Queen’s Speech

Baroness Adams of Craigielea Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Adams of Craigielea (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Purvis. I congratulate those who have made their maiden speeches today, every one of them far better than most of us have ever heard in this House.

We are in a constitutional mess and there is no mistake about that. It reminds me of the story of the man asking for a destination and being told, “Well, I wouldn’t start from here”. I do not think that any of us would start from here, but the question is: where do we go from here? What should be our direction of travel? Unless we have a clear destination we are not going to get very far, yet I have heard very little from the Front Bench today to give us a clear destination of where the Government think we should be going. We have heard yet more piece-by-piece items being raised that we should continue to add on to the constitution. One of them, of course, is English votes for English laws, coming, it is said, from the great question—the West Lothian question.

We were very often asked, on the Labour side in the Commons, what our answer was to the West Lothian question for Scotland. The West Lothian question was never a question for Scotland. Scotland was at that time putting forward measures to devolve some issues, home affairs in the main. How people in England decided to undertake their own home affairs was a matter for the people of England. We are coming to that question only now, all these years on. But I have to ask myself: can we in a Parliament that elects people from every corner of these islands then separate off the home affairs of one part of that? I would contend that that is not a suitable solution to the question posed.

I think that the only way in which we can find a suitable solution is by having a constitutional convention. All the people of these islands are entitled to be represented in equal measure within this institution. Scything one part off is not going to do that. It is almost like building a house which you continue to add to without looking to the foundations. The foundations of this UK Parliament are very old and we have continued to add devolution solutions, local government solutions and mayoral solutions without looking at how those affect the foundations. If we go forward with English votes for English laws, that may well be the solution that cracks the foundations of this union.

There is no doubt that in the election a few weeks ago there was a seismic change in Scotland—or was there? The SNP success was on a 76% turnout of the electors; it achieved 51% of that turnout, which means that 38% of those eligible to vote sent 56 out of 59 MPs to the other end of this Building. We then have to ask ourselves: are all the people being equally represented? I do not think they are. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is quite correct when he says that we have to look again at the voting system that produces such a result. I have always supported first past the post and it may well be in a constitutional solution that suits everyone that we come to that agreement, but it surely cannot be right that 50% of the people in Scotland are represented by three Members of Parliament.

We have in Scotland now almost a one-party state. Part of that was that during the election campaign there was very little scrutiny of the SNP. The SNP continuously draws power from blaming Westminster for everything that goes wrong. But let us just take a look at one aspect of the SNP’s policies. It makes great play of free university tuition but fails to tell us that this came at the cost of 170,000 places at further education colleges. There is a lot there to be looked at. We in this part have not taken part in the blame game, but perhaps it is time that we pointed out the positives of this union and stopped focusing on the negatives.

Another problem that we had in Scotland was undoubtedly the Tory posters showing the Labour leader in Alex Salmond’s pocket. That may well have worked in England, but we on this side found ourselves caught between two nationalistic approaches. What does it say to people in Scotland when they are told, “You are better off with a Tory Government than a Labour Government who can be supported only by Scots”? And we wonder why nationalism continues to breed.

I think the only solution we can come up with here is to set out on the road of a constitutional convention, one that looks at the governance of the UK as a whole, with equal votes and equal representation for everyone in the UK as a whole. I hope that the Government will look closely at the Bill that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, has introduced and take it very seriously indeed if we are to continue to have a UK at all.