Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Deben and Lord Sanderson of Bowden

Wednesday 28th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sanderson of Bowden]

I have no doubt that my noble friend on the Front Bench will have a note that says “resist”. However, the whole principle of the Barnett formula has to be dealt with. There is no time like the present to make a start, so the Government have to set up a consultation. I hear what my noble friend Lord Steel says—that it will be difficult to implement quickly—but it is not going to be implemented quickly if I know the workings of commissions. It will take time.

As a former Minister in the Scottish Office who benefited undoubtedly from the terms of the Barnett formula, I know only too well that it is a very difficult thing to defend when you are talking to Welsh Ministers and others in England. The noble Lord, Lord Barnett, is quite right to bring forward this amendment at this time. I have no doubt that it is something that the Government may not wish to include in the terms of this Bill, but that is no excuse for not giving us a clear assurance that they will start work on this whole business, which has been so detrimental to the situation for so long.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, said that he had to apologise for speaking in this debate as he was not a Scot. One sadness of this whole Bill has been that it has been a private discussion among Scots when it has a huge effect on the whole of the United Kingdom. I have intervened on occasion for that reason, as a self-appointed supporter of the rest of the United Kingdom, not just of England but of Wales, where I have close connections. This is why I want to intervene on this particular issue.

The Government have to be extremely careful about this issue, not just because of what is happening in Scotland but because of the deep abiding anger in England about how the formula operates. Noble Lords have before them a Member of Parliament who for 35 years had to explain to the people of Suffolk that we had a formula that operated in a way that meant that every year they did proportionately less fairly because of the use of this mechanism. In England and Scotland, the word fair is very important. This was not an anti-Scottish view; it was a view about fairness and about how the United Kingdom should operate.

It is particularly difficult for those defending the position in Wales. In the Principality, this formula acts so unfairly that it distorts the ability of any Government, coalition or Labour or whoever, to explain their policies. Their policies affect Wales differently not because they mean them to but because the provision is different. So we need to look at this from a United Kingdom point of view, which is why I have huge sympathy for my noble friend who proposed the view that the amendment is too limited in its demand that we should look at the situation as it affects Scotland. This is a united kingdom. The real trouble with the party-political structure in Britain is that those who call themselves unionists have never been unionists; they have always sought a kind of half-arrangement or side deal, which never faces up to the reality of the union, which should be to benefit every part of the union because people belonged to it. That is why we are increasingly divorced—because increasingly we do not know what happens in other parts of the union, as anyone knows if they listen to the “Today” programme in Scotland and compare it to what they might have heard in England. The fact is that we do not know what goes on in Scotland, because we do not have that information, nor do the people in Scotland have much of the information that would be extremely helpful to make a proper balance.

I intervene today because this is a serious matter for this United Kingdom. Unless we learn to talk unionism as a whole, we might win a referendum and then lose the peace, if I may put it like that, because we will then continue the same old stuff: dividing off the countries of the United Kingdom and letting them get on with it, as far as we can manage it, because it is too troublesome to make unionism work.

For that reason, I believe that we need to have an absolutely clear promise from the Government that there will be a proper, independent investigation—not a half or quarter investigation, and not just a Scottish, Welsh, English or Northern Irish view—to come up with a mechanism, based on need, which will enable us to have a system. I agree with my noble friend Lord Forsyth that it may be over 20 years. However, I want a system which can be defended in Wickham Market and in Dorchester as well as in Llanelli and in the north of Scotland instead of the present formula, which cannot, could not and will never be able to be defended anywhere, except to those people who know that it delivers to them something out of all proportion to what it delivers to other people.

A formula which can only be defended in front of those who benefit from it is no formula at all. That is why this is a much more serious debate than the Government have so far been prepared to face up to, and I hope that the Minister will have no moderate, calming or comfortable words. I want a real promise that this will be done, and be done forthwith.