Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Lang of Monkton and Lord McCluskey

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord McCluskey]

In the light of the debate so far, I should like to add something to what I said before. I remind the House that the purpose of legislation is to effect a change in the law—to state the law. Subsection (1) is a statement:

“The Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are a permanent part”.

Whether or not that changes the law, I do not know. Given the arguments about sovereignty, it may state the law at present but it cannot change it a week next Tuesday because, as my friend Sir Gerald Gordon, an expert lawyer in Scotland, said, there is no written constitution in Scotland in the United Kingdom, but it can be written in one sentence, and that is: “There shall be a Parliament at Westminster, and it can do what it likes”. Another version is: “There shall be a House of Commons at Westminster, and it can do what it likes”. Apparently, the Government do not hold to that view because, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has pointed out, it cannot do what it likes and must do what the Smith commission has decided it will have to do.

The point I want to make is the important one that subsection (1) makes a statement, although I do not know its legal effect at all. But when we look at subsection (2), where I want to add the word “only”, it states:

“The purpose”—

which probably means the only purpose—

“of this section is … to signify the commitment of the”,

UK Parliament et cetera to something or other. In other words, if you interpret subsection (1) by looking at subsection (2), which you have to do, of course, you find that its only purpose—or “the” purpose—is simply to make a statement of fact. I do not see how these things change the law.

The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made remarks about the parliamentary draftsmen. They have my deep sympathy because they were given an appalling job to do, given the terms of the report and the whole background to it, including matters discussed at Second Reading. If this is the best they can do, maybe we can try to do better, but we are writing on water here.

[Lord Lang of Monkton (Con)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak on these amendments because I thought that I would prefer to speak on Clause 1 stand part. However, it might save time if I speak now, not least because the debate has already ranged very widely over a number of more general points.

I also wanted to speak at an early stage to thank those noble Lords—in particular my noble friends Lord Norton of Louth and Lord Forsyth, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead—who made polite reference to the report of the Constitution Committee. My noble friend Lord Forsyth’s excellent speech in particular, in which he managed, in that wonderful tone of slightly supressed indignation, to quote from the report, reminded me just how strongly the committee felt about it when it prepared that report. Committees tend to present reports in fairly moderated terms, but these are very serious issues. Indeed, we were in a pretty bad mood to start with because we had already produced a report on the draft clauses, which came out some time before this Bill appeared, in which we drew the attention of the Government to some seven major points of constitutional principle that we thought should be replied to. The reply we eventually received was just more than two lines long. We had to express pretty considerable indignation at that.

While I am on the same theme, it is also a matter of regret to us that the Government have not yet been able to reply to our latest report, which we particularly hoped to have had ahead of the start of this Committee. I hope that that response will appear very soon.

In our report, we criticised very strongly the progeny of the Bill and the fact that the Government had committed to accept the Smith commission’s terms. I will not dwell on that point any longer; it has been very well covered by other noble Lords. We also placed strong emphasis on the importance of the position of the United Kingdom and, with all this demand-led devolution that has been going on, of stabilising and securing the sovereignty of the United Kingdom for the future. I am glad to say that another instalment of our work is on its way to your Lordships in due course on the union and devolution, which will cover that theme and, I hope, carry it forward.

Reverting to this debate, the clause we are looking at and the amendments to it are about sovereignty, which is a clear, absolute and easy-to-identify concept. All the amendments are about protecting it from potential inroads that arise from all the changes made in the other place that depart from the simple request made by the Smith commission. It is a declaratory clause. As my noble friend Lord Norton pointed out at Second Reading, by making a declaratory clause the core of a new parliamentary Bill it has been drawn up in the face of the Government’s own guidance on drafting legislation, which deplores such treatment.

Not only is it unwise, but it also compromises the subject by adding specific changes that were not requested by Smith. They are changes that weaken the principle of sovereignty, in particular the requirement under subsection (3) that there should be no abolition of the Scottish Parliament without a referendum for the Scottish people. Smith did not request that. That is not declaratory; it has specific substance. How does it protect the sovereignty of the United Kingdom?

I also ask my noble friend the Minister: why do the Government think that the Scottish National Party wanted that amendment to the Bill? It does not believe in permanence; it wants impermanence. It wants to undermine sovereignty and provoke the United Kingdom Parliament. Ultimately, it wants to break up the United Kingdom. Every extra concession granted makes that more possible.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, referred to political reality. Yes, no one believes that the Scottish Parliament will be abolished and no one wants it to be abolished—you cannot put the smoke back in the bottle—but why compromise the position with qualifications of this kind in this important Bill? The Scottish National Party talks a lot about the sovereignty of the people—what one might call the “Braveheart philosophy”—but we have to wonder whether the clause makes the issue justiciable. Might some Scottish judge at some future date rule that the combination of permanence and a Scottish referendum in a statute overpowers the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament? I do not know the answer to that, but I know that at Second Reading a number of my noble and learned friends identified this area as one that needed close attention.