salmond thought would all vote for independence are proving him very wrong.
Secondly, despite what has been said today, the people of Scotland must realise that they are not voting for one further stage towards better devolution. I support giving further powers to the people of Scotland, although not necessarily to all the institutions of Scotland, but please let us stop confusing devolution and independence: they are two totally different animals. The people will be voting to establish an independent state which is separate from the rest of the United Kingdom. Unlike devolution, it is not a decision that can be changed, modified or reversed by democratic process if it does not work or if circumstances change. Some things may well need to come back to central government as opposed to going to the devolved powers.
It is not about Mr Alex Salmond and David Cameron or about a Tory Government versus the so-called left-wing one in Scotland: it is an irreversible decision. If Scotland votes yes, the only way back to the United Kingdom will be on its bended knees and, even then, the rest of the United Kingdom may say, “Very sorry but we don’t want you any more”. However, I also believe that, if Scotland votes no, a very long time must pass before we have another referendum on this issue. A 60:40 result is good enough. It should be enough to say, “No, no more, we are not going to have any more referendums on this issue”. There is only one way that could occur, and it will not be from a vote in the Scottish Parliament. It could occur only if the SNP gained a majority of seats in the House of Commons. Then there might be a case for saying, “We will hold another referendum”.
If Mr Salmond wins by one vote, he will demand an independent country. However, I have to say to my noble friend Lord Foulkes, with whom I do not often disagree, although I do on this issue, that it is my view that if the SNP loses the referendum, particularly if it loses it as convincingly as I believe it will, there is a hard core, English-hating, independence at any cost part of the SNP that will turn on Mr Salmond and blame him for the failure, and the party will rip itself apart because it will have lost its purpose. It will no longer have a reason for existing if it can no longer claim that it is seeking independence.
Thirdly, it is surely time that we ask why Scotland should become an independent country and a separate state. What is it that divides us from the rest of the United Kingdom? Normally, when you look at history—I am a quasi history teacher from a long time ago—you see four major things that divide one nation from another. One is language. Well, we speak the same language. I was in Bruges recently, where Flemish and Dutch are spoken, whereas in Brussels French is spoken, so Belgium is divided. However, we are not divided; there is no difference in language. There may sometimes be a difference in dialect but there is no difference in language.
As regards religion, Scotland itself may sometimes be divided by religion, but it is not divided from the rest of the United Kingdom by religion. As regards race, there are different races in the United Kingdom but the Scots do not make up a separate race. Otherwise, if we voted yes on the 18th, my brothers, my sister, my nephews and my nieces would not only become foreigners but would also be part of a different race, which is just unimaginable.
The status quo is the present union, so why are we dividing it? The last issue is that of a boundary, to which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, referred. There is no natural frontier or boundary between Scotland and England. In fact, when we used to drive north, my father used to throw his cigarette out the window because he never smoked in Scotland. When we crossed the Solway, he would say, “We are now in Scotland”. However, the border is now 200, 300 or 400 yards up the road.
Noble Lords may not be surprised by my final point. In the modern world, where we have a global economy and some companies are bigger than nation states and have a greater turnover than many nation states, why on earth would we split up a small country like ours into different parts and say to one part of it, “You can control your economy”? No, you cannot. We are struggling in this country in the global economy to tax companies properly. Surely that will be the case if we have an independent Scotland. Therefore, I will vote no and I hope that the rest of Scotland will follow my example.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I associate myself with the thrust of the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Haskins. He is right to say that we need to devolve power out of London in an overcentralised England. I want to do that, as he does, as part of a United Kingdom that includes Scotland.
I hope that voters in Scotland will vote no decisively. The United Kingdom is stronger together, to the benefit of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England, individually and collectively. The process of splitting would be long and hard, and the outcome would be uncertain for everyone. I do not want to see a border created between Scotland and England, but one might prove to be inevitable. Greater devolution following a no vote would be the best outcome, and would lead in turn to faster and deeper devolution in England—a trend that has started but which has some way to go to equal what is happening in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
I want to concentrate my contribution on the report of the Select Committee on the Constitution and say that overall the report is extremely cogent and persuasive. It confirms that if Scotland becomes independent, it is seceding from the United Kingdom, which will remain the continuator state. The report defines the rules around division of fixed assets appropriately, and concludes correctly that division of non-fixed assets would need to be negotiated. The constitutional implications are clearly set out.
I was a member of the Economic Affairs Committee when it undertook an inquiry into the economic impact on the UK of Scottish independence. It reported last year and during the hearing of evidence I began to doubt the wisdom of holding only one referendum. If the result in September were a no vote, that would be clear and no further referendum would be needed. However, I felt as we listened to the evidence that the complexity of the issues was such that to hold a referendum only on the principle of Scotland becoming independent, as opposed to a referendum on the final agreement, might cause more problems than it solved if the result of the September vote was yes.
I am still of the view that two referendums are needed if the first results in a yes vote. This issue is alluded to in paragraph 67 of the Select Committee on the Constitution’s report. The matter considered in that paragraph was whether Scottish MPs elected to the UK Parliament in 2015 should leave the UK Parliament on independence day, should there be a yes vote in the referendum. I agree with the report’s conclusion that they would have to leave. I do not see how that could be in dispute. This paragraph, however, contains a second issue, which is perhaps too summarily dismissed. It says that,
“the Edinburgh agreement was for a ‘decisive’ referendum whose outcome will be respected on both sides”.
That of course is true, strictly speaking, but it assumes, first, that there will be two sides, not several sides, when it comes to a negotiation; and secondly, that Scottish voters will not want to change their mind.
My question is this: what happens if the vote on 18 September is yes by a very narrow margin of, say, 51:49, but the Scottish Government elected in May 2016 want to reverse the decision to become independent, and secure a mandate at the election to overturn that narrow yes vote in the referendum? The referendum question in September is a simple one about principle. It lacks any detail. It asks:
“Should Scotland be an independent country?”.
There are no timescales. My point is that the negotiations, however long they take—whether they be short or long, and whether there is an independence day before the 2016 elections—are likely to throw up problems that voters may not have considered or not been able to consider, and which may cause them to wish not to proceed. So can they change their minds?
To hope or to expect that a narrow yes vote can be “decisive” when negotiations have not taken place seems to be an assumption too far. I am for speed in the negotiations should there be a yes vote, in order to avoid constitutional limbo. However, I cannot see how a referendum is decisive when it is about principle only and not about the practical consequences. I hope the Minister in his reply may be able to define in what circumstances a yes vote in September could be overturned by the choice of Scottish voters, either by a second referendum, should one be called, or by the result of the 2016 election.
Lord Cullen of Whitekirk (CB)
My Lords, one of the subjects that the Constitution Committee, of which I am a member, had to consider was an aspect of the governance of Scotland between the referendum and the day on which Scotland would become independent, assuming a yes vote. That would be a period of indeterminate length.
Evidence given to the committee by the Secretary of State for Scotland—statements that were not off the cuff but plainly premeditated—led the committee to conclude that from the date of the referendum, if it was a yes vote, the UK Government would no longer seek to act on behalf of the people of Scotland. The committee therefore considered that there could then be a “constitutional limbo”, to put it mildly. So, I suppose, in the worst case, there would be no Minister answerable to this House or in the other place for matters reserved to this Parliament under the Scotland Act. In those circumstances, the committee made a number of recommendations, including a recommendation that the two Governments should agree on the transfer of powers prior to independence day.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lang, that the view that the UK Government would instantaneously lose their mandate in the event of a yes vote cannot be right. However, I am glad that there are now some signs that, contrary to the impression given to the committee, the UK Government are overcoming their diffidence about acting in the interest of the people of Scotland in the event of a yes vote. This emerged to some extent last week. On 18 June, the Electoral Commission published the draft of a leaflet to inform the public about voting, which is due finally to be issued at the end of this month. It is to contain guidance as to how members of the public can take part in the referendum, and information from lead campaigners.
There is also to be a joint statement by the Scottish Government and the UK Government about the process that would be followed in the event of a yes or no vote, as the case may be. Such a joint statement had been requested by the Electoral Commission some time ago but, for whatever reason, was months overdue by the time it was provided recently. One might have expected that the joint statement would have been published before the leaflet was put together, but that is not what has happened, so far as I know.
Part of the joint statement states:
“The United Kingdom Government would continue to be responsible for defence, security, foreign affairs and constitution, most pensions, benefits and most tax powers up to the date Scotland becomes an independent country”.
Many important subjects fall within the scope of matters reserved to this Parliament, but I am bothered by the fact that only seven of them are mentioned in the joint statement. It makes no mention, for example, of the economy, transport, or oil and gas, to name but three matters that are of some interest in Scotland. I therefore wondered whether the selection of seven subjects in this joint statement was simply deliberate because it was as much as could be agreed between the two Governments. Or is the selection simply because this statement was to give general guidance to members of the public? Either way, there needs to be clarity at this point, 85 days from referendum day.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Lang, I would welcome a response from the Advocate-General, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness. I hope that he can assure the House that the United Kingdom Government will continue to be responsible for all the matters reserved to this Parliament. If that is not to be the case, what will be the position?
Baroness Adams of Craigielea (Lab)
My Lords, coming 30th in the debate is not the easiest position, given that most points have already been made. I am now looking for different ways of saying the same thing. I am not surprised to have found myself in agreement with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness. Given that the Liberal Party was a partner in the constitutional convention, I fully expected to agree with most of what he said. I was a bit more surprised to find myself in almost total agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Lang, and, God forbid, with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, whom I often jousted with in the other place when he was not a supporter of devolution and I was.
The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, wondered what would have happened if Alex Ferguson and Tommy Gemmell had not left Paisley to head south. I can tell him, as a resident of Paisley—in fact I was born there—we would have been delighted for them to stay. I am sure that we would have found a junior football team they could both have managed and coached. However, they did come south, and I think that was of benefit to everyone.
My first interest in politics came when I was 17 and I joined the Labour Party. Life was simple then. The Conservative Party on one side and the Labour Party on the other. I hate to say this to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, but the Liberal Party was on the fringes. Life was simple: we all knew where we stood, we all knew who our opponents were. Then, in the late 1960s, up popped Scottish oil and the almost minute Scottish National Party adopted its first slogan: “It’s Scotland’s oil”. That is what I always thought about nationalism: it is a selfish, inward-looking phenomenon. Nationalism is a destructive force; it is not a force for going forward. It sets people against people and countries against countries, no matter what form it takes. In my view, it should be avoided at all costs.
That slogan set off the debate that went on for almost 40 years and led, in the late 1980s, to interested parties—the Labour Party, the Liberals, the churches, the trade unions and civic Scotland—becoming involved in the constitutional convention, to hammer out how we could avoid nationalism but go forward and allow Scotland’s home affairs to be decided in Scotland. That process took the next eight years, and in 1997, when the Labour Government were elected, my noble friend Lord Robertson came forward with the proposal that we should have a referendum to decide whether there should be a Parliament in Scotland or not. There I found myself again divided from some of the people I had been closest to in the argument for devolution. They did not think we should have that referendum; they thought it had been in the manifesto and that we should go forward. They were looking for something different from what I was looking for: devolvement of power, not on a national basis, but bringing power home, closer to people. I found myself in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, and I hoped he would include local government. That is where real power should lie. The closest point we have to the people who elect us is at local level.
The phrase by Donald Dewar that is often quoted is that the devolved Parliament was a process, not an event. I do not think for a moment that Donald Dewar meant that that process was further devolving powers to the Scottish Parliament; rather it was devolving powers from that Parliament back to local government and the people who first elect us. That did not happen. In fact, the exact opposite happened. We have watched councils decline in Scotland. There are currently 32; I doubt that will last for very much longer. Power is being sucked up to the centre, albeit the centre has changed. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, who said he had looked at the rising numbers at Edinburgh Airport. If you want to look at things being pulled to the centre, simply look at that. As Edinburgh Airport has grown, Glasgow Airport has declined. Power, jobs and influence are all being sucked into one place in Scotland.
Alex Salmond was never going to be content with a devolved Parliament. He did not want it in the first place. He went along with it and saw it as a stepping stone. We now come to the referendum that he talked us into. It is quite simple—yes or no—but not according to Mr Salmond. We have again been sidetracked down the road of what happens if there is a no vote: “What more powers do we get? What’s the second prize?”. We should not have been distracted down that road. It is a quite clear yes or no, and, like with most things, no should mean no.
I hope there will be a no vote, but that we then look at the whole situation in the UK. I think we need another constitutional convention or conference, whatever you wish to call it, that does not look at it in a piecemeal manner, as we have looked before. That is the difficulty we have got ourselves into: we keep chipping bits off and adding bits on. We need to look at the whole circumstance in the UK—from this Parliament to regional governments, to the Scottish Parliament, to the Welsh Assembly, to local government —to see what has to be done as a whole. I do not think we can continue in the way we are. People are now disfranchised and almost certainly do not feel included. Until they feel they have some input to make at local level, I do not think we are going to see voting patterns increase—rather, they will decline.
I appear to be the only woman speaking in the debate. To be quite honest, that does not surprise me. Women in Scotland have not been very vocal about this, but when it comes to opinion polls the answer is no. That is because women are not gamblers. Men are more likely to take a gamble on what might be, but women are used to the everyday issues of what happens now: “How do I put the bread on the table? How do I keep the family clothed? How do I pay the rent? Am I going to gamble all that?”. Maybe it will be all right on the night, but maybe it will not. Women’s family ties are important to them. Like the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, I have two grandchildren living in Scotland with a Scottish mother and an English father, and two grandchildren living just outside Cambridge with a Scottish mother and an English father. One set of them will be foreigners. Whichever way we go, the family living in England are going to have foreign cousins and the family living in Scotland are going to have foreign cousins. My grandchildren are all British, and I hope they all will remain British.
I want to ask the Minister what the implications are for education. My eldest granddaughter is 16. She has just sat her Highers and hopes to do very well. She will not apply to university until next year because she is too young, but she wants to look at her options throughout the UK. If, by sheer chance, there is a yes vote in September, she will have to apply to the English universities, I presume, as a foreign student. Young people do not want that to happen. They do not see borders and boundaries in the way that my generation probably did. She finds the thought of a border between Scotland and England laughable. She sees herself as European more than anything.
That leads me to EU membership. If, as we are being told, after a yes vote Scotland will not automatically be a member of the EU—I think that that is the case—my granddaughter will not be applying as an EU student but as a foreign student. She cannot freely travel to Europe, as she would hope to do in a gap year; that will not be open to her without visas and all that comes with it. She will need a different passport. What of EU members living in Scotland at the moment? A large number of them live in Scotland, so what will happen to them after an independence vote? Are they to be cast aside? I was interested to hear one of my colleagues say that Welsh was the second most spoken language in Wales. Can I tell noble Lords that Polish is the second most spoken language in Scotland? That is not a recent event. It comes from the 1940s when the Free Polish Army was stationed in Scotland. It has been for a very long time.
These are very big questions but questions that the Scottish Government are refusing to answer and we have to get those answers before proceeding further.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
My Lords, for many Englishmen, Scotland is a land of mists and mysteries, and I am an Englishman. I confess to being something of a genealogical nut and yet in 40-odd years of clambering up my family tree I have found not a single drop of Scottish blood.
Perhaps the trolls and social-media Stalinists would claim that this gives me no right even to participate in this debate, and that I fail the McTebbit test, or whatever passes as an appropriate test of my loyalties north of the border. So let me be clear: I support two teams—England when it is playing Scotland, and Scotland when it is playing Germany, France, Italy, or almost any other country.
The world of books has always been of some importance, so perhaps I should use that as a starting point. The first book I ever remember reading was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, as a boy, by torchlight beneath the covers. Even on a cold winter’s night in Hertfordshire I could walk on warm sands with Jim Hawkins and his famous Scottish creator. The Scots, as we have heard, have always been renowned for their literary imagination, with Barrie, Burns, Conan Doyle and Kenneth Grahame—an endless, illustrious list given by the noble Lord, Lord Birt. Of course, as many have mentioned, there is Walter Scott.
I prepared for this debate by reading for the very first time that classic novel of the north, Rob Roy. That would tell me something about the Scottish spirit, I thought. It is a rather long book, so it came as something of a surprise to discover that I was more than half way through it and still had not set foot in Scotland. Dare I admit it—parts of the dialect were a bit challenging. As I am sure all noble Lords will know, it is set in the years immediately after the Act of Union. It is a novel of national pride, cultural aspiration and, most of all, reconciliation One of its heroes is Baillie Jarvie, a man who—I am using Scott’s words,
“although a keen Scotchman, and abundantly zealous for the honour of his country, was disposed to think liberally of the sister kingdom”.
I think Baillie Jarvie was saying that we are better together. He scolds the foul-tempered Andrew Fairservice thus—although I will not attempt the accent:
“Whisht, sir!—Whisht!—it’s ill-scraped tongues like your’s that make mischief atween neighbourhoods and nations. There’s naething sae gude on this side o’ time but it might hae been better, and that may be said o’ the Union”.
That may still be said of the union, and even more so of ill scraped tongues.
My noble and learned friend Lord Wallace, and several others, referred to a nation punching above its weight. I prefer to think of it as a nation singing above its scale. Scotland has certainly done that. There are so many great inventors, industrialists, engineers, academics, surgeons, artists, and just plain good exceptionally hospitable people. We have already heard stories of great Scotsmen and women in so many areas—in business, science, education and military valour—which I will not repeat.
However, let me turn to one area of great national pride and cultural interest—that of sport. It is a stunning matter of fact that Scottish athletes who made up 10% of Great Britain’s team at the Olympics hauled in 20% of our medals. Who will ever forget the pride of the entire country at that extraordinary achievement? Could that have been achieved by Scotland on its own in isolation? I doubt it. Look at the English premiership these past few years—the finest football league in the world and run by, yes, Scots. I am sorry, but it is the shocking truth: Alex Ferguson, Kenny Dalgleish, David Moyes, Paul Lambert, Steve Kean, Owen Coyle, Alex McLeish, and on, and on, and on—Scotsmen to a man and in every lilting post-match syllable. Has that smacked of arrogance in the English? Arrogance is usually administered with a firmer hand than that. If my old friend Francis Urquhart had ever heard of the drive for independence, I suspect that he would have concluded that the demand for it came from south of the border, not the north.
Those Scots are everywhere, even here in Westminster. As my noble friend Lord Forsyth pointed out so passionately earlier, take out those with Scottish roots from the list of Prime Ministers these past 100 years—the Campbell-Bannermans, the Douglas-Homes, the Browns and the Blairs, the Macmillans and the MacDonalds and all the rest, and you are left with a remarkably short list. Take out a couple of Welshmen who crept in there as well and the list is shorter still. So have we English lost out? No, all of us have gained.
There is a golden thread, a mixture of sentiment and common interest, that has bound our peoples together that makes us stronger, not weaker, and that has made this union one of the most adaptable and successful ever devised by man. Do I take all this for granted? Of course I do at times, I am English. Was I taught too little at school about Scottish history? Absolutely I was. Do I wish this union of ours to continue? Most certainly, and with all my heart.
Even as an Englishman it is impossible to walk the fields of Culloden without feeling the power of its history. You cannot read the pages of Rob Roy or listen to the songs of old Scotland, even with a dull English ear, without being taken up by the romance of Scottish culture. Walk through the streets of Edinburgh in August, as I do, and you will see heads held high—just as they are bent low when walking those same streets in January. I defy you to sail the seas of the west coast in the company of Para Handy without laughing with every blow of the puffer’s bilge.
I have not an ounce of Scottish marrow in my bones. I represent a party that would gain mightily and overnight if Scotland disappeared and took all of its Labour MPs with it. The rest of us would move on. Yet we—the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish—are more than friends, we are family. If Scotland were to decide to quit, to leave us and go its own way, it would be the greatest sadness of my political life. May that day never come.
Lord Soley (Lab)
I have lived, worked and studied in Scotland and England. My family roots are from all parts of these islands. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, that if he digs deep enough he will find little parts of these islands in all of us. It is one of the many reasons why I think of myself as British, not English, and why I recognise that the United Kingdom is, in my judgment, by far the most successful political and economic union that the world has ever seen.
The noble Lord, Lord Lang, put it very well—I thank him for his committee’s report—when he reminded us that in 1707 the Act of Union brought to an end years of fratricidal strife across the border. It introduced peace and prosperity to these islands that allowed England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland all to build up, especially in the more radical parts, that tradition of democracy, the rule of law, freedom and tolerance that made us the most successful nation of that period. It was a nation that was able to invent and carry forward the Industrial Revolution because of those economic and political freedoms. We should be proud of it. We should fight for it.
In 1707 that Act was, in a way, about an unformed federal state—it was federalism before federalism was invented. The Scots kept their own legal system; the English kept theirs. There were separate church/state relationships. Those aspects of federalism were there in these islands already. When I hear people say, as Alex Salmond and others do, that somehow or other Scotland is uniquely different, I say, as I have indicated, that the interrelationship within these islands is far too complex to be dismissed in the way in which it is sometimes done by the SNP. In my view, one of the greatest achievements of the United Kingdom is that we can maintain our differences in a way that enables different cultures within the United Kingdom to flourish. I go to Scotland and I can enjoy the culture there. Scots come here and they can enjoy the culture in England—or in Wales or in Northern Ireland. We can do that because we have developed political structures that allow it to happen.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, hit on an important point when he indicated that we have to keep our thinking flexible on what happens next. That is not only because there could be a narrow vote on 18 September; rather more worryingly, if there is a strong yes vote—I hope that there will not be—and then a flight of capital and jobs from Scotland, we will find that the attitude towards separation changes. There will be an election for the Scottish Parliament in 2016. What will happen if the SNP is thrown out? Will we carry on negotiating on an independence that no one wants? I very much doubt it.
I strongly object to the way in which the SNP addresses this argument. It is trying to present it as though voting for independence on 18 September means that everything changes but nothing changes. It cannot be like that. There are crucial dangers on the economic and currency fronts. The issue of whether Scotland joins the European Union is crucial, too. I cannot improve on what, from his great knowledge, the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, told the House. As someone who has had to deal with political realities over the years, I can say that if I were a state such as Spain or some other European state that had separatist groups within it, I would do everything possible to make it difficult and costly, if not impossible, for a separating state to join. You would want to send the message to the separatist groups in your country that separation is a bad idea. We have to accept that hard political reality.
What do we do about the current argument? I have my criticisms of the way in which the no campaign has been run in Scotland and feel that we are underestimating the importance of bringing the rest of the United Kingdom into the argument. As has been pointed out, about 1 million Scots live in the rest of the United Kingdom. About a quarter of a million live in south-east England. When I talk at the Caledonian Club, I find that most of the Scots there are anti the separatist vote. When I go to some of the other Scottish groups to whom I talk, they are anti the separatist agenda, too. They realise, rather better than many SNP members, that if you leave the union and separate, you are saying to the rest of the United Kingdom, “We are leaving you. This is a divorce”. Those who want to leave need to recognise that if they poke the English, in particular, in the eye, the feeling on this side, here, will be awoken that Scotland is not wanted. You can already hear that. When I talk to people in the rest of Britain about this, they say, “Well, if they want to go, it doesn’t matter”. If they are saying that, there will not then be a nice, friendly, structured argument about who gets what. If a separate Scotland tries to walk back into the family the following day, who gets what can certainly be discussed, but the family that has been left cannot be told how it should run its economy. That is why Scotland cannot have the economic and monetary policy that the SNP says that it wants.
What do we do next? I know Scotland well. I hope and believe that the Scottish people will not vote yes to separation. My guess is that they will not but, if they do, we need some major constitutional changes for the remaining parts of the UK. If they vote no, however, we cannot just carry on as before. I understand and to some extent am sympathetic to a constitutional convention, although there are problems about how to contain it in a limited timeframe and focus it effectively. If we do not have that, we need to have a structured way in which we can recognise the changing relationships between the regions and countries of the United Kingdom.
There is the question of greater devolution. Much of the talk in this debate has been about devolution within Scotland, but there is the matter of devolution throughout the UK. A rarely addressed problem is that of England. An English Parliament is not necessarily the answer. When you look at England, it is very important to recognise that the south-east corner, bounded by Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Oxford and Southampton, contains over 22 million people. That is over one-third of the total population of the United Kingdom. In the early 1980s, I and Bryan Gould, who was then the MP for Dagenham and a shadow Minister, tried to work out a regional structure for England, but the impossibility of the south-east hit us hard. There is a great problem there. It is not insoluble, but it is a difficult problem, which we need to address.
The issue of England in relation to all this is important. It greatly troubles me when the SNP seems to think that it is enough simply to be anti-English. Many of its members are anti-English rather than anti the United Kingdom. That is deeply offensive to many British people in England. That is why the SNP perhaps needs to take on board that arguing for independence in the way that it does sets off a reaction elsewhere in the UK that will not create the thoughtful debate that we would have to have after a yes vote. I hope that there will not be an independence vote, but we have to face the reality.
Lord Elis-Thomas (PC)
My Lords, when I sent my name in for this debate, I suspected that I might end up in a minority but I did not expect to be in a minority of one. However, there is on the wall of this House a very important reminder of the failure of the House of Lords to understand issues of home rule, as it was then called. Of course, I am referring to the two famous portraits of the 1890s which show their Lordships—in those days bedecked in fine top hats, of course—doing down the aspirations of the Irish people. I wish to speak about the idea of the exercise of sovereignty within an existing state and the way in which that can and should happen in a context that respects everyone’s rights to self-determination as peoples.
I am very grateful to the Constitution Committee for the way in which it has exercised its judgment on this issue but I am concerned about the constitutional framework that is being pursued. My suspicion is that the notions of a continuator state and a successor state are not precisely analogous in the present position. I know that there are no other precedents but it is important for us to consider how the devolution transformation has changed the United Kingdom already and how it might change it again.
What has really dismayed me about this debate is that your Lordships seem to believe that the United Kingdom was created by almighty God. The United Kingdom is a constitutional chapter of accidents, just like most other constitutions are. As someone who has studied the history of these islands, I am aware that the United Kingdom did not remain a kingdom as originally conceived, with the union of the kingdom of Scotland and the kingdom of England, which had already taken on the Principality of Wales, with Ireland, but that existed in history only for some 150 years. So why is that state form the only thing that we can envisage in the 21st century?
I confess publicly that if I had a vote in Scotland I would vote yes. That does not make me a nationalist with a capital N and it certainly does not make me a separatist. The badge that I habitually wear indicates which Union I think is the most important to belong to—the European Union—alongside the nation of Wales, but that does not mean that I do not consider it to have been a great privilege in my political life to have served in this building for 40 years. That is my approach to this issue.
What I have tried to do here for that period, especially the 15 years I have spent trying to establish the constitution of Wales, with a lot of help from my noble friend Lord Richard—I was glad to hear him say earlier that his work is yet unfinished; I look forward to the time when we will have more equality in the numbers of Members who serve across the United Kingdom in our assemblies—is to have a positive approach to trying to make devolution work. To that end, I have always emphasised the important principle of the sovereignty of the people and of the self-determination of peoples. This is what I find very attractive about both the original Scottish Government White Paper—much attacked and savaged in this Chamber—and, more recently, the draft independence Bill.
I am a big fan of what is usually known as the continental way of making constitutions—in other words, putting down basic principles and indicating fundamental rights—and here we have a fine example in how a series of policies is set out. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, has already referred to this matter. As a former Defence Minister—and someone with whom I have had disagreements in the past on matters of nuclear disarmament—he is quite seriously concerned about a Scottish Government who are attempting to make nuclear disarmament a principle of the constitution. Well, for heaven’s sake. We have a situation where 190 countries have already signed the non-proliferation treaty, so is it not rather good—for some of us, anyway—that one of the nations of the United Kingdom might decide to do that by its constitution?
Apart from the international issue of disarmament, there are issues relating to social policy, which is set in the constitution, and in particular there are issues involving the environment. Again, I would be very attracted to a yes vote on these grounds—the commitment to legislate on biodiversity and to address the mitigation of climate change, following on from what the Scottish Government have already done in this area in the Climate Change (Scotland) Act and so on. The notion of placing in one’s constitution, as about 90 other countries have done, the right to a healthy environment is also attractive. However, perhaps most attractive is the provision for a permanent constitution to be prepared as a written constitution by a further constitution convention. It is not something that the Scottish Government themselves are seeking to do; it is something that they are seeking to establish by the same principle by which devolution was established—that is, through a convention made up of civic society.
In contrast to everyone else who has spoken, I do not see these huge fears about the future of the United Kingdom and I do not share the pessimism. I will co-operate of course with whatever refreshed union—to use the term of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis—will emerge from these discussions. I still believe, however, that the best way forward is a yes vote in Scotland. This would have a catalytic effect on constitutional development not only north of the border but across the Marches of Wales.
Lord Richard
Since the noble Lord was kind enough to refer to me, I wonder whether he could answer a question. I heard what he said—I listened with great interest—but is he saying that at the end of the day he wants to see a United Kingdom in which Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the regions still participate, or is he saying that he wants to see a United Kingdom which Scotland, and possibly also Wales, is no longer part of?
Lord Elis-Thomas
What I certainly see is the constitutional position, especially since there will be one common head of state, where what we are talking about is not the end of the United Kingdom but the creation of united kingdoms or the recreation of united kingdoms, which of course includes the Principality of Wales and indeed a significant portion of the island of Ireland. Especially when we look at the new relationships within the island of Ireland, there are myriad possibilities. I look forward with excitement to the further changes in the history of our kingdom.
The Earl of Caithness (Con)
My Lords, despite all our discussions, both on previous occasions and today, I do not believe that we are any closer to realising the full impact that will occur in this country—and by that I mean the whole of the United Kingdom—and Europe, if there is a yes vote for separation. We have not fully analysed it, and I do not think it is possible to fully analyse it at the moment.
A number of problems have been raised that could occur in this debate. In fact the noble Lord, Lord Soley, prompts me to ask my noble and learned friend now: what is the legal situation should there be a narrow vote for yes to independence and then an immediate backtracking in Scotland and the removal of the SNP from power? Is there a provision where there could be a second referendum or is it a fait accompli that once there is a yes vote on the 18 September, that is it for ever and a day. I would be grateful if he could clarify that.
I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Lang for his excellent report and for highlighting just what a difficult and bumpy road there is ahead of us in the event of a possible yes vote. My noble friend reminded us that today is the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, which he said was primarily a Scots versus English battle. I remind the House that a lot of Scots fought on the English side. There was Comyn, the de Umfravilles, Macnabs and MacDowells. There were Highland clans fighting for the English. It was as much about a settlement of who should be the King of Scotland as between Scotland and England. My ancestors were involved in that battle and in the Battle of Flodden that my noble friend mentioned. At least we helped to win one of the battles we took part in. The point of that was to remind the House that Scotland was as divided then as it is now. As my noble friend Lord Lang said in his speech, the union in 1707 brought the peace and harmony that both countries really wanted.
There has been a mass of paperwork and many good government publications, but the fact remains that we in Scotland—in fact, we in the UK—do not know the full implications of what will happen and the effect of the independence vote. Only 14% of people in Scotland know what the current arrangements are between Holyrood and Westminster. Compound that with the Scotland Act 2012 and there is a huge information problem that the Government must try to address. In addition to the book that will arrive in everybody’s home about the independence vote, would my noble and learned friend consider whether there could be a small pamphlet explaining the powers of Westminster and of Holyrood now and what they will be? The fact is that under the 2012 Act the Scottish Government are allowed more tax-raising powers by secondary legislation without primary legislation—but not many people realise that.
There will inevitably be questions that are unanswered because the negotiations have to take place after a yes vote if there is one. We must recall that that is in marked contrast to the situation with regard to Europe, where it seems to be the policy that all the negotiations should happen before the referendum takes place. We would be much better served in Scotland had such a situation happened so that we had a clearer view of the likely implications, and the division of assets and liabilities. One would then be in a better position to put the cross on the paper.
I follow the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, in regard to Europe. What does my noble and learned friend think the timescale might be if there is a yes vote? Could there be a negotiation for Scotland to become a member of the EU by the time separation day happens? If there is not time—I do not believe there is—England will find itself with a foreign country that is not part of the EU on its northern border. The effect of that on the north of England will be dramatic, as it will be on the south of Scotland. An artificial line that has occurred through history would have to be manned at all its border posts. How many roads would be closed so that that may be satisfactorily managed to avoid fraud? Let us recall that 23 million vehicles cross in both directions each year between Scotland and England. Some 15 million tonnes of freight move in each direction and there are 7 million rail passenger journeys. If there are to be border controls, that will impede the natural flow of trade within an area that at the moment is all united. It is therefore no wonder that the polls in the border areas show a higher percentage of people wanting to have a no vote and to stay in the United Kingdom than elsewhere in Scotland.
Will my noble and learned friend comment also on the draft Scottish independence Bill published on 16 June? Are the Government going to do a critique of it and are they satisfied on its legal accuracy?
There has been quite a movement of powers to Scotland following devolution, mainly with the Scotland Act 2012. All the major parties are saying now that there should be a further transfer of powers from Westminster to Holyrood if there is a no vote on 18 September. That has caused considerable upset in parts of England, from Cornwall to Northumberland. There is no doubt that there will have to be a constitutional convention to try to work out a better way in which the union can operate, because we are past the point of no return now. The Scots have driven us to this situation. Although I am in favour of transferring more tax-raising powers from Westminster to Holyrood, on this occasion it is time to make haste slowly, because this is a matter which, if it is not done correctly, could break up the United Kingdom in other ways that we have not envisaged at the moment. For that reason I support that part of the report of my noble friend Lord Lang in which he says that there ought to be a constitutional convention as soon as 18 September is past.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, the challenge we face in this debate is immense in itself, but it is also symptomatic. We live in an age of paradox. Never have the people of the world been more interdependent in terms of security, economics, health and all the rest. Yet somehow there has never been such a widespread sense of alienation and disenchantment with existing political structures. I believe these two factors are working together in the situation that confronts us.
It is not just about economics. In the case of Scotland it is clearly about emotion and culture as well. There is a deep-seated yearning for a sense of identity and personal significance and the confidence that comes out of a sense of identity. The challenge is how we recognise that identity and enable it to flourish but at the same time enable people to see that in the world in which we live it is simply impossible to find a way forward without co-operation; and that therefore it is not really the right time to dismantle a very effective part of co-operation, as demonstrated within the United Kingdom.
I am a half-Scot, and I hope that the House will forgive me if I am a little personal in my approach to this debate tonight. I had a father who could not have been more English, rooted in the Surrey-Hampshire borders. I had a mother who could not have been more of a Scot. She had lost two brothers, serving the United Kingdom in the Army, one not yet 20, who after being awarded an MC was killed in action. The other, as a young captain serving in the Indian army 84 years ago—a kilt-wearing captain, when he had the opportunity—was killed on the north-west frontier.
During the war my mother was working and therefore my grandmother had a great deal to do with bringing me up. She had gone out at the age of 19 to marry my grandfather in India, and they lost two of their children there. He was a missionary in the Church of Scotland. He ended his life as secretary of the foreign missions of the Church of Scotland. He was not, as I understand him, an evangelical, but he was dedicated to the cause of education and had concentrated on education in his time in India.
During the war, my grandmother used to tell me vivid stories about Scotland all the time—often in the cosiness of the shelter as the bombs fell round about. My mother identified very strongly with London during the Blitz, but always as a Scot. She never doubted or questioned her Scottish identity. That was true of her work in academia, at London University and the LSE, on the Bench and in local politics.
What did all that mean for me? How did it affect me? It meant, I realise in my older age, that I grew up with a sense that England and Scotland were inseparable. They were different—that I was very clear about—but they were inseparable. There was a certain confidence about that. Indeed, at times, the humour was quite strong. One of the stories I was brought up on was the story of the Scottish businessman who had been building up his business very successfully and had always resolved any difficulties that arose at St Andrew’s House but was finally confronted with something that meant that he had to go to London, to Whitehall. The family were rather anxious about what would happen, so when he came back, they asked him, “How did you get on with all those Sassenachs?”. He said, rather puzzled, “Sassenachs? I did not meet any Sassenachs; I only met the heads of department”. That story made a great impression on me.
It was therefore not altogether a surprise when, as a very young Member of the other place I became a PPS at the then very large Ministry of Housing and Local Government for England and Wales and went to ministerial meetings on Monday mornings. There was quite a big team of Ministers. Down one side of the table were the Ministers and down the other side were the civil servants. Bang in the middle, opposite the Secretary of State, was the Permanent Secretary. Who was the Permanent Secretary? Stevenson, a rugby-playing Scotsman, if ever there was one.
I think that that is central to the story of the United Kingdom together. England and Scotland together have had a great and successful past. Yes, we have had our differences. Yes, there are some historic resentments in Scotland about how the Scottish aristocracy perhaps sold out the Scottish people to the English. Those things are real; they do not go away. What we must face is that if there is a no vote in the referendum, that will not be the end of the story. We will have gained a political victory, but the issue will remain. I do not want to be a Jeremiah, but I have a foreboding that it will accentuate and could turn quite ugly. I see some Scottish Members of the House indicating their doubts, with me, on that matter.
Therefore it is essential that, with no further prevarication, we get down to the job of restructuring the United Kingdom in a way that meets that challenge. Let us stop theorising about the possibilities of a federal United Kingdom. A federal United Kingdom is what is required. It is the logic of all that is happening in terms of devolution and the talk of greater opportunities and financial powers for Scotland. I am convinced that we will have a stronger United Kingdom on a federal basis than we do when we are always trying to sweep the issue back under the carpet.
It seems to me that there are parallels here with Europe. Looking back at the European story, I happen to believe that we would have had a stronger Europe if we had had a greater confederal approach rather than the emphasis on a unitary approach. Sometimes, strength lies in the co-operation and effective operation of confident people with a strong sense of identity. From that standpoint, I would be the first to applaud the creation of a commission to look at the future constitutional structure of Britain, but I would want that commission to have a firm remit that it was to look at it in terms of the contribution to be made to our mutual future on the basis of a federation.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd, because I agree so much with his peroration, and I shall come back to that point in a moment.
The committee report outlines, quite rightly, the very considerable constitutional implications of a yes vote. It certainly places in sharp focus the profound and shocking effect that it would have on both the continuation state of the UK and the successor state of Scotland. However, I am an optimist. As a fellow Celt, a Cornishman, I hope very much that our Scottish cousins will firmly vote no. I believe that we should plan for that every bit as much as we prepare for the stark reality of yes. A number of colleagues in all parts of the House have been referring to the possibility that we have to do something very serious indeed even if there is a no vote. What the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has just said echoes that.
We were given a lead earlier in this debate from the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord Richard, to the effect that we should be looking very firmly at the implications for the whole of the United Kingdom. Indeed I am repeating a phrase that I think the noble Lord, Lord Lang, made in introducing his committee’s report.
Many of today’s contributions have understandably focused on the challenges for Scotland on 19 September. However, how does this Parliament, and the parties in it, deliver on the promise that a no vote will not mean that there will be no change?All the leaders say that they are committed to more devolution and that Scotland must be assured that it will happen. My noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness reiterated that promise at the start of today’s debate.
It is in that context that I am disappointed—though it is perfectly reasonable—that the committee did not look at the constitutional implications of a no vote. Perhaps it needs to return to that, even before 18 September. That is because, as devolution takes another step forward, after the referendum, both in Scotland and in Wales, we cannot forget that the largest part of the United Kingdom is England. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in a debate on the gracious Speech said:
“We clearly recognise in Scotland and Wales the distance and resentment towards Westminster-dominated decisions. We need to recognise that the same instincts apply in Newcastle, Norwich, Cumberland and Cornwall”. —[Official Report, 11/6/14; col. 460.]
Colleagues on all sides of the House, on these Benches and throughout, have spoken in similar terms.
The Chancellor spoke about this only yesterday in Manchester. Naturally enough he expressed it in terms of giving an economic boost to the north of England, and he suggested doing so by getting the big northern cities to work together. In that speech, however, he acknowledged something vital, which is that real economic powerhouses must possess real political power too.
In that context we have to examine the whole issue of local democratic accountability. To take a rather more parochial example, yesterday the Government took a big step: finally devolving to Cornwall the right to allocate the latest tranche of EU structural funds, some £450 million, and that is where the power should be, rather than in those artificial regional development agencies that we all suffered from.
However, that should only be the start. More power should be devolved to a democratically accountable Cornish assembly, or whatever it may be in different parts of the country. That is subsidiarity. There were quotes from my erstwhile leader, Jo Grimond, about the concept of subsidiarity. I do not think that he invented the term, but the concept is quite clear: that decisions should be taken as close as practicably possible to those whom they affect. Colleagues from all parts of the country and all parts of the House have made a similar point. Different arrangements will suit different parts of England–we should be relaxed about that. Dr Andrew Blick, a highly respected academic in this field, has written an excellent pamphlet detailing how this model could work—a model of devolution on demand. This will be relevant whatever the outcome of the referendum of 18 September, to both Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom. We must build on the new city deals so that the new powers, along the lines offered to Wales in 1998, can be available as of right to institutions which mean something to the people they affect. This concept of devolution on demand, which we Liberal Democrats have been advocating, is very well examined by Dr Blick’s paper. It would mean getting councils to come together to form the new institutions; and in return for working together they would be entitled to power, initially on the scale offered to Wales in 1998, and then on a greater scale, with more responsibility for finance eventually following thereafter.
As the Chancellor said yesterday, Wales has its own parliament and can pass its own laws but the economies of Manchester and Leeds are each bigger than that of Wales. So I conclude, as he does, that there is no reason why parts of England cannot take power on a similar scale to the Welsh Assembly if the will is here in this building to make that happen. There is no reason why Kent, Cornwall, Manchester or Leeds cannot take on responsibility and have proper accountable governance. They would be more strategic and powerful than local authorities but not as centralised and clumsy as control from Westminster.
I very much agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said about an English parliament and I invite him to look at the effective debunking of that idea in Dr Blick’s pamphlet, which I quoted in Grand Committee last week. It would be incredibly unbalancing and centralising to invent an all-England parliament at this stage. Incidentally, if there were a yes vote in Scotland then an English parliament would be even more disruptive to the British constitution. That is because it would of course be representing 92% of the remaining United Kingdom, with Stormont and Cardiff Bay representing 3% and 5% respectively. That would surely be impossible to sustain for any period.
The second option, which is equally undesirable, is that of English votes for English laws. This has been examined and examined again but even the year-long work of the McKay commission raised more questions than it answered and, sadly, it ended up being rubbished on all sides.
Thirdly, the idea of some top-down imposition of regional government, as was attempted in the north-east of England, has also been dismissed and seen as irrelevant. Those artificial regions that were created for a different purpose just do not meet the needs and aspirations of people in England. I take as an example the northern end of the south-west region that is dear to my heart, which is nearer to Scotland than it is to Land’s End. The idea that that region has a natural unity is just not true.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, emphasised just now—as the noble Lords, Lord Crickhowell and Lord McFall, did previously—that 19 September is as much a constitutional opportunity or threat as 18 September. We have to grasp the fundamental asymmetrics of the demand for devolution in England—the fundamental messiness of England—and the essential asymmetrical reality of the United Kingdom, and then go with the grain. Once people have devolution they tend to like it and their neighbours will then demand it too. We can move toward a more devolved United Kingdom—the whole of the United Kingdom—without imposing artificial boundaries, in the way so eloquently described just now by the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, and without unbalancing the whole union by pitching England against the rest. The next Parliament must make that happen.
Lord Garel-Jones (Con)
My Lords, I confess that I am a little sceptical about this idea that devolution cures all, which many noble Lords seem to have embraced, but I do not want to go down that route today.
I begin by referring briefly to the position that would arise in the European Union in the event that Scotland were to secede from the United Kingdom. The legal position is quite clear, contrary to what Mr Salmond would wish us to believe. As long ago as 2004, President Prodi stated in reply to a question in the European Parliament:
“When a part of the territory of a member state ceases to be part of that state, e.g. because that territory becomes an independent state, the treaties will no longer apply to that territory”.
More recently, the position was validated by President Barroso, who said,
“a region which secedes from a member state automatically ceases to be part of the European Union”.
So there would need to be a negotiation. Other noble Lords—the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, has already spoken—are better qualified than I to speculate as to how that might develop. I would just say that I can think of half a dozen member states that would count up to 100 very slowly indeed before rolling out the red carpet for an independent Scotland. At the very least, negotiations would not be a piece of gateau, as the French might say. There would be no fast track—rather, a bumpy road leading who knows where.
However, I do not want to dwell on the downsides; I want to take a much more positive line. Too much of the debate has sounded like a bunch of snotty southerners firing warning shots at the Scots. I am Welsh, and whenever I hear our national anthem, “Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau”, I feel an emotion shared by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and other Welsh Members of your Lordships’ House. Consequently, I think I can understand the profound sense of attachment and belonging that the Scottish people feel for their country.
The real drawback of this referendum from my point of view is that I feel forced to reveal something that we Celts have kept quiet about for several hundred years. Between us, the Celtic fringe—that is, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—while accounting for only 15% of the population, have been running Great Britain for years. Delve into any area of British life—the arts, the law, the civil service, the business world, politics—and what do you find? You find that we are hugely overrepresented. Tell it not in Gath, speak of it not in the streets of Ashkelon, but we have been running this place for years.
When I was Minister of State at the Foreign Office during the Maastricht negotiations, our principal adviser was a chap called John Kerr, later head of the Foreign Office. Our spokesman was a chap called Gus O’Donnell, later head of the Treasury. Emyr Jones Parry headed the EU external department at the FCO and later was our ambassador at the United Nations. There are no prizes for guessing their particular origins. The noble Lords, Lord Kerr and Lord O’Donnell, are now respected Members of this House, and my only regret is that we were never joined by Emyr Jones Parry, who would have been a considerable strengthening of the Taffia in your Lordships’ House.
It is true that our ultimate boss, the Prime Minister, Sir John Major, was English, but it is also true that no fewer than 50% of the Prime Ministers in the 20th century were Scottish or Welsh—half of them. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made reference to that. Noble Lords may think that I am stretching the envelope a little by including Lord Salisbury in that list, but more than 500 years ago the Cecils were Welshmen on the make from Allt-Yr-Ynys on the Monmouthshire border. True, they anglicised their name from Sitsyllt to Cecil. True, they now sound like proper English toffs. But it is true too that the present Lord Salisbury—the noble Marquis, Lord Salisbury—clutches his Welsh origins to his bosom with pride, as I am sure do the 700,000 or 800,000 Scots living and working in England today.
Look at British history and it is the same story. Robert Burns, Adam Smith, Alexander Fleming, David Hume, John Baird—in any walk of science, business, the arts or the military, Scottish names appear again and again. If I were to give your Lordships a full list and add the Welsh and Irish figures, I would need to detain the House overnight.
Lastly, I will quote two apparently contradictory slogans: “Small is beautiful” and “Size matters”. Our countries—Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales—are not only beautiful; they give us a deep sense of belonging and social cohesion. On the other hand, many of the decisions that affect our daily lives are taken increasingly in international fora where size matters, whether it be the EU, the UN, NATO, the WTO or the G7. In all these, Great Britain has the size and weight to be at the top table. I say to my fellow Celts in Scotland: let us have the best of both worlds, let us continue to take a deep pride in our small homelands and let us continue—on the quiet—to represent Great Britain on the international top tables where size matters.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, said, in his recent book My Scotland, Our Britain Gordon Brown draws attention to,
“what is unique about the modern United Kingdom—and distinguishes it not only from the US and other federal countries but from the European Union—is the extent to which UK citizenship guarantees fundamental social and economic, not just civil and political rights. It means that regardless of whether you are Scottish, English, Welsh or Northern Irish, you have a right to a UK-guaranteed pension; a right to UK-guaranteed assistance when unemployed; a right to fully funded health care free at the point of need; and a right to minimum standards of protection at work, including a UK-wide minimum wage and tax credits, no matter who you are and where you reside. The system of sharing across the UK creates a form of equality between the citizens of the four nations that no other group of countries can match for its depth and sophistication and this is arguably the defining characteristic of the Union today”.
We are surely right to care deeply about this and to campaign as hard as we can for its retention.
I want to deal with wider questions on the basis that the SNP’s independence referendum is defeated on 18 September, because the problem will not go away. The SNP is clearly peddling a lie when it asserts that Scotland can be a nation again only if it becomes a separate state. We are a nation. We have always been a nation, and what is more we have been successfully part of a world-class state for more than 300 years. Other speakers have explained what this has meant in practice and celebrated the contributions that Scots have been able to make on a world stage as part of the United Kingdom.
In Scotland, we control our institutions. We have a separate legal system, we are free to practise different religious practices and we have a distinctive culture. It is the best of both worlds, so what is the problem? It does not seem to be Scotland. My reading of the situation is that the people of Scotland would like to remain within the United Kingdom in the union that has lasted for more than 300 years, but that the conditions under which they are prepared to do so have changed and they need to be reflected in a new constitutional settlement. Like my noble friend Lord Richard, I believe that our present constitutional arrangements are a complete mess. The changes that need to be made are significant but not impossible to deliver, although there are consequences that may take time to be worked through.
This is a constitutional moment, an opportunity to sort out issues, that we must seize. The problem that we have to solve after 18 September is with the UK, not Scotland. There are three dimensions to it. The first is the sovereignty of the UK Parliament. Noble Lords will recall that in the run-up to the referendum on devolution, the sovereignty of the UK Parliament was reaffirmed and in the 1997 White Paper Scotland’s Parliament the Government said:
“The United Kingdom Parliament is and will remain sovereign in all matters”.
This claim was repeated in the assertion in the Scotland Act 1998 that the Scottish Parliament,
“does not affect the power of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to make laws for Scotland”.
With the benefit of hindsight, this now seems the wrong way round. Not only have we transferred significant powers to Brussels, for good reason, but one Parliament, two legislative Assemblies and a high-powered London authority are taking powers from the centre. Referendums, reflecting our new notion of popular sovereignty, are in effect required when important constitutional decisions are made.
Then there is local government. I think noble Lords enjoyed the rather delicious, bilious attack on the present arrangements by the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, and would wish for them to be changed. I also thought that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, was right to bring up the quotation from Jo Grimond, which correctly analyses where power resides.
It is a mistake to believe that Britain is in any meaningful way a unitary state today. In any case, in my view what Scotland wants is the certainty that in its own sphere the Scottish Parliament holds undisputed power and its decisions will not and cannot be overruled by Westminster. This should apply to all devolved Administrations. So the second problem that needs solving is the need to decentralise decision-making in Britain, which is not devolution, as has rightly been said, and should not be confused with it. Decentralisation is different.
What we now need is more than the simple devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which should happen; we need double devolution, which means that power will also go to the UK city regions and other areas so that London powers, at least, are operating in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Teesside. We could add to that the Midlands and the south-west. In practice, Parliament does not legislate on matters directly affecting Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or London, so would it be so different if devolved matters in England were left to city regions or an equivalent wording?
Thirdly, with regard to our own House, one further set of reforms might help to cement the new arrangements. The House of Lords could perhaps be replaced with an elected senate-like forum that represented the nations and regions, was sensitive to their needs and recognised that there are areas so controversial that they may cause polarisation, sufficiently strong to jeopardise the union, and therefore provided a forum where these issues could be resolved.
If we manage to seize the legislative moment—a constitutional moment that comes up only very rarely—and move to a more federal system, we will need a properly codified constitution. Federal systems all around the world are typically characterised by clear divisions of powers between different tiers of government, a set of autonomous institutions, a formal division of competences and rules for the resolution of conflict. As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and its advisers are doing a great job on this, and surely its time has come. It might be good if, as part of its programme, it could look at how responsibility for defence and security issues, the maintenance of our single economic market, welfare and guarantees for the funding of key services such as healthcare and pensions could be organised within the new federal system, while at the same time allowing for the proper and unfettered devolution of other powers without reservation.
Whatever the post-Scottish referendum arrangements are, the UK already looks more like a constitutional partnership of equals in what is in essence a voluntary multinational association. In some way it must make sense to codify the new division of powers and the new power-sharing, tax-sharing, risk-sharing and resource-sharing rules in a beautifully crafted and written codified constitution. As others have said, we should start working on that now.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, I come very near the end of a long and fascinating debate, in which we have had excellent contributions from so many parts of the United Kingdom, right down that lovely banana that lies on the Celtic fringe of our islands, from the Western Isles down to and including Cornwall. And we have had a marvellous contribution from pure Englishmen as well.
In the time available to me, I should like to concentrate on the report of the Select Committee. I was one of those who was privileged to give evidence before the committee, and I was very impressed by the quality of the questions that were put to me, and by the expert and effective chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady Jay. We were being asked to consider an event which we all wished would not happen. However, as an intellectual exercise, it was a very stimulating experience. I pay tribute to what I think is an excellent report and to the masterly way in which it was introduced for us this afternoon by the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton.
Although it contemplates the implications of a vote for independence for the rest of the United Kingdom, it has some very important things to say about what that vote would mean for Scotland, too. It seemed to me to be clear, when I was giving evidence, that Scotland could not take this step without a great deal of assistance in that direction from Westminster. I took the orthodox view; there are reserved matters. The union of the kingdoms of Scotland and England and the Parliament of the United Kingdom are reserved; so also is the power to repeal the two Acts that gave effect to the Treaty of Union—the Union with Scotland Act 1706 and the Union with England Act 1707—of the Scottish Parliament. So the recommendations that legislation would be needed in this Parliament to set the process in train, as described in paragraphs 37 to 44, seemed to me to be entirely appropriate, with legislation going through this Parliament to make the necessary changes to enable the process.
As the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, the recommendations were cogent and persuasive, but that is not how the matter was seen north of the border. The scales were lifted from my eyes when, on 16 June, the Scottish Government published the draft Scottish Independence Referendum Bill. I rather regret that it has not been made available for all of us in the Printed Paper Office, because it really has to be seen to be appreciated. One may ask how it could be that the Scottish Government should devote time and money to something that is outside their competence, but it seems that we are far beyond niceties of that kind. It is quite plain from this document that the SNP Government take a quite different approach. In effect, that draft independence Bill is their response to the committee’s report. Far from being, or seeing itself, as a “successor” state deriving its independence by a grant of independence from the rest of the UK—a gracious grant, as someone said this afternoon—independence is something that they wish to assert as their constitutional right on their own terms. That is what this document is all about.
Mr Salmond is not looking for a Scottish independence Bill passed in this Parliament. What he is doing in this draft Bill is making a draft declaration of independence on his own terms. As I see it, that is a warning for all of us. It changes the flavour of the debate from that which I think the Select Committee, with great respect to it, was contemplating in its discussions. I think that it will lead to a demand by Mr Salmond for a Section 30 order removing all the obstacles to his Bill, so as to allow him to put the measure before his Parliament within days of his obtaining a yes vote. He will claim to have the backing of the Edinburgh agreement, about which the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, made some very persuasive comments. It may be very difficult to see how we can escape from its terms. I hope that the Minister will say whether the Edinburgh agreement will survive a change of government if in 2015 the Government change and the Opposition become the Government. As far as Mr Salmond is concerned, speed is essential. His target is to achieve independence during the lifetime of his present Government in Edinburgh while he can still control events, and the rest of the United Kingdom must face up to that.
I think it is right to say that the launch of the Bill was a propaganda exercise. “We can give you something that London cannot give you—your own constitution”, it is saying. It is, at first sight, a simple and compelling document, as the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, said. It is brilliantly drafted, readable by everyone, including primary schoolchildren, and is something that anyone who cares to read it will at once understand. All the bits that one would expect to find are there: the nature of the state; an outline of the machinery of government; citizenship; protection of rights and freedoms; equality; the environment and, of course, the repeal of the Act of Union. Anyone who dares to criticise it does so at his peril. However, there certainly are things to criticise. Like the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, I suggest that the Government need to look at the document’s terms very carefully and point out where the flaws lie. One of the most important is the matter to which the noble Lord, Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, drew attention— namely, the declaration in Section 23 about nuclear disarmament and the removal of nuclear weapons from Scotland. This, of course, is a subject of debate in Scotland, and many people disagree with what is being proposed. However, as I understand it, the provision is there to tie the hands of the successor Government. That is why it is so important to Mr Salmond to get this through while he maintains a majority. That is another reason for being cautious about the making of a Section 30 order. One would need to be very clear about the implications if this constitution, and its effect on the nuclear weapons policy, gave the independence Bill a free hand in setting out what it intends to do.
There are other things to be concerned about. The provision about the head of state is, at first sight, very reassuring. The Queen and all her heirs and successors are to be head of state. However, there are already signs of great unrest among the nationalists who want independence. The problem with putting a provision like that in a Bill of this kind is that it attracts debate and creates instability.
There is the repeal of the Act of Union. Only one Act is mentioned given the inward-looking nature of this document. However, this was a treaty: there are two Acts, but the other Act is simply not mentioned. After all, what is the constitution really trying to do? One of the things it starts off with is claiming that the people are sovereign. Many countries in the world have written constitutions. All the countries in the Soviet empire proclaimed that the people were sovereign but, of course, we know that was simply not true. It is a charade in a way, a clever piece of propaganda, but one has to recognise the dangers there and what the Government will be faced with when they are presented again with the Edinburgh agreement and a demand for a Section 30 order. That is the challenge for the Minister, to which I invite him to reply.
Lord McAvoy (Lab)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, and the members of his committee for producing the report and for the masterly way in which it was introduced. It cleared the decks for rational discussion, and I am sure that the whole House is grateful to him and his committee.
We stand here today in the midst of an historic debate on an historic issue—an issue that could lead to some of the greatest constitutional consequences in living memory. We are here on an historic date, 24 June —the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn. Though our debate may be placed on such an historic occasion, this is not a nationalistic point about the triumph of the Scots over counterparts south of the border; for it was a much different time and, as the lyrics of “Flower of Scotland” state:
“Those days are passed now
And in the past they must remain”.
The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, provided a varied picture of the make-up of the Battle of Bannockburn, thereby emphasising that it was not straightforward.
Thankfully, since those dark times we have learnt to evolve and work together for the collective benefit of all. The point I wish to make is that we should be clear that the SNP has no ownership over the history of the Scottish nation and, while the past is something to be looked to and learnt from, what we are concerned with is the immediate and future well-being of the people of Scotland and the people of the entire United Kingdom. Mention has been made of being anti-nationalist and the merits of being nationalist and patriotic. There is nothing wrong with being patriotic. It should not be a case of “my country, right or wrong”, because we know that that is not the case, but I do not accept the correlation between patriotism and bad nationalism made by the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, for instance.
The report we are discussing outlines the stark realities that the people of Scotland and the United Kingdom will face in the event of a yes vote, and it highlights a process that will not be simple and easy but rather long, complicated and at times, it seems, rushed. All this in order to facilitate unnecessary Scottish secession from the union, and at what cost? What pressing issues will we be faced with between September 2014 and the 24 March 2016 that will not be fully addressed due to this process of secession and dealing with the resulting constitutional fallout? When trudging through the deep mire of constitutional issues resulting from independence, ordinary men and women may well be left to fend for themselves while competing and overlapping constitutional and legislative jurisdictions are worked out, and tough negotiations take place.
In the report, we see highlighted the fact that an issue of “prime importance” would be the existence of the United Kingdom as a “continuator” state. This in effect means that what lies ahead for Scotland by leaving the union is a full process of renegotiating many of the things we have achieved and worked towards as a united British people, thereby losing our place at the centre of global, social and economic decision-making. It is true that there has always been a very strong Scottish voice at the heart of British politics, as illustrated by the listing of names by several noble Lords. Those strong Scottish voices were reaching far beyond what the proportional figures may coldly suggest. Via our collective strength, we have seen Scottish voices reach a global significance that would be impossible to achieve as an independent nation. However, as the report outlines, the UK would continue to function with Wales, England and Northern Ireland, and keep key institutions such as the BBC, and international places on the G8, G20, NATO and the UNSC. The SNP would effectively silence the voice of the Scottish people, preventing it reaching those corridors and rooms far beyond the borders of Scotland and carrying significance far beyond that of a nation of our size.
I therefore wonder whether the SNP is willing to be honest with the people of Scotland, as this and other reports have been. The road to independence is not a smooth one, as Alex Salmond would have us believe, nor is there a pot of gold at the end of the nationalist rainbow. What there will be is hardship, which will require the tough endurance of the Scottish people to overcome, but I cannot say whether that endurance will be worth it in the end.
When points like this are made, we are accused of scaremongering. This is not scaremongering; it is being honest with the Scottish people about the realities they will face. This is something that the SNP refuses to do because it fears the people. It fears the proper judgment of the Scottish people. It will not trust them with the facts and the honest truth but, instead, delivers false promises and disingenuous assurances that all will be rosy in the Garden of Eden.
There is a clearer, honest path that the Scottish people can follow, being assured of security and strength as part of both Scotland and the UK. This path can be seen in the devolution proposals set out by all parties, but especially, I must point out, as set out by Labour. We wish to see a strengthened Scottish Parliament, trusted and able to carry more of its own load, but in turn only as part of a stronger United Kingdom, retaining the benefits that working together delivers for all our people. We wish to see a new union for the 21st century, one that delivers on social justice and enhances social unity and cohesion between all its constituent parts. We wish to see a more progressive Scotland as part of a more progressive United Kingdom. We must work to preserve the gains of the past, while also laying the groundwork for the innovative achievements of the future.
There are areas of government policy that the Scottish Parliament is best placed to deliver on; we agree with that. However, we should go further. Devolution does not just mean full centralisation of power in the devolved Administration, as the SNP seems bent on doing. It should lead to further devolution of power to where it can be utilised, away from the central power sources of the Holyrood Parliament to government bodies and councils, ultimately empowering local people. Devolution in Scotland seems to have stopped at the Scottish Parliament; there is no further devolution to local authorities. Instead, there is a drawing of power, institutions and decision-making to the centre. Local councils are hamstrung by the local government funding arrangement, where, quite frankly, they have to do what they are told or lose out. We now have a national Scottish police force. Devolution, like subsidiarity, is a good principle, but it is not happening in Scotland and it certainly will not happen under an SNP-controlled Government.
While we bear that in mind, we also have to keep in mind our responsibilities as part of the whole UK body and maintain the continuation of the UK welfare state and those benefits that we derive from it —guaranteed, as they all are, to the people of the United Kingdom. We must share the load, making our own contribution for the benefit of all. These are social responsibilities that develop a strong and true union between all of our people, standing in solidarity with each other through times of hardship. However, we must be wary and careful. We must ensure that devolution does not go too far and lead to a situation where we have fierce competition between the four nations of the United Kingdom, developing a race to the bottom socially and economically. We must strike that fine balance between the ability to cater for regional needs and the ability to address national ones as well.
Like many other noble Lords, I have no doubt about the ability of the Scottish people, in the event of a yes vote, to overcome the challenges that will face them. They are a truly resilient people. However, it is for us to show them that, while they can go it alone, this does not mean that they should, or that it is the best option.
To finish, I would like to address a point that I made at the beginning of my remarks about looking to the past and learning from it. While in the deep past we have seen division between the nations of the United Kingdom, I like to look to the recent past and see the great challenges that we have confronted as a united nation: domestic challenges that undermined our welfare and external challenges that threatened our liberty. Yet we stood firm and overcame them together. In the 1940s, when confronted with the vilest and shocking tyranny of Nazism, we, as our own nation, supported by the Commonwealth, persevered, held out and finally defeated the evil that confronted us. We did that by standing together. When the time came to rebuild our shattered nation, after all the heartbreak, destruction and sacrifice, we came together yet again to create a new society, leaving a legacy to the generations that would come after of new homes, new lives and new hopes.
I take great pride in showing visitors everything in this place—it is a wonderful place—but in the Royal Gallery, amid all the pomp and ceremony of the royal portraits and the murals of famous well won victories, I take most pride in showing people, in the corner by the window, a beam from the jetty at Dunkirk where the British troops were able to embark and get back to Britain. Without it, we would not have won that war. That was a tremendous example of how, as a United Kingdom, we pull together.
Today we are once more faced with economic hardship and great social and economic challenges that are currently being felt throughout the country—certainly in some of the deprived areas of Scotland. Now is the time to stand together once more. It is not about offering false dreams and false hopes, as the SNP has done, but about delivering a new dawn by working together. We will have to fight by all and for all. We cannot just retreat into our respective homelands and shut ourselves off from each other. We must stand united, regardless of our differences, and give truth to the old Labour adage that,
“by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone”.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part. It has been a remarkable debate in the quality of the contributions. Indeed, as in some of our earlier debates on this subject, we have had a range of very thoughtful contributions from noble Lords on all sides of the House, from all parts of the United Kingdom—Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, England and, indeed, Cornwall. That has enriched our debate.
One of the most important things that came through was the number of people who talked of their own experience. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, talked about working in Scotland as well as in England. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, talked about his family and what makes him what he is—a product of this United Kingdom. My noble friend Lord Dobbs said that he was a full-blooded Englishman but nevertheless has a great affection for and affinity with what we have achieved as a United Kingdom.
My noble friends Lord Glasgow and Lord Purvis and the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, said that what they so much regret about the referendum debate is almost having to choose between being British and Scottish, whereas most of us think we can be British as well as Scottish—and indeed, European—whatever part of Scotland we come from. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, talked about the strength and diversity within the United Kingdom. In spite—or perhaps because—of that diversity, we are a United Kingdom. We can celebrate the diversity and our unity.
I particularly thank my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton for his reprise of the recommendations of the Constitution Committee’s very valuable report on the constitutional implications of the referendum and, specifically, of a yes vote. The Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House has a well deserved reputation for full and detailed examination of key constitutional debates that we face in the UK. This latest report discussed in today’s debate is no different.
As I indicated in my opening speech, we will offer a full written response in advance of the due date of 16 July. The noble Lord, Lord McConnell, asked about that. I understood that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, might have thought that that was a response to the McKay commission, so I make it clear that it is a response to the report that we are debating today.
I will offer a few reflections on behalf of the Government because the report rightly highlights that the constitutional stakes could not be higher. A yes vote in September would have a profound impact not just on Scotland but on people right across the United Kingdom. Those implications would be far-reaching and would extend far beyond constitutional points—to the economy, our place in the world, and our relationships with one another across these islands.
However, as the committee notes, at its very core the implications are set out in law; and it would be to the law that we would have to turn. Successive Governments have been very clear that it is for people in Scotland to decide if they wish to remain a part of the United Kingdom, or if they wish to leave and go it alone. That is why I say to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, who indicated that the Welsh were not involved in the agreement signed in Edinburgh in October 2012, that it has been the view of successive Governments that if the people of Scotland wish to leave they should not be held in the union against their will. That was the background to the agreement.
However, as my noble friend Lord Purvis pointed out, it is one of the strengths of the union that, because we have established the rule of law and the basis of democracy, we are confident that these matters will be determined through the ballot box and not through means by which other countries in history have sought to claim their independence.
The referendum on 18 September will determine this question. I say to my noble friends Lord Shipley and Lord Caithness that, in a debate where both sides are almost invariably at odds with each other, the one thing that the two Governments have never disputed is that there should be only one referendum. It is important to recognise that if Scotland votes yes on 18 September it will be not only for Christmas, as one noble Lord said in his contribution, but decisive. The agreement reached was intended to be decisive and would be respected. The noble Lord, Lord McFall, asked whether that was set down when it was signed up to. In fact both Governments have said that it would be a decisive referendum that would be respected by both sides. Therefore one would expect that a no vote would be respected by those who have campaigned for a yes vote.
However, as the committee notes at paragraphs 38 to 43, if there is a yes vote, legislation delivered through this Parliament will be required to take Scotland out of the United Kingdom and to establish a new, separate state. I shall come later to the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. The committee recognised that the extent and scope of that legislation may be very limited. Many subsequent orders will be required but the legislation itself could be quite limited. Much will depend on the agreement reached.
As I have said in your Lordships’ House on a number of previous occasions, these negotiations cannot begin in advance of the referendum as we must not pre-empt the outcome of the negotiations. To do so would require the United Kingdom Government to put themselves in the shoes of a Government of the continuing United Kingdom minus Scotland. It would require the United Kingdom to act in the interests of only one part of the United Kingdom rather than the whole of the United Kingdom. To do so in advance of a referendum would be to deliver exactly what the nationalists want—a United Kingdom that excludes Scottish interests and acts only in the interests of England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That is the reality of independence: it means that there will be two separate states, and where you have two separate states you have two separate sets of interests. Sometimes they will be mutual, sometimes not.
Later in the committee’s report the question of who should make up the negotiating team for the rest of the United Kingdom was raised. As someone who has represented a Scottish constituency in the United Kingdom Parliament as well as in the Scottish Parliament, and as someone who will continue to be resident in Scotland after the referendum, whatever the result, I find the report’s recommendation on the role of Scottish representatives and the exclusion of those who would have a conflict interest very compelling.
I turn now to the points highlighted by the committee, including representation of Scotland within the UK Parliament and by the UK Government in the period between a referendum which endorsed a yes vote and independence day. In paragraphs 56 to 58 of the report the committee raises the risk of constitutional limbo. This issue was raised in his introductory speech by my noble friend Lord Lang, by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, and by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Cullen of Whitekirk. I have looked back at the context in which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland answered that question. It was in the context of negotiation, whereas, as I have just said, you cannot have negotiations where there are different sides of the argument.
However, to make it clear, during any negotiations Scotland would still be part of the United Kingdom and public services would be delivered as they are now. This means that the Scottish Government would continue to be responsible for health, education, justice, rural affairs, housing and transport in Scotland as well as the other devolved matters, and the United Kingdom Government would continue to be responsible for reserved matters. I do not think that the noble and learned Lord expected the Electoral Commission statement to contain the whole list of Schedule 5. However, the key ones are there and there is nothing sinister about the ones that were mentioned or not mentioned. The United Kingdom Government would continue to be responsible for reserved matters, including defence, security, foreign affairs and the constitution, plus pensions, benefits and most tax powers up to the date when Scotland became an independent state.
During the negotiations, the two Governments would continue to discuss any policies of either that affect the responsibilities of the other. Equally clear is the reality that a vote to leave the United Kingdom is a vote to leave its institutions, including the Houses of Parliament. The timing of any changes would have to be settled in the event of a vote for independence.
I sincerely hope that there is a clear endorsement—a view expressed by all noble Lords with the exception of the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas—of Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom. If there is not, that is when the negotiations will begin. I suspect that they will take as long as necessary to ensure that both sides are content, rather than fitting neatly into a timetable laid down by the Scottish Government. I hope that that answers the question raised by noble friend Lord MacGregor. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, with his experience of negotiating seven NATO entries, indicated that that was not by any means an easy process. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, pointed out, as did my noble friend Lord Garel-Jones, negotiation of entry into the European Union is by no means a straightforward matter either.
As people have said before, it is the deal in any negotiation that is important and not the date. With regard to the negotiations themselves, as the Constitution Committee report notes, the starting point for them is predetermined by the legal position that underpins all of this debate. The first of our Scotland analysis papers dealt with the legal and constitutional position of Scotland within the United Kingdom and the implications of independence. This was the right place to start, because it is from the law that political realities and experiences will flow. The legal reality is clear: the rest of the UK would be the continuator state in the event of independence. Scotland would leave and become a new successor state. I welcome the committee’s clear endorsement of this position in the first of its conclusions.
This key legal point has a number of ramifications. The United Kingdom would continue to be a member of all the international bodies to which it is currently party: the European Union, permanent membership of the Security Council of the United Nations, NATO, the G7 and the G20. As a new successor state, Scotland would need to apply for and seek new terms of membership. Those negotiations cannot in turn be prejudged in the way that the Scottish Government and advocates of independence seek. As has been pointed out in this debate, 28 member states of the European Union, each of which will wish to protect and represent the interests of its citizens, will have to sign up to these negotiations. Many of these states have had to accept terms of EU membership from which the Scottish Government expect to be exempt.
In the previous debate I did not wish to seem dismissive of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard. I hugely respect the experience that he brings to these matters, but it would not be right to speculate on how negotiations could work. Previously I perhaps raised an eyebrow more with the idea that the Scottish Government would find it acceptable for the United Kingdom Government to negotiate on their behalf: I just think that you need to say that there could be some political issues around that, but I certainly do not dismiss lightly what the noble Lord, with his experience, says.
As I noted at the start of today’s debate, the Government will respond in full to the committee’s recommendations, ahead of the response deadline. I hope that I have given some indication of our likely response to some of the key points made by the committee and repeated during this debate, and a clear sense of the approach that the United Kingdom Government are taking on these issues.
I turn to some of the other points that have been raised. In reference to the Edinburgh agreement I indicated that it is one wherein the United Kingdom and Scottish Governments agreed to work together to ensure that the referendum on Scottish independence could take place on a legal basis. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, thought that we had been tricked into it. Noble Lords might want to think about this for a moment. With the SNP having won—with a manifesto commitment to a referendum—a majority of seats in the Scottish Parliament, in which the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and I have some responsibility for the electoral system used, neither of us or many others thinking that any party could win a majority, it is not unreasonable that the referendum was facilitated. I rather think that Mr Alex Salmond, with the cunning wiliness referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, hoped that the United Kingdom Government would say no and give him ever more of a grievance.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
A 45% vote on a 50% turnout is not an overwhelming mandate. I am not saying it is overwhelming in one direction or the other but it is arguable that it did not provide the mandate and there could have been further discussions. I also said that in the discussions the UK Government seem to have conceded on every issue—issue by issue.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I do not accept that. In a PR election, to win an outright majority of seats—the political reality was that there was an expectation that if we had sought to thwart that, it would have played into their hands. There was the possibility that they would have run their own referendum, which we would have argued was not legal, and we would have been embroiled in a constitutional mire. The fact is, there is a binary question, yes/no, but I rather think that some in the nationalist cause would have liked to have muddied the waters with a third question and allowed us all the time to negotiate among ourselves what the third option would be, thus taking our eye off the ball and not tackling the main issue, which is whether Scotland should be an independent country.
The noble Lord, Lord Birt, made important points about the BBC. As the committee indicates, that is one of the institutions that would belong to the continuing state. He highlighted the detriment that Scotland leaving the UK would cause the BBC: 10% less funding for BBC programmes and for the rest of the UK. He also pointed out, importantly, that of course the BBC is independent of government and any negotiations it had with the Scottish broadcasting service would be akin to the kinds of negotiations that I am sure it has with many other national broadcasting companies throughout Europe and the rest of the world. Unlimited access to BBC services in an independent Scotland would cost money, and it is naive and indeed misleading for the Scottish Government to pretend that everything would just go on as before.
The noble Baroness, Lady Adams, asked about English universities. Access for Scottish students would be the same as for those from other European Union countries. The other thing that is slightly odd is the Scottish Government trying to pretend that English students coming to Scottish universities could be treated differently from those from other European Union countries.
Baroness Adams of Craigielea
On that point, given that if Scotland voted yes it would no longer be part of the European Union, how then would Scottish students be treated?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Indeed, if Scotland was a member of the European Union, they would be treated the same as everyone else from there; if it was not, they would be treated the same as international students from India or wherever. Of course, if Scotland were to be part of the European Union—a point that I think the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is about to latch on to—the idea that you could allow free tuition for students from every other European Union country and charge English students does not have any sound basis. It is difficult to say that you want to enter into a social union with other parts of the United Kingdom but one of the first things you do is charge its students when you are not charging anyone else.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I know it is difficult but it has already been said. Mr Salmond has said that they would not get free tuition—that English, Welsh and Northern Irish students would not be treated as other European students. That is what we are facing. We are doing everything by the book. We are treating these matters honourably. People on the other side of the discussion are not.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, there is such a thing as the European Court of Justice, and anyone who attempted to fly in the face of what most people would think of as accepted European Union law may find that the law caught up with them.
My noble friend Lord Cormack and the noble Baroness, Lady Adams, talked about their grandchildren and how they do not wish to see opportunities cut off and cannot understand why we would want to build barriers. That has been reflected in many schools, where there have been substantial no votes. It shows that in an era when young people can communicate so easily, when the communication barriers have been broken down because of modern technology, the idea that you would start erecting barriers is something that many of them just cannot comprehend. That is a great strength for our union as we look forward.
My noble friend Lord Caithness asked about the draft Bill. I confess that we have not yet done any analysis of it. My noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, however, was telling me the other day that he has already identified two or three inconsistencies with the European Convention on Human Rights, and if my noble friend has identified them, that probably means that they are right. It is not a very good start for a constitution if it seems to fall foul of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, raised the question about whether it could be a Section 30 order. It is clear that independence cannot just be asserted. The terms of an agreement reached between the representative of an independent Scotland and a continuing UK would have to be that: an agreement. I have already indicated what the position would be with regard to the period between the date of a referendum if there were to be a yes vote and the date of independence, and all the responsibilities that the United Kingdom Government would have. The quote that I gave was a direct quote from the statement given jointly by both Governments to the Electoral Commission, so the Scottish Government themselves have signed up to that.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Cullen, made a point about how long it took to get that agreement, and that was just an agreement to make a statement. That might put into context how long it might take to negotiate an independence settlement. If Scotland chooses to leave the United Kingdom, it must be prepared to do so whatever the terms, because the terms cannot be known in advance.
As the report of the Constitution Committee indicates, there could be possible difficulties with a Section 30 order if it was challenged in the courts that the use of the Section 30 order had gone beyond what Parliament intended an order to do—if it were bringing in independence when in fact that was clearly never the intention of Parliament.
Lord Hope of Craighead
To be clear, is the Minister saying that what is contemplated, at least by the Government, is that there would have to be legislation through both Houses of Parliament in order to facilitate the independence Bill that is now on the table?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I think I said in my evidence to the committee that there was a possibility of a Section 30 order but that there are difficulties with that. I indicated that there might have to be very limited legislation, if only to allow the Scottish Government to put together a negotiating team and enter into negotiations. As the noble and learned Lord probably knows better than anyone in the House, along with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Cullen, the propensity for some people to litigate in areas like this could be very great. If that were the situation that we were in, although we sincerely hope that it will not be, it would be important to put the negotiations on a proper legal footing so that they could not be subject to some further challenge.
Lord Purvis of Tweed
I am conscious not to take up more time. Following on from the point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, the Scottish Government have put forward, in the documents that have been referred to, the assertions that the Scotland Act would be revised again. They have said that, together with the enactment of the Scottish independence Bill, the existing Scotland Act would be amended, but in the document they have not said by whom and when.
If I am correct in thinking that the concordat still exists between the Scottish Government and the UK Government that any proposals put forward by the Scottish Government that may impinge on reserved matters should be discussed in advance with the United Kingdom Government, was there any discussion or any forenotice by the Scottish Government that they would be bringing forward this matter, drafted by civil servants and presented to the people of Scotland as a Scottish Government paper?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I can confirm that there were no prior discussions with the United Kingdom Government on that matter. Finally—
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Surely my noble friend is not telling the House that in the event of Scotland voting to leave the United Kingdom, that would not be a matter that would require legislation approved by both Houses of Parliament?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
I made that clear earlier: we are talking about an interim Bill. As I indicated earlier, in response to the point made by my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton, yes, we have indicated that there would have to be legislation. The scope and extent of it would very much depend on the terms of the agreement reached; they may not have to be very extensive. However, I confirm that there would have to be legislation to bring about independence. I hope that that is clear and unequivocal. My noble friend looks doubtful but I am saying that there would have to be legislation to bring about independence.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
That is a bit weaselly, because it suggests that a deal could be done between the two Governments and then there would be a kind of confirmatory piece of legislation. If we are talking about breaking up the United Kingdom, this is a matter not just for the Executive but for Parliament as a whole.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, of course the Executive are answerable to Parliament. That is self-evident, as we well know. It is impossible to speculate on this because we do not actually know what the terms would be. I am just confirming that there would have to be legislation. I cannot speculate about what would be in the legislation because I have no clue what kind of negotiations there would be or what agreement would be reached. To try to speculate would go against the grain of what we have said about there being no pre-commitment or pre-negotiation.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
I am sorry to keep everyone but this is a very crucial matter—as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, indicated. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, has said that the Government have not yet considered fully the terms of the interim so-called constitution drafted by the Scottish Government. Perhaps he could tell us today that the Government will look at that, and report back to this House on it, and then we can have a further debate. We really must consider this. As I said in my speech, we are getting bounced into one thing after another. We should be damned sure that we are not bounced into this one.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, we certainly shall look at it, although whether we can have a debate between now and the House rising I just do not know. However, I hope we are not confusing two things. Of course, a constitution would be a matter for the independent Scotland. It would post-date independence. I think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, talked about an interim Bill, and that was what was being discussed.
Lord Hope of Craighead
I simply adopted the language of the Scottish Government. They produced this draft Bill to carry the matter forward as from independence day on an interim basis until the new constitution forecast at the end of the Bill was passed. It is incredibly important to know what we are to make of the interim Bill. Among other things, it proclaims that every Scots person is to be a citizen of the European Union as from independence day, although we all know that Scotland will not be a member of the European Union. It is full of flaws of that kind and we simply cannot give them carte blanche to pass it through without discussion.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, what an independent Scotland does after independence day would be a matter for an independent Scotland. I think that is common ground. If it wants to legislate nonsense then it can. That would be the decision of an independent Scotland.
Lord Cormack
I am very troubled about this, as many of us are, against the background of the deal the Government did with the Scottish Government. My friend the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, nods vigorously. Can we at least have an absolute undertaking from my noble and learned friend that when the Government have considered this we will have a full Statement in the House and an opportunity to ask questions?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I cannot make that commitment but I certainly gauge the mood of the House. If it might help, I think perhaps that at some point we have confused two different things. The point I made to my noble friend Lord Forsyth is that there would have to be legislation going through this Parliament to establish Scottish independence. That is very clear. That is what I said to the committee and I think I am right that it was accepted.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen
The Minister says we are getting confused and he is very accurate. It seems that what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said related to what the Scottish Government might do in the Scottish Parliament following the yes vote and before independence day took place. That is where the worry comes in. What they do after independence—if that day should ever happen—is up to them but if they bounce us in the interim period by passing through the Scottish Parliament this draft constitution, then that should really worry all of us.
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for clarifying that. I think that the question asked by my noble friend Lord Forsyth related to the Act enacting independence rather than independence itself. The noble Lord, Lord Robertson, is right: what happens after independence is a matter for the Scottish Parliament. What happens between a potential yes vote on 18 September and the date of independence is a different matter because the present law of the United Kingdom would still apply. As I believe that the present law of the United Kingdom, including the Scotland Act, does make provision for Section 30 orders, the orders would have to be passed—we are not changing the procedure of them—by both Houses of this Parliament, as well as by the Scottish Parliament.
I have also indicated to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, that there are legal issues and doubts about whether that would be an effective way of doing it, because there is a concept that we cannot use secondary legislation to effect an outcome that is totally contrary to the intention of the original legislation—as Hadfield has it. The original legislation was not enacted to establish an independent Scotland, so using a Section 30 order to bring about de facto independence could be challengeable. That ultimately would be a matter for the courts, so I will not put it any higher than that; but such a course of action could be fraught. I hope that that is clear.
On responding to the particular points about the interim, I will bear in mind what is being sought.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Before my noble and learned friend sits down, is he saying that there is no question of a Section 30 order being used to effect this?
Lord Wallace of Tankerness
Yes, that is what I said. It would not be the right way and would be susceptible to legal challenge.
The Scottish Government have set out proposals that contradict the agreement set out in the Electoral Commission statement. The Electoral Commission statement makes it very clear, and both Governments agreed, that as far as reserved matters are concerned, the United Kingdom Government would continue to be responsible for them. That is what the law is, and it will continue to be so until the date of independence.
I shall conclude briefly. We have had a very good debate, and we have been told to be positive. Such has been the success of the United Kingdom, however, that the yes campaign perhaps makes the best case for us. If one looks at the Scottish Government’s White Paper and at the yes campaign, one sees that such is the success of the United Kingdom, they want to keep much of it. They want to keep the monarchy; they want to keep the currency; they want to keep the Bank of England; they want to keep the National Lottery; they want to keep the NHS blood transfusion and transplant service; they want to keep the Royal Mint; they want to keep the research councils; they want to keep the air and maritime accident investigation branches; they want to keep the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management; they want to keep the Green Investment Bank; they want to keep the Met Office; they want to keep the Hydrographic Office; they want to keep the UK benefits system; they want to keep the DVLA; they even want to keep “Strictly Come Dancing” and “EastEnders”. What better advert can there be for the United Kingdom than how much of it the independence-minded nationalists actually want to embrace?
We have shown that we have a remarkable partnership of nations. For all our achievements and all our successes, and for all the support we give each other in difficult days, we have a United Kingdom of which we can be legitimately proud.
I apologise—I should have said more about the overwhelming challenge of a new United Kingdom. I had quite a bit to say on that. I will only say that I have heard noble Lords. Obviously, I cannot give a commitment tonight about a new convention for the whole of the United Kingdom, but I hear the comments from all round the House—cross-party and cross-country, and not just about the United Kingdom but about decentralisation. These are matters on which my colleagues in government will wish to reflect with the seriousness with which they were put forward in this debate.
I have tried to answer as many questions as I can. I sincerely hope that on the key date of 19 September we will be looking forward and not having to deal with some of the issues raised in the admirable report from my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton and his committee.
Scotland: Independence (Constitution Committee Report)
Lord Lang of Monkton
That this House takes note of the Report of the Constitution Committee on Scottish independence: constitutional implications of the referendum. (8th Report, Session 2013-14, HL Paper 188)