Scotland: Independence

Lord Gordon of Strathblane Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gordon of Strathblane (Lab)]

My Lords, somewhat more than 50 years ago I presented a series of programmes on Scottish television called “Scots Abroad”, which broadly celebrated the wholly disproportionate role that Scots had played in the building of the British Empire and, subsequently, the Commonwealth—whether by colonisation, occasionally by conquest or by administration. Scotland also benefited hugely from the existence of the Empire markets. My native city of Glasgow simply would not have grown from a small village to one of the fastest-growing cities in the world in the 1800s were it not for the demand for ships, railway engines et cetera, all of them manufactured in Scotland.

In the world of ideas, too, the golden period is known as the Scottish Enlightenment, as has already been referred to. Indeed, I remember meeting in America a scholar at the Smithsonian who had no Scottish connections or background but who entitled his book How the Scots Invented the Modern World—along with almost everything in it. It was entitled The Scottish Enlightenment when it was republished in this country. Neil MacGregor, the very distinguished director of the British Museum, subtitled a talk there: “When the Scottish Enlightenment encountered London globalism”. Both are important because those were wonderful Scottish ideas, and nobody is pretending that they are other than Scottish, but they would not have had the world stage without the British connection. That is really the lesson that those of us who will be voting no want to get across tonight.

The UK now exercises its power through soft power. Just as the whole country was genuinely proud of the way that London handled the Olympics, I hope that we will have equal cause for pride in how Glasgow will handle the Commonwealth Games in just a few weeks’ time. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has already given the litany of Scottish Prime Ministers and senior government officials. Anyone who claims that Scotland has been a downtrodden nation for the past 300 years really cannot pretend to serious consideration.

Scottish traditions and institutions have also been allowed to flourish very freely by the union settlement of 1707. We all think of devolution as beginning in 1999, but it did not. We have had administrative devolution since 1885. In 1999 came democratic control over that—with all the positives and negatives that that brings, let me tell you. What is being proposed now, I think, is adding fiscal powers. By and large I support that. I genuinely support the points that the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, made in his speech, because I believe that politicians will be more responsible if they are responsible for raising the money they promise to spend.

However, I would urge a couple of caveats about devolution. I am in favour of subsidiarity, but there are some issues where we do not like the idea of a postcode lottery. There are some issues that we want to be handled the same throughout the country. I would say that pensions is one of them. I want everyone in the UK to enjoy the same right to a pension. I would probably say health and welfare as well, but they could be argued about. There are other issues where you may want devolution, but the practicality of achieving it on a very small island with a land border is somewhat limited. You may want, for example, to have a higher customs duty on drink and tobacco north of the border, but unless you institute a border post, people will just drive down in pantechnicons and bring up booze.

Likewise the position of the economy—and Alex Salmond knows this. This is why he wanted a third option, because at that point he was honest enough to recognise that independence is impossible with a currency union, which he regards as desirable. That is why he wanted the third option. He now says that Scotland needs more immigrants and the Scottish Government would aim at having 27,000. Nothing is stopping the Scottish Government having more immigrants at the moment. The trouble is that immigrants do not go where Governments direct them. They go where the jobs are. That is why they all went to Glasgow in the 1850s. They came from the Highlands and Islands, Ireland, and England, let alone abroad, simply because Glasgow was the workshop of the Empire at that point. The idea that somehow you can have a currency union with separate economic policies is unthinkable and Alex Salmond knows it. It surely is preposterous to suggest that a foreign country will have more influence over Bank of England policy than one that is an integral part of the same country—yet that is what the Scottish people are being asked to swallow.

The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, earlier referred to the Darien scheme. By a strange, uncanny coincidence the losses of the Darien scheme in modern terms, I am told, would have been roughly the same £40 billion that RBS cost us. The interesting thing is that the Darien scheme was promulgated by a Scot, William Paterson, who had also founded the Bank of England. It is undoubtedly true that the English Government were less than helpful, because we were two separate countries at that point. A lot of Scots Nats say that it was the Darien scheme that led to Scotland having to go into a union almost unwillingly—“bought and sold with English gold” and all those phrases. But, in fact, it almost proves the Better Together point. Had we been part of the union, the Darien scheme might have foundered anyway, because it was a malaria-ridden swamp on the Isthmus of Panama, but on the other hand, at least lives would have been saved had we had England as a partner rather than a rival and formal enemy.

I really hope that Scotland votes no, because even then, at the time of the Darien scheme, we would have been better together. The alternative of a weakened Scotland exercising even less influence on a diminished England means that the UK as a whole will be sidelined from the world’s stage. I regard that as a tragedy for the whole world, because I think that, with all its faults, Britain is still a beneficial influence in the world and I am very proud of the part that Scots have played in making that so.