Queen’s Speech

Earl of Lindsay Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Lindsay (Con)]

My Lords, I also want to welcome our three maiden speakers and their excellent maiden speeches. I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Dunlop on his appointment to the Scotland Office.

I want to put to my noble friend the point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, made very forcibly, and that is that securing a strong and lasting constitutional settlement between the UK and Scotland will involve more than passing additional primary legislation to devolve additional powers. Indeed I think that, if he were with us, the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Kelvin, might also agree. When he launched the Smith commission agreement in November 2014, he added four personal recommendations. One of those recommendations was that:

“Both Governments need to work together to create a more productive, robust, visible and transparent relationship. There also needs to be greater respect between them.

This recommendation, I think, strikes a particular chord with anyone who was involved with the Calman commission, of which I was a member, and I see that the noble Lord, Lord Elder, and my noble friend Lord Selkirk, fellow members, are in the Chamber tonight.

To remind your Lordships, the Calman commission was established in late 2007 by the then Labour Government with the support of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Its remit was to review the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998 in the light of experience and to recommend any changes that would achieve a number of objectives. One of those objectives was to continue to secure the position of Scotland within the United Kingdom. The Calman commission issued its final report in June 2009, and the Scotland Act 2012 enacted many of its recommendations that required primary legislation. However, at the heart of the Calman commission report was an important series of recommendations that required little, if any, legislation, but on which relatively little progress had been achieved. Those recommendations are important as, had they become a reality, the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Kelvin, may not have felt the need to issue a plea for an improved relationship and greater mutual respect.

Part 4 of the Calman commission report was titled Strengthening Co-operation; it ran to 40 pages and made 23 specific recommendations. There was good reason why the Calman commission put co-operation at the heart of its report and dealt with it in such detail and at such length. That reasoning, and the recommendations that we made, are, I suggest, even more relevant and timely in today’s circumstances than they were when we made them in 2009. We were convinced that as important, if not more important, than any further legislated changes to the balance of powers was the need for significantly greater co-operation between UK and Scottish Ministers, civil servants, Parliaments and parliamentarians. This conviction, those recommendations and the 40 pages of commentary that backed them were not plucked out of thin air on a whim. They were based on the evidence that we gathered, both from within the UK and, importantly, from other countries around the world that have had a longer history of devolved government. It was clear from the evidence that a resilient, flexible and successfully functioning devolved constitution depends on the quality of the co-operation and the strength of the relationships, both formal and informal, that exist between the various Governments, officials and Parliaments. It was equally clear that co-operation and constructive relationships are not optional extras. They are key ingredients of a strong and lasting constitutional settlement and are every bit as important as the balance of powers that may be prescribed through legislation.

Given the weight of the evidence, the Calman commission looked in detail at how, after 10 years of devolution since 1998, dialogue, collaboration and dispute resolution was working in practice between Governments, officials and parliamentarians. We looked equally at how they could be improved in the future. We found that examples of collaboration were too few in number and were struck by how underdeveloped intergovernmental and interparliamentary arrangements were.

I will not go into the detail of our recommendations tonight. However, I would strongly encourage my noble friend and his colleagues to dust off the Calman commission report, turn to part 4 and consider the detail of what we recommended. It addresses the fact that wherever there is a boundary between a reserved and a devolved power, mechanisms are needed to manage the issues and choices arising and to encourage or allow constructive cross-border discussion, co-ordination or joint action, whether against a backdrop of consensus or one of differences of opinion.

We considered and made recommendations on a number of existing formal and informal mechanisms, such as the Sewel convention, the memorandum of understanding, various cross-border departmental concordats and the joint ministerial committees. We considered and made recommendations on inter- parliamentary relations and the lack of opportunities for communication, dialogue, information exchange, joint working, joint committees, joint evidence-taking and reciprocal access. In addition, we made a number of recommendations on matters such as the conduct of intergovernmental ministerial meetings and the inevitable tensions arising from the three-way interaction between the UK, Scotland and Brussels.

Of the 63 recommendations made in total by the Calman commission, more than one-third of them dealt with strengthening co-operation and collaboration. It is a matter of regret that more of them have not been implemented. The relationship between Westminster and Edinburgh could only have benefited had they been implemented.

In response to the Smith commission agreement, the last Government published the document Scotland in the United Kingdom: An Enduring Settlement in January 2015. While most of the document deals with matters requiring primary legislation and fiscal measures, there is in the final chapter a brief but welcome reference to the issues that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and I have raised and that the noble Lord, Lord Smith, raised in his recommendations after his commission reported.

Para 9.1.2 states:

“Effective inter-governmental working is essential to guarantee the best possible provision of services and representation for the people of the UK; a renewed commitment to build these relationships and explore better ways of working, as recommended by the Smith Commission Agreement, will require close collaboration between the UK Government and Devolved Administrations”.

There is one other brief reference to those issues in that final chapter of the Government’s response to the Smith commission.

Brief as the references are, I hope that they are like tips of an iceberg and represent a much larger commitment that we will shortly see. I hope, too, that my noble friend can assure us that as much effort will be invested in strengthening relationships, both formal and informal, across the border as will be invested in delivering and enacting the Scotland Bill.

To guarantee the strong and lasting constitutional settlement, the evidence is compelling, if you look at the UK since 1998 and at other countries where devolved constitutions have worked very successfully over many years, that primary legislation that defines and redefines the balance of powers is not by itself sufficient.