Scotland: Devolution

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords, it is an honour to be the first to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, on his fine and witty maiden speech. There will be many more occasions when your Lordships’ House will relish his wit and wisdom, his intimate knowledge of the north-east, and his great experience both of what makes a political party tick and of the trade union movement. I already sense a special sense of solidarity with him: he is a devoted supporter of Newcastle United, with the emotional rollercoaster that that brings—I see the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, nodding madly. I am a West Ham boy; I know how he feels.

I declare my membership of the All-Party Group on Reform, Decentralisation and Devolution.

Relief that we are intact as a United Kingdom is still surging through every one of my capillaries, nearly six weeks after we knew the result of the referendum on Scottish independence. However, it is a relief suffused with anxiety, for the referendum campaign showed just how brittle the union had become and how brittle it remains. Now, not only do we have great repair work to do in terms of the emotional geography of the United Kingdom but we find ourselves on a vast construction site for the remaking of multiple aspects of our constitution beyond the sculpting of a new constitutional settlement for Scotland. It is largely without plan, substantial forethought or consensus.

There is a critical, pivotal sentence in chapter 3 of the Government’s Command Paper of earlier this month, The Parties’ Published Proposals on Further Devolution for Scotland. It is this:

“Proposals to strengthen the Scottish Parliament provide an opportunity to reach a strong and lasting constitutional settlement across the UK”.

Perhaps I may offer just a few thoughts on what it takes to frame “a strong and lasting constitutional settlement”.

The coming extra surge of powers for the Scottish Parliament will require constitutional legislation of a fundamental and first-order kind, as will any serious moves towards greater devolution and decentralisation within the wider United Kingdom. Can we reach for the Gladstonian solution of “home rule all round”, with the predominance that that would give to an English Parliament serving more than 80% of our people? Can we somehow carve a surrogate English Parliament out of the existing House of Commons along the lines suggested in the McKay commission report of 2013? Should we follow the developing economic geography of several parts of the kingdom and foster the growth of city statelets? The possibilities are multiple and every one of them stretching.

First-order constitutional legislation, in my view, needs to meet certain tests. It requires durability and predictability in its operation once it has received Royal Assent. For that to be achieved, it needs to live and breathe in a stable yet sensitive relationship with the other adjacent moving parts of the constitution. There is a prior requirement if these tests are to be met: a high level of parliamentary and, by extension, public consensus. To achieve this takes thought, consultation, care and time.

I appreciate the need to move with some deliberate speed towards fulfilling the promises made to the people of Scotland by the three party leaders on the front page of the Daily Record two days before the referendum poll. Great responsibilities rest on the shoulders of the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Kelvin, and the five political parties engaged on the task of converting those proposals into workable practice. However, I fear the consequences of excessive rush, not just for Scotland but for those other parts of the kingdom that will feel the percussive effects of the vote to stay together. Every fibre of me sympathises with the party leaders’ desire to save the kingdom in the last days of the campaign, but placing a series of staccato pledges on the front page of a newspaper is not the most desirable way of refashioning a constitutional settlement that had been 300 years in the making.

We are in the rain shadow of a general election. The metabolic rate of the party competition is rising and will continue to rise. I regret that very soon after the referendum votes were counted, as the English question shifted from a rumble to a roar, political partisanship inserted itself over the matter of English votes for English laws, with the Conservative leadership making it plain they would make EVEL an election issue if Labour did not go along with the idea. That Friday was when the party leaderships should have risen to the level of events and met as fellow Privy Counsellors to agree that, alongside the Scottish timetable, a broadly based constitutional convention or royal commission should be created to range wide and deep over the constitutional questions facing our country.

In the debate on Scotland that we had in your Lordships’ House last January, the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, whom I am delighted to see in his place, said that we needed to learn once more how to do things together as a union. Here was a shining opportunity to do just that. We need a set of constitutional arrangements that will allow the constituent nations and regions of our United Kingdom to live in a condition of “mutual flourishing”—to borrow a phrase used by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury in a different context. For this we need a broader-gauge approach: to think high, to go wide, to fashion a settlement that will endure.

Has the moment passed for this? I think not. I do not know whether the will can be generated within our political leaderships to stand back, rise to the level of events, meet as Privy Counsellors and make a joint proposal for a constitutional convention or a royal commission, but there really is a glittering prize of a better governed United Kingdom to be grasped up there on the higher ground.

Scotland: Independence Referendum

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great honour to be the first to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, on her fine maiden speech. Her arrival in your Lordships’ House is as timely as it is welcome because she has been at the epicentre of the questions before us today. The noble Baroness’s wisdom, which we have already felt today, will continue to be a boon to this House and so will her company, for she is hugely liked and admired across the political spectrum for her gift for friendship and for her generosity of spirit.

As a non-Scot, and the first non-Scot to speak in this debate, it is hard to know how to declare one’s interests in a debate of this kind. In my case, they come in three varieties. First, I had one Scottish grandmother and, since last year, have close family living in Scotland, in the Northern Isles. Secondly, to adapt the opening line of General de Gaulle’s memoirs, I have always had “a certain idea” of Scotland. More than that, I have had a love of Scotland since my first visit, aged 10, in 1957 when we went from London by car to the Isle of Skye via Edinburgh and Inverness on the way up and the Clyde and Kilmarnock, where the family lived, on the way back. The third interest is difficult to declare because, as many of your Lordships will understand, male Brits of my age were brought up not to speak of emotions in public—quite the reverse. However, I cannot conceive of my country, the United Kingdom, without Scotland as part of it. My fear is that without the Scottish connection England will become a shrivelled nation, psychologically as well as geographically, and more inward looking after the equivalent of a family break-up.

Just think of the benefits that, over the past three centuries, have poured over the border from the family in the north to the family in the south, enhancing the lives of both family branches. We all have our own list—we have had several today—but here is mine in headline form. There are the continuing fruits of the Scottish Enlightenment, which we feel every day in the prowess of Scotland’s universities. I should declare an interest in that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, gave me an honorary doctorate at the University of Strathclyde a few years ago, which I wear with pride. There is Scotland’s industry and flair for invention; its gifts for public, judicial and military service; its writers and actors; and the variety, spice and bite that Scotland has brought to our Parliament and our political philosophies. That is quite enough emotion from me— probably too much—save to say that if Scotland separates, whatever the position in international law, I shall always regard it in my mind as part of my country until the day I depart for what will still, I hope, be a UK enclave in the sky.

Perhaps I may concentrate today on one aspect of what I regard as the regrettable decision taken by the Cabinet at the turn of 2012-13 that Whitehall shall not engage in any contingency planning for Scottish separation. The future of the Royal Navy’s Clyde submarine base in such an eventuality is of particular concern to me, as I am a firm believer in the need for the United Kingdom—or heaven forbid, the “remainder of the UK”, as Whitehall calls it—to sustain a nuclear weapons capacity through to the mid-21st-century as the ultimate protection against a highly unlikely but potentially utterly catastrophic contingency we might face in an unpredictable world. Sir Kevin Tebbit, a former Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, has accurately depicted the UK as the world’s most reluctant nuclear power. It is to our credit, however, that we go through a great and often anguished debate each time we face an equipment or an upgrade decision. But were we ever to give up our nuclear weapons, it should be after we have had the fullest and best informed national conversation possible, not on a side wind swirling out of the Scottish question.

Having visited Faslane and Coulport, I have some idea of the magnitude of any attempt to recreate them in England or Wales in both logistical and financial terms. My research colleague, Dr James Jinks, has furnished me with the original February 1963 study, now declassified in the National Archives at Kew, of possible bases for the Polaris force. This was the list: Devonport, Falmouth, Milford Haven, Loch Ryan, Gare Loch, Loch Alsh, Fort William, Invergordon, Rosyth and Portland. The Gare Loch was chosen for good reasons: it has deep water in which to dive quickly down the Firth of Clyde off Arran, and three possible exits en route to the patrol area—through the North Channel straight into the Atlantic, up the north-west coast of Scotland and out through the Minches, or south down the Irish Sea and through the Western Approaches.

Should an independent Scotland strive to remove the SSBN and SSN forces from the Clyde, which the SNP is pledged to do, there are now only two possible sites for relocation: Falmouth and Milford Haven. Can you imagine the planning process and the construction efforts required, let alone the cost? We may be able to take a stab at imagining these things, but the Ministry of Defence cannot under Cabinet orders. The solution, in my judgment, would be a sovereign base arrangement for Faslane and Coulport on the Cyprus model, but that idea is, I fear, regarded with horror in both Downing Street and the First Minister’s residence. I profoundly hope that the question does not arise.

I shall finish with a thought about the union post a referendum decision in Scotland not to separate. Although the union will be intact for now, there will remain the danger of a creeping estrangement between Scotland and England, especially if the SNP forms the next post-referendum Government. There could well be a continuing, perpetual drizzle of complaint about Westminster and Whitehall which would induce still more resentment south of the border and poison any conversations about further devolution. If the post-referendum relationship is one of surliness and sourness, we shall all be the poorer. I was very struck by the words of the noble Lord, Lord Lang, about learning to do things once more as a union. Post-September, if we are still together, it will be necessary to sing a song of the benefits of union. The union quite simply is a 300 year-old international success story. It has done great things for our people and for the world in peace and war. It can still do more, much more.

Scotland: Independence

Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield (CB)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for securing this debate and support his call for a Joint Committee.

I offer a few thoughts on the possible percussive effects of the Scottish question. Horizon scanning is a perilous trade, but those of us who live on our islands and care deeply about them need to be ready for several stretching, vexing and interlocking contingencies. I have two swift scenarios. The first one has already been alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth.

In September 2014, the Scottish people vote to separate from the UK and negotiations begin. I have my doubts that the all-encompassing statute ending the old sovereignties will be in place by spring 2016, but it would be so well before 2020. In May 2015, at the general election, Scotland returns 59 MPs to the House of Commons. Last time 40 were Labour Members. Should Labour win the 2015 election, even with a relatively comfortable overall majority, the loss of around 40 MPs when Scotland goes would plunge it into a minority Government. Does it soldier on to May 2020, or would such a Government try to engineer a losing confidence vote to stop the clock ticking, in accordance with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, knowing that what Whitehall inelegantly calls the “remainder of the UK”, or “RUK”, is unlikely to return another majority Labour Government in the foreseeable future?

In scenario two, in September 2014 Scotland votes to stay a part of the UK. Opinion surveys show that economic worries were among the trumping factors in determining the outcome. In June 2017, the UK electorate votes in a referendum to leave the European Union. Scottish voters, especially if the bulk of the Scottish electorate favoured staying in the EU in 2017, would say that the September 2014 deal is off. They voted then to remain part of a country with full EU membership and unfettered access to its single market. Could a UK Government deny Scotland another Edinburgh agreement and another referendum in, say, 2020? Alongside the upheaval and uncertainty of hauling ourselves out of the EU in the vain hope of becoming a kind of Singapore in the cold northern seas, the prospect of living inside a shrivelled RUK would loom once more. There is more uncertainty imperilling our islands in peacetime than in anyone’s living memory—and far more than our people realise.

I have a final optimistic thought. When the time comes, I want to draw my last breath as a Brit, not a RUK. I am fairly confident that I shall.