Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Austin of Dudley and Graham Allen

Monday 9th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Allen]

I hope—[Interruption.] I hope that even those who are heckling and shouting would say that I always try to engage people from the SNP in debate on these issues. Sometimes things get a bit interesting and a bit heated, but that is because we all care passionately about these views. I am trying to put my point of view over now. Perhaps there are shades of opinion in what appears to be a robotic, monolithic Scottish National party. Perhaps some SNP Members acknowledge that others have a different view. It might be the case that that has some resonance, and that not all of them simply wait to be told what to do at their regular Monday meeting.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

I take a different view from that of my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson). I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) that, now that the SNP is the establishment in Scotland, its members are desperate to avoid any scrutiny of the way in which it runs the Scottish Government. That is because they want to be able to blame everybody else—namely, the wicked people down south—for everything that goes wrong in their country.

[Mr Allen]

I am sure that the Chair would call me to order if I answered my hon. Friend’s very pertinent question, but I know that he will make that point and many others when he is called to speak.

New clause 8 is about defining. It is all very well to sit in Holyrood handing out little bits of largesse here and there, but that is exactly what Whitehall and Westminster do to everyone else. The Scottish people have suffered from that as much as the English people have. One way to get round that is to define the competences of local government and national Government in such a way that no one will be able to unpick the idea, whenever it suits them, that power should be devolved beyond Holyrood or Westminster. Unless that principle is clearly entrenched, the lure of power from the centre—be it Holyrood or Westminster—and the temptation to tell people what to do will be too strong.

New clause 8 proposes that people who want to engage in this debate should sit down and discuss with their local government—wherever it might be—what it is appropriate for local government to do. I do not believe that Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland should be immune from that idea, because otherwise they will find that power gets sucked back up. Some of my friends in Scotland are telling me that power there is becoming ever more centralised. No doubt that will be a matter of debate, but that is what people are saying. Perhaps the easiest way round that is not to say, “Oh yes, but we are very nice to people. We are benign and we give them a little bit more money here and there”, but to allow the people, the drivers who produced devolution in Scotland, to produce devolution lower down than Holyrood.