Scotland Bill

Debate between Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke and Lord Maxton

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[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.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke and Lord Maxton

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton]

That may or may not be the case. It will be shown in both the independence referendum and in future elections after that. The fact is that separate Scottish legislation was passed through this Parliament without the mandate of the people in Scotland for that legislation. If it had been part of the same United Kingdom, there may have been a case for it but it was not. It was for separate Scottish legislation passed through Parliament by a party and a Government with no mandate in Scotland to push that legislation through. There is no better example than the poll tax, which the noble Lord himself first raised.

I support what this Bill is doing but I wish that we had waited until we had had the referendum on independence so that that could be put out of the way before we move on to see what further action can be taken on devolution.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, it had not been my intention to speak in this debate but the nature of our discussion since the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, introduced his amendment has spurred me to my feet. A lot of the debate we are having today is the debate we have been having in Scotland for the past 50 years. The argument for devolution began at the time of the Act of Union. Had the Act of Union been framed in a different way, there would have been no need for devolution. The noble Lord was Secretary of State for Scotland some years before I held that post. When he was Secretary of State for Scotland he oversaw the equivalent of 13 different government departments because of the nature of the legislative settlement post the Act of Union and the growth of Scottish legislation; namely, everything from the nature of the Scottish church to the nature of the Scottish legal system to the nature of Scottish education, and then some.

I am a committed devolutionist. I came to it rather later than some of my colleagues, such as my noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen. I came through the trade union movement and looking at some of the issues that affected trade unionists in Scotland and the history of the very distinctive Scottish Trades Union Congress, which has very different origins from the Trades Union Congress. It is rooted in communities rather than in organisations and its history grew from that. Out of that I became committed to devolution.

I have to say that I have been extremely sceptical about this legislation. I do not disparage the work of the Calman commission. I pay tribute to it. In another time and place, it would have been appropriate to have this legislation. But I have to say that the people of Scotland are not remotely interested in it because there is a bigger debate. There is a more significant debate that we need to enter into. Some of it has been touched on today and it is unfortunate that, in this kind of forum, very little of it will be disseminated to the people of Scotland.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke and Lord Maxton

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, makes a very important point. We have spent a lot of time in the debate today talking about the problems that surround devolution, but devolution in itself has been a very considerable achievement. It may not have gone as far as my noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen suggested, to kill nationalism stone dead, but it has put in place a system of government that has rectified some of the inequities that have existed for something like 300 years. Because of the nature of the debate that we have had as part of this legislation, we are missing out on making the case that devolution was a very considerable achievement. I do not think that anyone—and I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth—would try to put the genie back in the bottle and go back to the previous status quo. Although what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is talking about is in essence a gesture, it is an opportunity for us to celebrate the fact that a transfer of powers was made very peacefully to the Scottish Parliament after the election of the Labour Government in 1997.

Many people misunderstand devolution, which has existed in Scotland for 300 years because of the nature of the Act of Union. The Scotland Act merely transferred that legislation, which often took place in this House in the middle of the night, and put it into a proper parliamentary context. By the time I became Secretary of State for Scotland, the Scotland Office was one department. When the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was Secretary of State for Scotland, he oversaw an empire of something like 13 different government departments. The model that we have now is the right one, and I support the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, in his argument for celebrating the cause of devolution rather than trying to hide it.

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, I rise as somebody else who supported devolution. There have been one or two occasions during this evening when I have had my doubts, I must say—but in the main I have supported it, because in my view it is about democracy. That is what distinguishes it from independence, which almost certainly under the SNP would be democratic but does not have to be. It is not a prerequisite of an independent Scotland that it has to be a democratic state, but the fact is that devolution is about democracy. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, may sit there and pull faces, but he is one of the reasons why many of us argued strongly for the democratic process of devolution. What we had developed in Scotland was a Secretary of State for Scotland of a Conservative Government who, of course, increasingly had fewer and fewer Members in support in Scotland. Legislation which affected the whole of the people of Scotland was being put through this place with no democratic validity whatever.

There was an alternative, which was to abolish the Scotland Office and do away with separate Scottish legislation altogether. That was not seriously a political option in Scotland. The reason why we argued so strongly for devolution was because we felt that the only way you could get democratic legitimacy in Scotland was to give democratic powers to a Scottish Parliament to make legislation in Scotland for—

Scotland Bill

Debate between Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke and Lord Maxton

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, perhaps I may marginally disagree with my noble friend’s answer to the noble Lady. There may very well be different Ministers for different occasions. If, for instance, we were dealing with fishing and the Scottish Minister wanted to travel as part of a delegation or whatever, it might be different. It would not necessarily be the Foreign Office he would be dealing with; it might be the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries. Therefore, my noble friend may very well be right in proposing the words “Minister of the Crown”, because it could depend on which function was being undertaken.

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, it was not my intention to intervene on this amendment but I could not quite resist it. On a couple of occasions this afternoon I have felt great sympathy for my namesake, Alice Liddell, who wandered through the looking glass, particularly when we were discussing the variation in speed limits on border roads. However, I began to feel that too when listening to some of the remarks of my noble friend Lord Foulkes—not least his point about Rangers Football Club. I think I shall try to make a point of being elsewhere when we come to that bit of the debate.

However, there is a serious point behind what my noble friend has alluded to in his amendment, although I am glad that he has drawn attention to the fact that its wording might not be as effective as it might be. Despite the enormous elephant in the room of the debate in Scotland about the future of secession or separation, we have to remember that this legislation is about the operation of Scotland within a devolved arrangement—in other words, within the United Kingdom. There is an important point about the consistency of foreign policy and how that foreign policy is articulated in other parts of the world.

I have been at the receiving end of Scottish Ministers popping up in other parts of the world and, frankly, it is a matter of walking on eggs. There are some very serious issues confronting us at the moment, not least in relation to Syria. We have just seen the difficulties in Libya and we also have to bear in mind that it was Mr Salmond who called the intervention in Kosovo an act of “unpardonable folly”. That kind of mixed message on British foreign policy does not help anyone, particularly those who are in international delegations seeking to convince the world to go in a particular direction. It would be a sign of the maturity of the devolved settlement if the Scottish Government were prepared to enter into a mature debate with the Foreign Office over areas where there are issues of interest in relation to foreign affairs. The Scottish Government, particularly under my noble friend Lord McConnell, have done a considerable amount in Malawi. That is an excellent example of intervention, particularly given Scotland’s history in relation to Malawi and the very strong ties between Scotland—particularly the University of Glasgow—and Malawi. These initiatives are of great value, but freelance activity is not helpful to the dissemination of British foreign policy.

I am hoping from the tenor of what my noble friend has said that it is his intention to withdraw the amendment. However, I do not think that the sentiment should be completely lost that there is a sound reason for a degree of co-ordination and, indeed, for a co-ordinated foreign policy. Every one of us in this place and in the House of Commons who travels abroad representing Parliament has a self-denying ordinance not to criticise our Government or our country. It would be quite helpful if some of the devolved Administrations within this country also acknowledged that convention.