Scotland Bill

Debate between Earl of Kinnoull and Lord Hughes of Woodside

Monday 22nd February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)]

My Lords, I hesitate to enter this debate, especially as it has been going on for a long time and I have always opposed Scottish devolution. I accept what has happened, that changes have to be made and that we have to move forward. However, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, makes an interesting point and if he forces a Division, I shall certainly support him in the Lobby.

As this debate has proceeded today, I have become more and more alarmed. We must choose our words very carefully. When my noble friend Lord McAvoy says that the Bill must go through, that is not the same as saying that, “This Bill must proceed”. We need an absolute guarantee that the Bill will not reach the statute book until the fiscal agreement has been reached; otherwise it will face opposition at every stage. Anyone who raises a question is accused of deliberately trying to stop the Bill going through and to stop the Scottish people getting their own way. Nothing could be further from the truth. We want to see a lasting settlement that will avoid the procedure whereby it seems that, almost every five minutes, the Scottish National Party demands greater concessions which it is given and which it accepts and hails as a great victory. The next day it says, “We have been sold down the river again”. If the debate on the future of Scotland is to be proceeded with solely on the basis of the attitude that the Scottish National Party takes, we are doomed to disaster.

This House and this Parliament have a responsibility, and we should proceed on that basis. When the Minister gets to his feet, he should at least give a categorical assurance that, if we reach Report and still do not have a fiscal agreement, that Report stage will not proceed until the agreement is reached. If he cannot go that far, he should at least go so far as to say that the Bill will not go on the statute book until that agreement is reached and agreed by Parliament.

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for enabling us to have this debate on the sorry state of the timetabling for this important constitutional matter. I want to make just three points.

The first concerns precedent. The Bill is the first of a series of devolutions in the UK and obviously precedential in its financial settlement. It is also precedential in terms of all the Bill’s contents. I hope that the one thing where it is not precedential is in the extraordinary process which has led to us being in this debate today. Your Lordships’ House is justly proud of its ability to scrutinise legislation, to bring to bear its considerable powers of analysis to improve that legislation and to test the thinking behind every provision within it. That scrutiny process is multi-layered and the Committee stage is an extremely important layer of it, and I would strongly resist the giving-up of it. The scrutiny process has been honed, through centuries, to the effective peak that there is today.

We aim to produce legislation that will stand the test of time. This Bill is likely to last a very long time, so we need to proceed carefully. I hope that the House will agree with me that, in a constitutional matter such as this, it is especially important that the full spectrum of the House’s abilities are employed, given that it is a new settlement within the United Kingdom and will definitely be precedential on the other devolution settlements under consideration.