Scotland Act 1998: Section 35 Power

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

The Equality Act 2010, to which this Government are entirely committed, is a reserved matter. On the basis that we have a unitary state in the United Kingdom, we believe that it is a key matter that must be applied equally across all four nations of the United Kingdom. That is precisely why we are concerned that the Bill passed in Scotland, putting aside the merits of the case, will have an adverse impact on the Equality Act 2010. That is why Section 35 has been triggered.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very difficult issue to get your head around. In a previous incarnation, I was a non-executive director of the Scottish Prison Service. I saw the terrible vulnerability of women in prison, many of whom had been abused since being babies. They wanted to be in prison because they felt safe there.

In this morning’s Scottish edition of the Times was the very distressing case of a 22 year-old woman, a sex offender held in Cornton Vale women’s prison, who was up on a charge when she was male for attacking somebody in the male division of Polmont young offender institution. The sexual offences she committed were on a 10 year-old and a 12 year-old in supermarkets in Fife. If we look at this legislation as it stands, there is nothing that can give the kind of protection that is needed for those women. She had male genitalia and there was no third-party verification, as there is not in this new Bill.

Let me be political. I have a very real concern that we have been caught in a trap. Nobody in Scotland is talking about the fiasco over the ferries, the fact that the Scottish education system has gone from being one of the best in the world to one of the worst, or the chaos in our National Health Service, despite the fact that the National Health Service in Scotland gets more money than elsewhere because of the Barnett formula. What will the Minister do about it? This is attacking the devolution settlement. I find it quite odd that the First Minister wants to support devolution; she is against devolution—she wants independence. The irony is that she can now say that big, bad Westminster is interfering in good Scottish Parliament decisions. How will the Minister get out of that one?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

The noble Baroness’s well-informed comments indicate the sensitivities that we are dealing with in Scotland and the wider UK. The Bill as its stands risks creating significant complications from two different gender recognition regimes in the UK, which could allow for more of the fraudulent or bad-faith applications that we are very worried about. Adverse effects could include impacts on the operation of single-sex spaces, particularly for women and children, whether in prisons, clubs, associations or schools. There could be adverse effects on protections for equal pay and single-sex spaces.

The question was on whether the UK Government should have engaged more with the Scottish Government in the process. We set out our concerns. The Minister for Women and Equalities met the Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice before the Bill moved to stage 3 in the Scottish Parliament. In the last two to three years, the UK Government have consulted widely on the GRA. It remains the Government’s view that this legislation strikes the right balance in the protections mentioned by the noble Baroness. This was well known to the Scottish Government. All the concerns that have been raised on behalf of women’s groups and from notable folks—whether the UN special rapporteur, the independent EU expert on protection for violence against women, or the Equality and Human Rights Commission —were put to the Scottish Government, but they have continued to push ahead with this legislation.

We have not been alone in expressing concerns regarding the Bill’s impact on the Equality Act and women and girls specifically. This has been a constant issue since these proposals were first published. It is very unfortunate that those ongoing concerns were not given more weight and that the legislation was not paused to allow further discussions between the Governments.

Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016 (Consequential Provisions) Order 2017

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Wednesday 10th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, I will not delay the House long. I have not yet had the opportunity to speak to the Minister across the Dispatch Box and therefore welcome him to his post. However, I would be grateful if he could answer some troubling questions.

My noble friend Lord Foulkes said that there are two counterterrorism forces in the United Kingdom: one is the Metropolitan Police, the other is the British Transport Police. What discussions have taken place between the United Kingdom Government and the Scottish Government on ensuring that intelligence transfer, which is absolutely critical in the fight against terrorism, is in no way compromised by this decision? I take on board the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, about the expertise and experience of a force that has to deal with problems such as terrorism. There is an accumulated knowledge that cannot necessarily be written down. It comprises a knowledge, an instinct and a recognition of where problems lie.

Over the weekend, we saw the figures mentioned by my noble friend Lord Foulkes—namely, that about two-thirds of the British Transport Police do not wish to go down this transfer route. How will the capability of the new force match the knowledge and experience of the existing British Transport Police? These issues should be above and beyond party political concerns. We all know what the terrible attack on Glasgow Airport felt like. We know the difficulties of communicating intelligence to people who may not have a background in the intelligence community. I look to the Minister for reassurance that this is being discussed with the Scottish Government, the Metropolitan Police and the police forces in England, and with the intelligence and security services for the whole United Kingdom.

The noble Lord, Lord Empey, mentioned the extent to which we have seen all aspects of transport, including trains, being used as a means of promoting terrorism. We need reassurance on this. Like many of my noble friends and noble Lords, I am concerned about the jingoism around this issue: it has to have Scotland and a tartan stamp on it. We are dealing here with people’s lives and livelihoods. The lives are more important than anything. We need answers. I say from this side of the House that we need reassurance from the Government that they, too, share this concern and are raising it in a pointed and deliberate manner to get the kind of answers that will keep people safe not just north of the border but south of it as well.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD)]

My Lords, I too will be extremely brief. For many years, I have helped, supported and encouraged the British Transport Police and I remember very well the Act that went through and the concerns that we had then about what would happen if the BTP were joined with Police Scotland. I agree with my noble friend that this is not about the BTP joining Police Scotland, although I am sad about that because that is really what we are all talking about.

I admit that the example I am about to give may not be a very good one, but I want to draw your Lordships’ attention to what happened when the royal parks police force was promised that the parks would continue to be policed adequately when it was merged with the Metropolitan Police. That did not happen—did it?—because the Metropolitan Police force is far too busy to be involved with looking after parks. As I said, this is not an ideal example but it indicates what could well happen if the measure we are discussing goes ahead—and so it will when the BTP joins Police Scotland, which I am afraid is not a very shining example of a police force. What happens when a train reaches the border? I absolutely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who asked exactly the same question about what happens either side of the border. Will the BTP have to disembark and hand over to the relevant other branch of the BTP? What will it call itself, because it will not be British anymore? I predict—

Scottish Independence Referendum

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, in the past half-hour, I have received an email from a leading player in the Scottish commercial property market to say that, overnight, £50 million worth of deals have been withdrawn as a consequence of the possibility of a Scottish referendum. Does the Minister agree with me that, when the Scottish economy is already weakened, when we are seriously troubled about our education and our health sectors, the First Minister’s action is one of unpardonable folly?

[Lord Dunlop]

Yes, I agree with the noble Baroness. I meet many Scottish businesses and have yet to find one which thinks that it is a good idea to engender such uncertainty by calling for another independence referendum. It should be a matter of concern for all of us that the economic data for Scotland show that the Scottish economy is lagging behind the rest of the UK. Those data started coming out before the vote last June. It is a matter that we should attend to. The UK Government are committed to working with the Scottish Government to focus on those issues, which are so important for the Scottish economy.

Scotland Bill

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Dundee (Con)]

My Lords, I should also like to support these amendments, including those in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, and the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull. In combination they seek to advance two main purposes: first, to enable the Crown Estate’s successor body to remain as independent of government and the control of Ministers as the current Crown Estate body already is; secondly, for the new Scottish Crown Estate body to include commissioners properly representing Scottish regions and localities. As has already been explained, such proposals correspond closely to the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Kelvin, and reflect his strong advocacy of avoiding centralisation as much as possible.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, perhaps I might raise a specific point which I had intended to raise under the group of amendments beginning with Amendment 65 on renewable energy. In an odd way, it comes back to the joint investment projects which my noble and learned friend Lord Davidson and the noble Lord, Lord Sanderson, raised. My point relates to offshore renewable energy. I draw attention to my entry in the register of Members’ interests as a non-executive director of the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult.

The Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult is a government-funded technology facilitator funded by Innovate UK, which, of course, is part of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. It is based in Glasgow and has developments in other parts of the UK. In particular, it has just taken over a development at Methil in Fife. The kind of joint investment projects I am seeking protection for, and clarification of their future status, are ones that probably have not yet taken place. If we are going to get investment in cutting-edge technology such as offshore wind, wave or tidal, some government money will have to be put into it. Will the Minister be so kind as to look at what protections there would be for investments made by UK government-funded agencies, perhaps in partnership with the private sector—in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Sanderson, outlined with Fort Kinnaird—to ensure that there is no diminution in the value of those investments as we move forward?

This is quite a technical point and it may be that the Minister would prefer to write to me. But it is the kind of thing which, in terms of precedent, requires a degree of clarification at this point. It may be an arcane point, but now is the time to get such points sorted out.

Scotland Bill

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, perhaps I may make a brief observation. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, quoted the 1998 agreement that affected Northern Ireland. I have to say that if you have a political agreement such as the Smith commission which you are trying to implement, you cannot be expected to translate it word for word into legislation. The Belfast agreement contained diplomatic language, political language, and of course there was an international dimension to it which is not present in the current proposals. The phrase that comes to mind when discussing these matters is, “There is nothing as permanent as the temporary”. We should not be working within an absolutely rigid framework which says that we have to replicate word for word the particular phrases used by the Smith commission.

It is never intended that a political agreement from a commission which has been established should automatically be transferred verbatim into law. That is not feasible and I urge noble Lords not to put themselves completely on the hook over this because of the fear that if something is changed, it will be seized upon by people who will say that you are running away from the agreement. The fact is that those people will seize on it whether you do or whether you do not. That is because we know that they signed up to it, and now they have walked away from it. The issue is this: is it right and proper legislation or is it not? Is it consistent with the aims and objectives that were set out by the commission to which the parties have agreed? I would have thought that that is a better measure for judging the quality of the legislation rather than putting yourself in a terrible position where if you change a word, a dot or a comma, somehow or other you are committing a political sin. That is not what Parliament is here to do. Everyone has been put into difficulty by getting themselves shackled to this proposal.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, we have spent more than two hours arguing more or less about the number of angels dancing on the head of a needle. Ultimately the power of this Parliament, and any Parliament, derives from the people. Sovereignty for any Parliament derives from the will of the people. If the will of the people changes then the legislation will change and the future of Parliaments will change.

I do not want to intrude on the personal grief on the government Benches because much of the argument has come from there, but we have to concentrate on trying to move on into how we can make this legislation more relevant to the complex society that we have. There has not been much evidence of that so far. I greatly regret the fact that I never studied law—well, I used to greatly regret that—but I have to say at the end of this afternoon, thank goodness.

[Lord Selkirk of Douglas (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 2, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, can be legitimately accepted by Ministers on the basis that it is a more accurate assessment of the present situation.

When I first became an advocate I was summoned by the Solicitor-General. I went up to him, not knowing what he was going to say, and he said he wanted to know whether I would become a parliamentary counsel. At that time I had not the faintest idea what a parliamentary counsel was so I said I would give him an answer as soon as possible. I then learned that a parliamentary counsel was merely a draftsman, and I fear that if I had given the wrong answer I might still be one of the draftsmen drafting the provisions of this Bill, rather than being given the privilege to comment on the best way forward.

There is no question but that the view generally taken is that the Scottish Parliament is there on a lasting basis and on the basis of permanency. There is no doubt whatever that this Parliament is sovereign and that one Parliament cannot bind future Parliaments. The results of the referendum and the general election both pointed in the direction of the maintenance and security of the United Kingdom, and also of greater powers for the Scottish Parliament. In some ways, we are having to walk a tightrope reconciling those two different aims. However, I believe there is room for manoeuvre, and this is a very small adjustment which the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is suggesting. Without losing anything of the political declaratory nature of the first provisions of the Bill, the amendment could legitimately be looked at and acceded to.

Scotland Bill

Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way; he has been very generous. One of my concerns following what he has just said is that we are going to be legislating in this Chamber on a wing and a prayer. I have taken Finance Bills through the other place. Changes to taxation have to be looked at meticulously because they have an impact on other parts of the taxation system. I can appreciate the difficulty that the Minister is in because of the commitments made by the leaders of the three parties, but I am extremely worried that we will end up taking decisions that we cannot back out of and that will have a negative effective not just on Scotland but on the whole of the United Kingdom. Can he give me any reassurance on this?

[Lord Dunlop]

As I said, we are working very hard to get this fiscal framework agreed as quickly as we can. This House considered the tax provisions of the previous Scotland Bill on their merits but, when it did so, aspects such as the block grant adjustment had not been agreed, so there is a precedent here. However, as I said, these two processes need to come together, and that is what we are working hard to achieve.

This House will be involved in the normal way if legislation is needed to implement aspects of the framework. To help the House fulfil its scrutiny role, the order of consideration for Committee will ensure that Parts 2 and 3 of the Bill—its tax and welfare clauses—are scrutinised at the end of Committee, giving more time for the negotiations to progress. As I have already said, it is the firm intention of the UK Government that the fiscal framework should be available to both the Scottish Parliament and both Houses of the UK Parliament before the passage of the Scotland Bill is completed. I shall be happy to say more about the fiscal framework in my closing speech and I particularly look forward to listening to what the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, has to say.

The Government believe that the new powers contained in the Smith agreement provide the basis for a stable devolution settlement for Scotland. Both Governments will need to work together to ensure that the powers are used effectively. The powers in the Bill are substantial and offer real opportunities to develop Scottish solutions to Scottish issues. This is not devolution in isolation but part of a broader process that recognises the need to reflect changes in other parts of the UK and that one size does not fit all.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie. She and I were a double act during the referendum and spread fear throughout the land. I shall take up one of her final points. She talked about faith and trust in the process and the vow, or the promise, or whatever you call it. I agree that Ms Sturgeon will be cracking open the champagne bottle, but whether we pass this Bill or not, she will be cracking open the champagne bottle because the one thing the SNP is very good at is whingeing. It has raised it to an Olympic sport.

I believe that a promise is a promise and should be kept, but there is something that overrides that, and it is the well-being of the Scottish people—and, indeed, the people of all of the United Kingdom. It should not be above our capabilities to sort this and get a move on with the fiscal framework. Contained within this, there are a number of traps that could cause huge damage to the Scottish economy and therefore to the Scottish people, but, as was pointed out in my noble friend Lord Hollick’s excellent speech and in the excellent document from the Economic Affairs Committee, there are real threats to the performance of the United Kingdom economy. I shall pluck one from the air: borrowing rights and borrowing costs. If they are not resolved, we could find ourselves in a Greek situation: we could be into the Varoufakis school of economics. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who I know is a friend of Mr Varoufakis.

The faux outrage that we have had from the SNP in relation to the powers in the Bill was absolutely predictable, and it will wish to keep it going because what it is most interested in is process. The longer we keep on at process, the less we look at competence. I will come on to some of the competence issues later. The Scottish Government do not want this legislation on the statute book before the next election because if it is, they will have to say what they are going to do with it. They have powers from previous Acts that they have not used. So there are issues here which we need to address in Committee, but there are some which the Scottish people need to be made aware of because the constant undertone of whingeing and complaint drowns out those who are raising real concerns about the competence of the Scottish Government.

[Lord Maxton]

I entirely agree with what the noble Baroness has said. Will she make it quite clear that the SNP is interested only in an independent Scotland, not in devolution in any form whatever?

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

I agree with my noble friend and will come back to that point later. The debate on the fiscal framework is interesting, particularly the intervention by Professor Anton Muscatelli, who is no fan of those of us on the union side. The work by him and by the Economic Affairs Committee, and some of the comments from the Scottish Government, reveal that the Barnett formula, and the process we have had up until now, delivers the best possible deal for Scotland. It is interesting that there is now back-tracking, with people saying, “We are going to get less”, or, “We could get less” as a consequence of losing chunks of the Barnett formula. This makes the case that we were all making during the referendum campaign. The SNP was trying to get the Scots to walk away from that very formula.

The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the real significance of the fiscal framework is the no-detriment deal. I will get this in before the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, does. That deal is,

“unworkable and will simply create ongoing disputes”.

I would take this one stage further: you have to define what detriment is. You cannot conclude that something is detrimental until you have set out the parameters of what detriment means. The overall deal gives the Scottish Government the power to design a significant part of the welfare system and control income tax. We have to reflect here, in the short term, on issues of competency, because there are impacts for all of the UK and how we are perceived internationally—and the omens are not good.

This is one of the reasons why we have had such histrionics from the other place about this legislation. Audit Scotland has already revealed that the Scottish Government are running a deficit: an underspend of some £350 million. This is at a time when our health service and education system are underperforming and crying out for money. Speaking as somebody who has been a Finance Minister, it is an even greater sin to have an underspend than an overspend, because it means that you have not done your planning properly and it raises issues of competence or cynicism. What is more, we have never been given a proper explanation of why previous powers have not been used. We also have lots of examples of how money has been misspent. In the past week, there were two cases of IT systems that are not even going to be used because they were so badly specified.

The performance of individual departments within the Scottish Government also gives me real cause for concern. Many Scots are really concerned about what is happening with Police Scotland. We have had some terrible tragedies recently. I was quite astonished to discover that the Justice Minister had not met the Chief Constable for four months. That is a shocking statistic and I am really concerned about it. We have 2,000 fewer police staff in Scotland.

The other area I have a concern about is one that we in Scotland have always been extremely proud of: our health system. The headlines may be about people dying on trolleys, but behind that there has been a 0.7% fall in real-terms spending on NHS services and new hospitals in Scotland over the past six years. Bed blocking has increased from 200,000 in 2011 to more than 612,000 last year because of a lack of community support, 71% of vacancies in accident and emergency staff are unfilled for six months and 2,000 NHS nursing jobs were cut in Scotland when Nicola Sturgeon was Health Minister.

I am a proud bus driver’s daughter from Coatbridge. It is a coincidence that I am standing behind my noble friend Lord Reid of Cardowan as both of us went to the same school and both of us got our opportunities because we were given a good Scottish education that allowed us to go to university. The gap between Scotland’s most and least deprived children stands at 12% in reading, 21% in writing and 24% in arithmetic. There are 4,000 fewer teachers in Scotland and the figure that really sickens me is that fewer people from poor homes in Scotland are now able to go to university—down at less than 10% when it is more than 12% in the rest of the United Kingdom. That shames Scotland and it must be put right.

I suspect that many Members of your Lordships’ House would not be aware of the fact that the budget for bursaries and grants in Scotland has been cut by £40 million and that the total value of student debt in Scotland stands at almost £2.7 billion. It is the SNP Government’s biggest financial asset. That is absolutely shameful. Against that record of incompetence we have to look at agreeing the legislation in this House without knowing the detail of the fiscal framework.

Many of us in this House are a bit long in the tooth. We should be able to come up with ways to examine the fiscal framework in time to meet the promise before the legislation is enacted. If we cannot see the detail of the fiscal framework—if we cannot see the workings, as they used to say in primary school—if the Government would be prepared to release to us the minutes of the discussions between the UK and Scottish Governments, we would at least have a flavour of where it was going.

The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, referred to the jollity that there would be if this Bill was not passed. In the other place there was a lot of criticism from the SNP Benches about how bad this legislation was. Yet did they put down amendments? Did they vote on those amendments? One very important amendment that my noble friend Lord McAvoy referred to was about abortion being devolved to the Scottish Parliament. They put down an amendment on that because they support it. They did not put in tellers. What could be more cynical than that? You have the amendment, you have the debate but you run away at the final hurdle because you are frightened of the nature of the debate that it will create.

I apologise that I have taken longer than the advisory time. As noble Lords may gather, I feel very passionately about this. The noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, referred to the fact that he listened to the results on the night and heard the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I listened to the results outside Stirling—Stirling in South Australia. The next day, when I went into shops, as is my wont, people would come round the counter when they heard a Scottish accent and shake hands and say, “We are glad that Scotland is part of the United Kingdom and will continue to be part of it”. If we muck this up, that is not going to be the case.

I will shut up now and look forward to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem—the second most beautiful place in Scotland after Coatdyke—and I very much look forward to hearing the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh.