Scotland Bill

Debate between Earl of Caithness and Lord McCluskey

Monday 29th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, we are in a mess. It is a very sad occasion when you get a situation like this where the pass has been sold. What is most interesting about the debate is the number of Scots who are questioning this because it affects adversely the rest of the United Kingdom, and I add my name to that list. I have never before attended a debate in this House, in the many years that I have been here, which has involved so many Scots who are all on the same side against an agreement that is beneficial to Scotland. Let us make it absolutely clear: Scotland had a very good deal before the present devolution agreement and it now has an even better deal. It will rank as one of the great victories that the Scots have achieved over the English Government. It is the UK Government in this case, but as far as the Scots are concerned, it is the English Government.

At the meeting this afternoon my noble friend Lord Dunlop said that this is a significant agreement which provides the opportunity to end the blame game. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. This will not end the blame game—the blame game will continue. All of us who have been brought up in Scotland know full well that whatever the UK Government concede to the Scots Government, particularly the Scots nationalist Government, it will never be enough. The blame will continue.

We have an interim agreement but a permanent agreement. The interim agreement has handed over the grenade, as the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, said, to go off five years or five and a half years down the road. No one is going to want to handle that grenade, and as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, said, it will be passed on again. So we have a false but permanent agreement which is of huge detriment to the rest of the United Kingdom.

[Lord McCluskey]

Perhaps the noble Earl will permit me to ask him a brief question arising out of what he has said. If those of us who reside in Scotland are going to benefit so much, as we all think we are, should we be declaring an interest in speaking in this debate?

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, having recently moved from Scotland to London, I will leave that to the noble and learned Lord, but I would certainly declare an interest—not that the Scottish Government in Edinburgh are remotely concerned with what happens in Caithness; they are much more concerned with the central belt. I do not think that Caithness is going to benefit very much.

I raised at the meeting hosted by my noble friend this afternoon the question of the tangential consequences of the no-detriment principle. It was quite clear that the Chief Secretary thought that this was a grey area. Let us take the example mentioned earlier by my noble friend Lord Forsyth and myself, of air passenger duty and the Edinburgh-Glasgow axis against the Manchester-Newcastle axis. If consequences flow from that, they are going to be very hard to prove, and, quite frankly, as far as I could determine, the Chief Secretary was not terribly interested in them. But if they can be proved by one side, we then get into the question of the resolution mechanism. The lawyers in this House have clearly shredded the mechanism that is before us, so we are now in an even worse situation in that we have a mechanism that is not going to work satisfactorily from the legal point of view; that will be difficult to implement in the first place; and that could be highly prejudicial to the north of England and other areas in the rest of the United Kingdom.

I have some sympathy with my noble friend on the Front Bench. I have been in his position when the whole House was against me and the only people on my side were those who were sitting to my right and to my left. That is the situation today. However, I would ask him to take this away and try to implement something of what my noble friend Lord Forsyth has requested. Of course this has to be a political deal in the end, but it is one that the United Kingdom Government have lost and the Scottish Government have won.