Scotland: Devolution

Lord Elder Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elder (Lab)]

My Lords, moving as we are towards the end of a long debate, I start by wishing the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Kelvin, well and his fellow committee members the best of luck. I say that as someone who spent eight years, I think, on the Scottish Constitutional Convention, most of them on its Executive, who was in the Scottish Office at the time of the White Paper and Bill and who, more recently, was on the Calman commission, so I kind of know the course.

I want to make a couple of general points. First, I suggest very strongly that we take care with the language we use in discussing further devolution. In the years running up to 1997, when we were talking about devolution we said that everything was reserved and then published a long—an increasingly long—list of things that were to be devolved. That was reversed in the 1998 Act, which says that everything is devolved except a much shorter list of central powers that are to be reserved. The issue is not just what powers we need to devolve—I am, of course, prepared to look at further powers to be devolved—but what powers we need to retain if the union, which was backed in the referendum by a substantial majority, is to be upheld. The SNP will always want more powers. We should be more careful, as was Scotland in the referendum vote.

Some of the more extreme suggestions—devolving all income tax, VAT, social security—look to be ending the union by the back door. If all that is left is defence and foreign affairs, and perhaps a residual and declining Barnett formula, then the Scottish people will feel that they have got rather less than they expected. The SNP of course wants to become a member of NATO, a nuclear-backed alliance, though it does not want to have anything to do with nuclear weapons. The fear is that, if we end up with this further great swathe of economic powers being devolved in some way, the majority in the referendum will feel hugely and rightly let down.

There has always been a school of thought in Scotland that you could stifle independence by granting more powers to the Scottish Parliament. That has always seemed to me to be flawed. If you argue for more powers in all circumstances, then you are actually arguing for independence, but with a slightly longer timetable—and that is not what Scotland voted for.

Secondly, I note the very tight timetable that is being followed by the new Commission. I wonder whether we might be in a better position if the same degree of urgency had been shown about the introduction of the Calman proposals, particularly those about tax. I declare an interest both as a member of the Calman commission and as someone who had a heavy hand in these tax proposals.

The commission reported in June 2009 and I believe that the tax changes are going to be introduced in 2016-17. These are substantial powers, and I should have liked to have seen how they might have changed the argument, had they been introduced rather more quickly. It is after all one of the ironies of devolution to Scotland that the income tax powers in the Scotland Act, backed by the people of Scotland in a separate referendum question, were allowed to lapse, not because they were not in the interests of the people of Scotland— who had voted for them explicitly—but because they did not fit well with the very narrow party aims of the SNP.

I hope the day will come when the debate in Scotland is not about more powers alone, but that we will move on to the vastly more important point of what is to be done with the powers that are there. For goodness’ sake, let us get back to the business of health and education policy, the power of local government, and all the rest. That is what is now needed.

Scotland: Independence

Lord Elder Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elder (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to make a number of points by way of intervention in what is already proving a fascinating debate. I have been involved in one way or another in virtually all the stages of the development of devolution over the past 20 or 30 years: the constitutional convention, of which I sat endlessly on the executive; the White Paper production when I was in the Scottish Office; and, more recently, the Calman commission.

The Calman commission reported almost exactly five years ago. I am sorry that the main recommendations in it, which were really quite substantial changes to the tax powers, have still not been implemented. I absolutely understand that time was needed to set up the new system. But I think it would have changed fundamentally the context in which the current discussions are taking place if that transfer of power and responsibility to the Scottish Parliament had already been achieved. I am sorry that that is the case.

I am not opposed to further changes to the Scotland Act. But in a sense I am going against party leaders who seem to be saying now that there should be a new set of proposals. I am, with a very small “c”, a rather conservative person. My own view is that there were really substantial changes in Calman and we ought to see how they bed in before we start launching ourselves into further proposals. I am not opposed to changes, but for goodness’ sake let us make sure that we see what the next stage looks like.

The present nationalist Government seem to want to deny the Scots a look at the new scheme in practice before going for full independence. I regret that. Indeed, as far as tax powers are concerned, we should remember that the important tax powers in the original Act—and they were explicitly backed by a second question in the referendum and so backed by the Scottish people—were allowed to drop by the SNP Government, because they thought that they were inconvenient to their narrow political case. They wanted to prove that the Scottish Parliament had fewer powers than it actually had, so they let some of them drop. I regret that. It was always a mistake. It was always a miscalculation. We should not let them forget that.

As far as the rest of the political parties are concerned, there has never been a bar to further movement. I would not wish to imply that I do not want to see further movement, but I want to see where the present very substantial changes go before we go down that road.

Secondly, there seems to be an unwillingness by the SNP Government to consider that Scotland will not get everything it wants. I hesitate to venture into areas where people who know a great deal more about this than I do have already spoken, but the idea coming out of the SNP Government that Scotland will be able to get what it wants in the UK, what it wants in Europe, what it wants in NATO, without any negotiation and without anyone being able to question it, seems to me to be quite wrong.

Let us take the EU. I hesitate to venture into this immediately after the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard—but nothing ventured, nothing gained. If the only issue were Scotland, it is perfectly possible to see how some kind of accommodation might be reached. But I am reminded of going with the late John Smith more than 20 years ago to a conference in Athens. I remember getting off the plane in Athens, I thought in my innocence that I had covered all the bases and made briefs on everything that he could possibly be talking about—international development, expansion of Europe and all sorts of things. We got down to the bottom of the steps at Athens airport to find a phalanx of about 50 photographers and journalists, all of whom wanted to know one thing. Mr Smith had been involved in devolution in Scotland; could he give his views, please, on the Macedonian question? Mr John Smith’s views subsequently expressed to me of this were sadly not particularly printable. I thought it was a splendid performance that he put up because it really did sound as though he knew everything about the Macedonian question—a class act, as ever.

It seems to me, if you were a commissioner in Brussels, looking about and you saw Scotland, you saw Macedonia—both of them—you saw Catalonia, and you saw the Basque country, and you were sitting in Brussels in a country that until very recently almost did not have a Government because it was split in two, you would worry a great deal about setting in constitutional process a system that enabled countries to split without any kind of consequences. It seems to me that that is not a remotely credible option.

As to NATO—again, I hesitate to venture into things that my noble friend Lord Robertson has discussed—the idea that you can somehow pick and choose the terms on which you go into what is a nuclear alliance is frankly absurd. Failing to answer some of the questions on that is a major failing of the nationalist position. And do we really expect the UK to take an entirely benign view of everything Scotland does? The Chancellor’s recent comments on this have been criticised by some in Scotland, but it seems to me to be self-evidently the case that if you are going to be a different country, you must expect to be treated differently. You cannot expect a Westminster Government to respond, “All right, we’ll have a separate country but we’ll treat it no differently”. That just seems to me to be absurd. At least that is now out in the open and understood.

Thirdly, I want to say a brief thing about more powers. Most of the party leaders have said, yes, they will look at advanced powers. Care should be taken here. I have consistently argued for a proper degree of independence within the United Kingdom, within the European Union, and beyond. With its own tax powers in addition to all the rest of the powers Scotland already has, we are just about there. I repeat that I am not ruling out more powers. I am just saying that we should see where we are when the full package is in place before we go any further.

Finally, we need to be realistic. For all that appears in the Scottish Government’s White Paper, most of the serious questions remain unanswered: currency, monetary policy and European membership are still left hanging in the air. There is a Panglossian air about the SNP view. With independence it thinks that all will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. I fear that the world is a much more complicated and difficult place than that—much more complicated and difficult than it is prepared to admit. If I am right, post-independence will be far too late to find that out.