Scotland Bill

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

It is certainly not intended that the amendment should do that. It says,

“except on a motion to make representations to the United Kingdom Government”.

I should have thought that the areas that the noble Lord mentioned are ones on which the Scottish Parliament might wish to make representations to the United Kingdom Government. However, my noble friend may have a point in that the amendment’s wording is not as exact as it could be. There are areas where the Scottish Parliament contributes in this regard. For instance, when I was a development Minister, I encouraged it to take an interest in development matters, just as local authorities and private enterprise do. However, it is a different matter when the Scottish Parliament tries to deliberate on policy in relation to these issues.

This is a difficult area and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, is right to point to a difficulty. Nevertheless, this Parliament is very careful not to talk about areas that are devolved to the Scottish Parliament. We are sensitive—perhaps sometimes oversensitive—about not dealing with those areas. As I think my noble friend Lord Sewel said in an earlier debate, we still have the right to legislate on any of them. If we wanted to, we could override the decisions of the Scottish Parliament and tell it what to do. However, we do not do that. We are very sensitive and very cautious, perhaps even oversensitive, as I say, but the Scottish Parliament does not reciprocate that sensitivity and caution as regards trampling on reserved areas.

The noble Lord, Lord Steel, will recall that he made the original ruling about the areas that could be discussed. That gave the Scottish Parliament an opportunity to discuss certain areas which it has subsequently expanded and exploited to a degree which was not intended at the time that the noble Lord made that ruling when he was Presiding Officer. I hope that we can send a message to the Scottish Parliament that it should respect our reserved areas just as we respect the devolved areas.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

Perhaps I may make a brief intervention in support of my noble friend’s amendment. I, too, should declare an interest. I was at the famous party also, and if I had thought that visiting a football park could be so much fun, I might have gone before now.

I support the amendment because I am particularly exercised about the extent to which the reserved area of foreign affairs is often affected by debate in the Scottish Parliament, and at some of the attitudes that are adopted by Members of the Scottish Parliament as they go abroad. In particular, in the English-speaking Commonwealth, where BBC News, BBC Parliament and Sky are available, the interlocutors among us who have been practitioners in foreign affairs are perhaps watching debates in the Scottish Parliament or are picking up stories on foreign affairs that come out of it that can make life difficult for our people who are involved in sometimes sensitive negotiations. Usually, such debates are set against a background of imperfect knowledge as to why issues are being raised and discussed.

My noble friend Lord Foulkes made a valid point when he said that we go to great lengths in this Parliament to ensure that we do not trespass on devolved affairs. Since the beginning of the Scottish Parliament, there has been a laxness of attitude to straying into reserved areas. I am not suggesting that Members of the Scottish Parliament, be they in the Scottish Government or otherwise, should be grounded, but I ask your Lordships to take into account that one of the conventions of this Parliament is that when you travel abroad you do not criticise your own Government, even if it is a Government of a different colour to the party that you are a member of. That can increasingly be undermined by interventions from people who do not owe any loyalty to the concept of the foreign policy of the United Kingdom.

This may seem an arcane part of the debate and, without doubt, it will be portrayed as carping about the magnificent foreign policy of the Scottish Parliament, but there are men and women around the world today doing very difficult jobs in sometimes difficult circumstances. They are not helped by voices off.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I would not like it to be thought that the views expressed in the previous two interventions were partisan in any sense. I certainly identify with those comments.

It appears to me that if the principle of subsidiarity distributes powers up and down, there should be clear and at least conventional understandings as to the limitations of interventions in respect of matters that are principally for one tier of government. This is not an absolute distinction. In the Lisbon treaty affecting the governance of the European Union, provision has been made for national Parliaments to participate in dialogue with the institutions of the EU about matters in which they are interested. Of course, we have in this House a Select Committee on European affairs and we offer thoughts and advice, but do not attempt to give any impression—and I believe we do not—that we are actually responsible for the matters that are being decided upon. Too often, the voices expressed, particularly by the Scottish National Party, attempt to give that impression.

Although it may not be a requirement that we lay down the law, as it were, it is a worthy motive that inspired the amendment and it emphasises what should be a clear convention. If the Scottish Parliament or any part of it, or a majority in it, want to engage the Government of the United Kingdom in discussion, it would be sensible to adopt the noble Lord’s amendment—and I hope that Members of the Scottish Parliament will take note of these recommendations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

The noble Lord must not tempt me to get on to that. Four is more than enough. That is in itself a very good reason why we should have a review of the whole electoral system. It should be objectively done. There is no party political gain to be had by anybody in this, but it is high time we had an independent look at how elections are run in Scotland.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, I can put on the record now that right from the start of the discussions about the Scottish Parliament, I was opposed to the voting system. It got to a stage where the minute I came into a room, eyes would glaze over. As a consequence, I lost the ability to make my arguments. To some extent, my opposition was based on recognition of the difficulty of having regional list Members and the problems that it would create for individual constituency Members where you had someone who could helicopter into your constituency and cherry pick the issues. It makes it very difficult even if it is a member of your own party who is the regional list Member. It makes it very difficult to run a consistent service as an elected representative. Time after time I was told that I was old-fashioned and that I was being tribal. My heart told me that I wanted first past the post, because that was the way that my party would win; but my head told me that for a new system of government, for devolution, we had to find some other way of doing things—but I was extremely unhappy with AMS. As the Minister knows, that is parallel to the system which operates in New Zealand, where there has just been a referendum and, ironically, they have voted to keep it.

Having said that, I agree with my noble friend about the hotchpotch of systems and the problems caused by non-contiguous constituency boundaries. In a couple of instances, I may have been responsible for that because of decisions that I took as Secretary of State. You do not always get the opportunity to take the decisions that you would want to take. However, I am opposed to the proposal that my noble friend has put forward—not because I am opposed to the idea of a review, but because I think that when you have been comprehensively beaten in an election, you do not turn around and say, “We’ve got to change this”. I accept that the Government of whom I was a member could have done something about a review, and the coalition could have done something about a review before the Scottish Parliament elections. Frankly, however, I think that we have missed the boat. It would be interpreted as the unionist parties saying, “We was robbed”. We have just been saying that we must be absolutely certain that the referendum is fair and transparent and that the decision will be accepted by the majority, which is very important. I think that we have missed the boat.

[Lord Stephen]

Would the noble Baroness be prepared to take a different view if the Scottish Government were in favour of a review of the voting system? My understanding is that the SNP Government would prefer a different form of voting system, perhaps even one in line with the system that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, might be persuaded to back, and similar to the proposals set out by my noble friend Lord Steel. If that were the case, would it not fundamentally change the argument that she has just made?

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

I thank the noble Lord for that intervention. It would change my position. I would snatch off their hand if they proposed a review of the voting system. I would be surprised if they wanted to do it now when the voting system has so decisively played in their favour and they have developed a sophisticated strategy of ensuring that regional list Members forensically target seats where there is a prospect of winning. My former seat of Airdrie and Shotts, which used to be one of the safest in Scotland, now has a SNP Member of Parliament because of that very forensic, very clever targeting of constituencies and issues.

It is with considerable regret that I say to my noble friend that I do not think that this is the time for this House or this Parliament to call for a review, because it would be misinterpreted. However, it is not often that I get a chance to say I told you so. There are one or two people, who will not be listening now, to whom I said that. It is a case of I told you so.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I hope I can persuade the noble Baroness to be a bit braver. We should not be too concerned about how people present it. The noble Lord’s amendment is not actually imposing anything, it is just saying that a committee should be set up to look at these issues.

I am told that I am supposed to be terribly grateful, as a Conservative, for the system of election that was put in place for the Scottish Parliament, and that I am the fellow who lost every seat when we had 8.5 per cent of the vote. I noted at the last Scottish elections that the Liberals’ share of the vote was down to 5 per cent; I think on the list system it was about 7.8 per cent. We never reached that particular nadir. The relationship with the number of seats that people win in Scotland because there is a four-party system is odd, to say the least. The nationalists have now got 45 per cent of the vote because of the way the system operates, like an avalanche, once a particular shift occurs.

There are a number of faults with the system. I will not repeat the arguments. Of course, one is this problem of having people in your patch trying to do you down, using constituency issues for that purpose. When I was the Member of Parliament for Stirling, one-third of my constituency had never had anything other than a Tory for as long as people could remember; one-third had never had anything other than Labour; the other third could go either way. This is going back to ancient times, but in 1983, even though I was a Thatcherite Tory and many of my constituents were not particularly committed to that view, you were respected as the Member of Parliament, and you made sure that you treated everyone equally, regardless of how they voted, and did your best. You were first and foremost the representative of your constituency.

I have watched what is happening in my constituency now, where you get different parties playing politics and constituents going to one after the other, and people trying to get stories in newspapers and using public funds to promote themselves, and undermining that relationship between the Member of Parliament and his constituents, which is an absolutely vital part of our system and which has been further undermined by the scandals over expenses and other matters. The whole system of being a Member of Parliament works—not because you have any real power but because when you send a letter on the headed notepaper, whether it is the Scottish Parliament or the Westminster Parliament, people sit up and take notice. I regret to say that is happening less effectively because of the damage that is being done and the fact that you have people playing politics.

Goodness knows—I will be tempted—if we are going to have elected Members of this House on a 15-year term, and the average lifespan of a Member of Parliament at the other end of this building is about eight years, that means we will have elected Lords who will last twice as long as Members of Parliament, and who will then be in a bigger patch, using their position to kill off all their opponents. I cannot think of anything worse. So there is an issue here that the noble Lord is right to identify.

There is something else I would like to say, which is probably going to get me into trouble with my party and upset a number of my colleagues. In this system, the way the list operates means that all you have to do to get into the Scottish Parliament is to make sure that you are in the right position on your list, as the noble Lord has pointed out. In my party, that means that all you have to do is get the membership to vote for you. If you are the incumbent and have been around for a long time, it is easier to achieve that because they know the name. Built into the system is something that gives the incumbent an advantage. That can be a good or a bad thing but the worst feature of this is that because you rely on the membership voting to give you your place on the list, you have a vested interest in having a declining membership. All political parties have suffered a lower membership. When I was Member of Parliament for Stirling, I used to recruit members. We had 2,500 members. Now we have 300. I thought, “What is going on in Stirling?”. Then I discovered that in the whole of Scotland we had 10,000 members. Yet we have got about 18 MSPs. We have a system that creates a self-perpetuating hierarchy who have an interest in having less and less contact with their constituents. If ever a system needs to be looked at and reformed, this is it.