National Infrastructure
Lord Maxton Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Maxton (Lab)
My Lords, I join in thanking my noble friend both for obtaining this debate and for the very eloquent way in which he introduced it. Rather like my noble friend Lord Liddle, I will take a slightly different course by saying that we live in a world that is changing very fast indeed. That must be taken into account when we look at the investment and planning of our infrastructure.
A friend from America told me recently, in an e-mail in which he gathered together a lot of information, that the computing power contained on my mobile phone at the present time would have cost me £3.5 million in 1991, only 24 years ago. That is the computing power that I now have on my mobile phone. That is only an example of the way in which the world has changed and is continuing to change. That is the important point. The world is not only changing, but is continuing to do so and is changing faster and faster.
After all, most of the infrastructure we are talking about deals with transport problems that would not have existed 250 years ago. Yet 250 years is a very short time in the history of mankind, let alone the history of the world. Railways and motor transport did not exist then, so there was no infrastructure as we talk about it at the present time. Having said that, I make the plea that the infrastructure for the internet be considered as part of the essential needs of the people of this country. At the moment, the internet is provided by a variety of individual capitalist companies which, quite rightly, desire to make a profit. However, there are three distinct groups of people who lose out in the present structure.
The first group is the elderly, which I have to say includes some of my noble friends around the House.
Lord Maxton
I am elderly, but not in that category. Some people think that I am quite an expert on computers in this place, but I consider myself to be a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. There is some element of truth in that.
The fact is that the elderly often lose out because they do not have computers, and if they do, they do not know how to use them. Even mobile phones can be a bit baffling. The second group is the poor: those who cannot afford to pay for a monthly internet service.
I was tempted to say that the third group is made up of those who live in rural areas, but it is not just them, it is those who do not have a fast internet connection in their home. I want this Government—or any Government, because two out of these three groups would benefit from having a Labour Government—to ensure that the telephone network is part of the infrastructure that we are looking at in terms of planning because it is the main way of providing access to the internet. If we do not do that, we will leave these groups behind. We have already seen in education that children who have access to computers and the internet are benefiting over those who do not. I therefore ask the Government to consider this.
Scotland Bill
Lord Maxton Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, I know that I am beginning to sound like a broken record.
The Duke of Montrose
My Lords, this is a paving amendment, and I shall address my remarks also to Amendment 54BA and the other amendments in the group. Amendment 54BA will remove the close connection condition for the purposes of identifying a Scottish taxpayer. This is an effort to remove the complications that come from trying to prove a close association, which is a concept that raises many questions of definition and interpretation. The argument is that the best way to define a Scottish taxpayer is without reference to residence in Scotland. Instead, the definition should be based on being a UK citizen and spending more time in Scotland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. This argument has been put to me by the Law Society of Scotland, and I think it has weight.
Perhaps the definition I have just pointed out goes some way to answering the call of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland for a definition in statute of what constitutes a Scottish taxpayer. At present, new Section 80D defines a Scottish taxpayer as,
“an individual … who is resident in the UK for income tax purposes, and ... who, for that year, meets condition A, B or C”.
These conditions are that the taxpayer,
“has a close connection with Scotland … does not have a close connection with any part of the UK other than Scotland … and … spends more days of that year in Scotland”,
or is an elected parliamentary representative for Scotland.
The residence qualification is typical of the sort of issue that has raised controversy in recent legal cases. I mention Gaines-Cooper v Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and Tuczka v Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. New Section 80D, when combined with new Sections 80E and 80F, presents problems for those who move between jurisdictions within the United Kingdom inasmuch as they create uncertainty, difficulties of interpretation and potential problems regarding compliance. In particular, the definition of “close connection” contained in new Section 80E creates a difficulty of interpretation—and what does “place of residence” mean? It appears to be different from residence as understood in other areas of tax law, such as capital gains tax. Does “place of residence” imply ownership when juxtaposed with “main place of residence” in paragraphs (b) and (c) of new Section 80E(3)? “Place of residence” and “main place of residence” are not defined in new Section 80E, and therefore create potential problems of interpretation for those who may live in Scotland yet work in England, or vice versa, including those living on the Scottish-English border.
Lord Maxton
There are, of course, people who live in Scotland, who even work in Scotland, but who are paid from England or elsewhere in the United Kingdom. They, too, create a problem because, as far as I am aware, the PAYE system does not depend on where you live but where you work or who you are employed by.
The Duke of Montrose
My Lords, this is the type of complication that we are talking about. In fact, the way the Bill is at the moment, it will practically be a question of where you spend the night. There are commuters from Glasgow or Edinburgh to London, and a variety of public office holders, who may have a place of residence in Scotland yet work for considerable periods in England or Wales, such as Members of the House of Lords, who are not included in new Section 80D(4), or Supreme Court judges. If a clause such as this remains, should the Bill not contain an obligation for each individual to state what he regards as his main place of residence?
New Section 80E also highlights the issue of split-year residences. Unfortunately I just missed the debate immediately preceding this, but I thought that my noble friend Lord Forsyth would cover the point. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs currently applies, in extra-statutory concession A11, split-year treatment to individuals who spend only part of the tax year resident in the United Kingdom. The concession means that, for example, an employee who comes to the UK for a secondment beginning on 1 June would be regarded as a non-UK resident and therefore non-taxable in the UK on his or her general earnings from the same employment for the period from 6 April to 31 May in that year.
The Law Society of Scotland questions whether setting up the provisions of new Sections 80D, 80E and 80F will require the creation of a similar extra-statutory concession. It would seem more sensible to create a robust system that does not rely on extra-statutory concessions in order for it to work—one whose fundamental architecture takes account of movement of people within the United Kingdom, and therefore within different tax zones, in one tax year.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, may not know that there are already people living just south of the border who take advantage of the services in the borders. I refer particularly to people from the Berwick-upon-Tweed area who make good use of the Borders General Hospital because it is a very good facility. I have a simple question for the Minister. How does Section 80F operate? It is about the number of days that people spend in Scotland or the rest of the UK. If we do not have any border controls we do not know who is coming in and out. I am assuming that we are not having that even under Mr Salmond’s proposals. Therefore, I simply do not see how it will work. Perhaps the Minister will enlighten us.
Lord Maxton
My Lords, quite properly everyone has been raising the issue of those people who live and work across borders, work on ships and trains, or are lorry drivers. My concern to some extent is those people—I could be one of them—who live in Scotland but whose sole income is a pension from the other place, and whose tax office is Cardiff and not East Kilbride or anywhere in Scotland. I am still not quite clear how that tax office will know that I am a resident in Scotland. As far as I know, it does not have to know my home address. I would accept that if this debate was back in the 1990s. Of course, technology has moved on and it may be that we now have a database that allows the Inland Revenue to know exactly where you live. I rather doubt whether it has ever bothered to update the records and keep them up to date. What happens to someone who lives in Scotland and should be paying tax in Scotland but whose sole source of income and tax office are outside Scotland? How does that person know what tax they should pay in Scotland?
The Duke of Montrose
I wonder whether the noble Lord remembers getting a demand for taxes from the Inland Revenue which, presumably, was sent to his house because it knows where his house is.
Lord Maxton
Oddly enough, I am in the unfortunate position at one level but fortunate in another that about five years ago, if not longer, I got my last letter from the Inland Revenue. It said, “Please do not send us any more tax returns because we know what your income is. It has been the same for the last 10 years so don’t bother any more”. If I moved house, I am not sure that anyone would know where I had gone. I assume that you have to tell the Inland Revenue but the fact is that there is this problem. As far as I am aware, PAYE is paid on the basis of where you are employed, who employs you and the income that you are paid. That can come from a variety of sources and is taxed at source. I am never quite clear whether one’s residence is an important part of that issue.
Lord Campbell of Alloway
My Lords, I support what has been said by and large for this amendment in the name of my noble friend the Duke of Montrose. This is a highly complex problem and very difficult to understand. The question is whether it falls within devolution or not. It is understood that an arrangement has been made for members of the Privy Council to consider, if a question such as this arises, whether it is within or without the concept of devolution. This matter is so complicated that I am only grateful for having been able to listen to what was said about it. I hope that it may be satisfactorily resolved.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
Further to that point, this is a circular argument. My amendment chose to alter the provisions in the Bill because the test of close connection does not deal with the circumstances that the noble Lord just mentioned. On my reading of new Section 80E, which defines close connection,
“where T has 2 or more places of residence”,
a soldier may have one residence in the family home in Northern Ireland and the other may be barrack accommodation in Edinburgh or some other part of Scotland. As I understand it—the Minister can tell me if I am wrong—under that definition the soldier would be liable to pay Scottish income tax. That is clearly and absolutely not fair. He might be in Afghanistan or Scotland. No one expects him to pay Afghan tax.
I tabled my amendment to suggest a possible remedy, although it may not be ideal—perhaps my noble friend can comment further. I may be wrong but my recollection is that during consideration of this matter in the other place Ministers said that they would come forward with a view. My noble friend seems to be saying, “Well actually, soldiers are the same as everyone else”. They clearly are not the same as everyone else, and are not in the same position as someone who works for the Royal Bank of Scotland who gets posted from London to Edinburgh. I do not want to prolong the debate by talking about the military covenant and so on, but these service men and women are paid very poorly for the job they do, and therefore the burden of increased taxation could be significant.
What my noble friend said was very welcome if it was that where such soldiers are caught by Scottish taxation they will be compensated by having their gross salary increased so that their net position remains the same. That would be fantastic, but can we have that as an undertaking from the Government and perhaps have it written into the Bill at a later stage? Perhaps my noble friend will come forward with an amendment to achieve that purpose. Could we then also work out a system similar to the transfer payment that we mentioned when we talked about the impact of a higher tax rate on welfare payments that would be made in Scotland? Such a system would involve a transfer payment from the MoD budget to compensate for the increased revenue that was being raised from tax in Scotland. The MoD therefore would need to be compensated for that by a reduction in the Scottish block grant.
Lord Maxton
I am rather confused by this. After listening to the question of the noble Lord from Northern Ireland, I can see a situation arising in which a soldier could be posted to, say, Edinburgh, and could rightly show that his family, wife and children live elsewhere in the United Kingdom—in Northern Ireland—whereas a single soldier in the next room would be resident in Scotland, and therefore on a different rate of pay.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I agree with the noble Lord, which is why my amendment proposes that if they are in military rented accommodation, they should not have to pay. Another way to deal with it would be to give them the choice of where they pay their tax. As it stands, their position is anomalous. I must say to my noble friend that if I were a member of the armed services listening to him saying that there are a number of options that the MoD will look at, I would not be very satisfied. We need clarity, particularly because so many Scots serve in the armed services and so many bases to which members of the forces are deployed are in Scotland. On the argument about accountability, as my noble friend said, many of them will not have had the opportunity to vote in the Scottish parliamentary elections on the taxes that will be imposed on them.
The military are a special case, and my noble friend ought to say that he will take this away and come back with a government amendment to deal with it, either in the terms that he suggested—that the MoD would provide compensation—or some other terms. Simply saying that the Bill provides for it and it is just about applying the test of close connection will not do.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
My Lords, we have had a very useful debate. I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Myners, for his contribution, which woke us all up a bit. I am not persuaded by my noble friend’s argument, at the end of which I think we got to the bottom of the matter—it simply is going to be too much trouble and, as regards these people whose tax status changes during a year, there might be rather a lot of them and we are not too bothered about it.
I venture to suggest that for those people the difference between perhaps paying Scottish tax and English tax might be significant. When my noble friend says, “Well you would be dealing with the whole of the Scottish population”, I do not think that the whole Scottish population will change their tax status in any one year. The Revenue is quite capable of dealing with changes in circumstances in a variety of ways. When my noble friend says that he wants to keep it as simple as possible, perhaps I may suggest that the way in which to do that is to drop this whole idea of having a separate Scottish income tax.
This is the Government’s idea and if they are going to change the tax system, they should be able to make sure that it is workable and treats people fairly, and that the answers to our questions are delivered. For the life of me, I cannot see how it can be right that someone who moves from Scotland to England continues to have to pay Scottish tax. Of course, at the other end of this building, none of this was discussed because it was guillotined and there was no opportunity. But I would not like to be a Member of Parliament living in England who receives a letter from a constituent asking why they are having to pay Scottish income tax when they are now living in England. I do not know the answer. If we sent a standard reply from the Treasury saying, “Well, it is administratively simple to make it this way”, that would be a vote lost and a very unhappy constituent.
Lord Maxton
When the noble Lord talks about voting, someone moving from Scotland to England would be able to move their vote. They would not be able to move their tax apparently, but they would be able to take themselves off the register in one place and put themselves on the register somewhere else.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I would guess that that must be because electoral registration offices have far more staff than HMRC, so it is probably easier for them to cope with these matters. This is an important principle. The idea is that it is just too difficult and too complicated. When we raise the issue of how employers are going to deal with a payroll where people are constantly changing from being liable for Scottish or English tax, we are told by Ministers and the Treasury, “It is very simple. It is just a matter of changing the tax code, so it is not a problem”. But when it comes to the Treasury having to take account of liability, if it is about collecting the tax, then it is far too difficult and complicated. I think we are getting a bit of doublespeak here. I do not say that that applies to the Minister—
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
It may seem simple to my noble friend and it may have been discussed for 15 months, but I have to tell him that I am not a supporter of this Bill. I thought I made clear at Second Reading why I am not. I am somewhat surprised at the argument that my noble friend has put. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, put it quite clearly. I do not disagree about the impact of the policy but what is being said is that, if there is a change in the tax regime that results in the tax base being made narrower and from which people in Scotland will benefit, in addition people will benefit in Scotland by the cost of that change being added to the block grant. To me, that is double benefit and I do not see how that has anything to do with the accountability of the Scottish Parliament.
It arises because the Scottish Parliament is not solely responsible for tax policy, which would be an argument for fiscal autonomy that no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will put to us. However, the scheme in this Bill is a kind of charade whereby the Scottish block is always topped up regardless of the benefits that accrue to Scotland from the changes in the tax base, which cannot be right. I defy my noble friend to explain why, say, the Scots would get the benefit. Let us say that thresholds were raised to £10,000 so that no one earning less than that would pay income tax. That would have a dramatic effect on the Scottish block. I guess that it would be many hundreds of millions of pounds—perhaps £600 million or something of that order. My noble friend is saying that the Scottish Government would be compensated by being given that money, but the people living in Scotland would have benefited from the fact that they are not paying tax on the first £10,000. That cannot be right.
When my noble friend says, “Well, we have all known this for 15 months”, I had not appreciated that the situation was as stark as this. I thought that it might be a one-off thing at the start, but the idea that this should be a continuing matter is not about accountability; it is about giving people a guaranteed budget.
Lord Maxton
As the noble Lord understands it, would the reverse be true? If, say, Mr Alex Salmond decides that he has a project that he knows the Scottish people will support and he puts up the income tax to pay for it—for example, a free new hospital or something like that, on which he knows that the Scottish people will support him—will the block grant be cut accordingly to compensate for the fact that more money is now being raised in Scotland?
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
I think the answer to that is no. As has been made clear, we are talking here about the Scottish block being compensated for changes in United Kingdom taxation policy. My difficulty with this concept is that the people in Scotland are within the United Kingdom. They benefit from those changes and then a compensating payment is made to the block grant to compensate for that, which cannot be right.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
She may still be alive but she is no longer leading the Labour Party in Scotland. I do not want to ruin what career she may have ahead of her, but in any discussions I had with her I found her to be exceptionally able and far-seeing, looking beyond the immediate prospect of events and what is in today’s newspapers.
I am not enthusiastic about this whole devo train that we have got on. I believed from the beginning that it would lead to the nationalists dominating the Parliament and that it could lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. I am not particularly smart for thinking that. Enoch Powell was arguing that years ago. All I am saying is if we are going to go down this track, we should anticipate some of the problems and that Barnett is going to be one of them.
I sense that the House probably does not want to discuss this at any more length, so I beg leave to withdraw the amendment in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett. I look forward to receiving some criticism by him for not making all the points that he would have made, and for not making them as eloquently as I am sure he would have done.
Scotland Bill
Lord Maxton Excerpts(12 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, for all the reasons that I set out in my first contribution to this Committee when it convened some time ago to consider the Bill, I want to see this Bill passed. Consequently, I support the devolution of the tax powers to the Scottish Parliament and I want to see Clause 29 stand part of the Bill because, without that mechanism, the amendments relating to the commissioners for Revenue and Customs will not be able to work. I do not intend to delay the Committee with any debate or argument about what I think is genuinely a technical part of the Bill in terms of the mechanism for the implementation of its provisions.
My second point is by way of a bit of advice to the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, whom I welcomed to the Committee earlier. He had an interesting baptism in the Committee. I am sure that he enjoyed the hour that he was at the Dispatch Box engaging, as he did, with my noble and learned friends and noble Lords around the Chamber. If he thought that that had a distinct quality about it, then he ain’t seen nothing yet if he succumbs to the invitation to engage in a discussion about the position of Scottish football clubs. We have already had a reference to behaviour on the internet with cyberattacks and so on, but the nature of the comments that will be unleashed on the internet if he is unwise enough to be attracted into debate and discussion about the health or welfare of any Scottish football club will be worse than he has ever seen.
Lord Maxton
Does my noble friend agree that perhaps that is why Mr Alex Salmond has decided that he is switching his loyalties to rugby?
Lord Browne of Ladyton
Taking my own advice, I am utterly reluctant to express any opinion that is even marginally related to any football club in Scotland. Most people in Scotland know where my allegiances lie, and engaging in this debate would make it even worse for me. I apologise to my noble friend Lord Foulkes, who has been engaged in Scottish football. His support for Heart of Midlothian Football Club is well known and he has made an important contribution to Scottish football over the years. However, I think that he probably has more scars on his back from that time than he has from any political confrontations in Scotland. I just give the Minister a bit of gratuitous advice: he would be wise to take these matters away and perhaps write some very carefully worded letters to my noble friend and his noble friend if he thinks that these questions need answering.
I want to raise a point that I mentioned in my contribution to the debate on the previous group of amendments. I do this by reference to my contribution to the Second Reading of this Bill, which took place on 6 September 2011. During my contribution to that debate, I asked about the progress of the high-level implementation group and the joint Exchequer committee, which are complementary elements. The joint Exchequer committee, led by Ministers, and the high-level group of civil servants—from both the Civil Service that supports the Scottish Executive and the UK Civil Service—are to work out the process and deal with the challenges and issues in preparation for the implementation of the provisions that we have been debating when this Bill becomes an Act, as I hope it will.
I raise this because I have a suspicion—and I put it no higher than that as I share my motivation with the Committee—that perhaps from the Scotland side of this process of engagement there is less willingness to engage, and less capacity to engage, in the preparation for these issues than we will need if we are to meet the expectations that we all share that these devolved powers will be available to be used for the benefit of the Scottish people, broadly by about 2015. I do not expect the Minister to make any comments at the Dispatch Box about willingness, but I would be able to deduce from the detail of his answers whether there has been that willingness.
I raise this issue for one very good reason. There is an impression in Scotland that the Scottish Government are anxious to get their hands on these additional powers. In fact, they want more. It is not sufficient to say to the Scottish people that you want these powers; you have to explain to them what you are going to do with them when you get them and you have to convince the Scottish people that you are preparing yourself for these powers and for the use of them. I went on at some length at the beginning of this Committee about what I thought was happening in Scotland, and there was convincing evidence that the Scottish Government were falling down in all of those respects.
Therefore, can the Minister tell the Committee not just how many times the high-level implementation group has met but what progress is actually being made? Even if it has to be described generically, I will be satisfied by that, but I will keep pressing as long as this Bill is before this House to get more detail. What progress is being made to prepare the structure in Scotland to receive these powers or any powers that relate to the raising of taxation?
The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)
My Lords, this is proving to be an education, not least because we have another debate in which there are some points on which I can see the direct relevance to the clause we are discussing and a number of other points on which I am struggling a bit. They are all important points; I am just not quite clear what the connection is with a clause that has to do with the powers of HMRC.
Of course, the football question is directly relevant, and we must deal with football. I declare an interest here as a season ticket-holder of Arsenal Football Club —things are looking very good.
Lord Maxton
The noble Lord might be aware that Mr Ally McCoist, the manager of Rangers, was complaining bitterly because one of the things the new owner of Rangers had done was to sell the shares in Arsenal Football Club which apparently Rangers had held for a very long time.
Lord Sassoon
There is another thing I have learnt this evening. I am very grateful to the noble Lord.
I appreciate that this is very dangerous territory. The important point about the football is that this is a clause about the powers and duties of HMRC in relation to Scottish affairs. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, was trying to set a trap for me by getting me drawn into the tax affairs of an individual taxpayer, because of course the powers we are talking about here define, among other things, where information can be shared and what the limits are. If he was setting me a trap, I am doing my best not to walk into it—he was not setting me a trap, good. He will understand that I cannot possibly comment on the tax affairs of any individual taxpayer. I will simply say that there is nothing in the Bill that would change the circumstances of an individual—or a company—who is overdue in paying taxes to HMRC.
My noble friend Lord Lyell asked whether there was a difference between preferred creditor and ordinary creditor status between Scotland and the rest of the UK. I must confess that it is not an issue I have in the front of my mind, and I will write to him. I am sure it is a very important question, not only for football clubs.
Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, makes a very important point. We have spent a lot of time in the debate today talking about the problems that surround devolution, but devolution in itself has been a very considerable achievement. It may not have gone as far as my noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen suggested, to kill nationalism stone dead, but it has put in place a system of government that has rectified some of the inequities that have existed for something like 300 years. Because of the nature of the debate that we have had as part of this legislation, we are missing out on making the case that devolution was a very considerable achievement. I do not think that anyone—and I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth—would try to put the genie back in the bottle and go back to the previous status quo. Although what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is talking about is in essence a gesture, it is an opportunity for us to celebrate the fact that a transfer of powers was made very peacefully to the Scottish Parliament after the election of the Labour Government in 1997.
Many people misunderstand devolution, which has existed in Scotland for 300 years because of the nature of the Act of Union. The Scotland Act merely transferred that legislation, which often took place in this House in the middle of the night, and put it into a proper parliamentary context. By the time I became Secretary of State for Scotland, the Scotland Office was one department. When the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was Secretary of State for Scotland, he oversaw an empire of something like 13 different government departments. The model that we have now is the right one, and I support the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, in his argument for celebrating the cause of devolution rather than trying to hide it.
Lord Maxton
My Lords, I rise as somebody else who supported devolution. There have been one or two occasions during this evening when I have had my doubts, I must say—but in the main I have supported it, because in my view it is about democracy. That is what distinguishes it from independence, which almost certainly under the SNP would be democratic but does not have to be. It is not a prerequisite of an independent Scotland that it has to be a democratic state, but the fact is that devolution is about democracy. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, may sit there and pull faces, but he is one of the reasons why many of us argued strongly for the democratic process of devolution. What we had developed in Scotland was a Secretary of State for Scotland of a Conservative Government who, of course, increasingly had fewer and fewer Members in support in Scotland. Legislation which affected the whole of the people of Scotland was being put through this place with no democratic validity whatever.
There was an alternative, which was to abolish the Scotland Office and do away with separate Scottish legislation altogether. That was not seriously a political option in Scotland. The reason why we argued so strongly for devolution was because we felt that the only way you could get democratic legitimacy in Scotland was to give democratic powers to a Scottish Parliament to make legislation in Scotland for—
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean
The hour is late and I am not going to make a speech, but I will just rise to the fly to say one thing. I opposed devolution because I thought that it would lead ultimately to the growth of the demands for independence and would benefit the nationalists, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. However, if I had realised how much damage devolution would do to the Labour Party in Scotland, I might have been tempted to go along with it.
Lord Maxton
It was partially self-inflicted, as my noble friend beside me says. However, that damage is also a short-term phenomenon and we will recover.
Certainly, we will recover once we have had the referendum on independence. I do not understand why Mr Alex Salmond does not want that referendum immediately, because this is his best chance of winning it. The longer he leaves it, in my view, the less chance he has of winning it. The arguments will no longer be about the way in which, or whether, we have the right to hold the referendum. It will be about the issues of what being an independent country, outside the United Kingdom, actually means: whether it will be part of Europe; whether it will have to apply to be part of Europe; and whether the rest of the United Kingdom will be part of Europe. Mr Alex Salmond seems to think that the rest of the United Kingdom would not necessarily be part of Europe, but it must be in his best interests to hope that it will be part of it. Can your Lordships imagine a Tory-dominated England, led by people such as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who would probably say: “Now we can get out of Europe—we don't have to be in it any longer. We can get out altogether and leave the European Union.”?
I always supported devolution on the basis of democracy. It was the right thing to do and it still is. I wish, however, that we could settle the issue of independence once and for all. If we get it out of the way, we could then deal with whether we apply, change or alter devolution. I am not necessarily convinced that we have to give enormous extra powers to the Scottish Parliament. In fact, there are some parts of the devolution settlement where we ought to be taking powers back from Scotland. For instance, broadcasting is one area over which they demand power, but powers like that should certainly be with this Parliament because they are now international rather than national. We should not therefore necessarily always be looking at giving powers to Scotland, and never taking them back.
We also have to look at what to my mind my late and very good friend Donald Dewar meant when he said that devolution is a process and not an end. The process was about extending democracy from the Scottish Parliament down to local government and local areas, so that you were giving powers to the people in the areas and the communities in which they lived. That to me is what Donald Dewar meant when he said that, not that it was the first step towards an independent Scotland.
Baroness Adams of Craigielea
On that point, was it not the case that the Scottish Parliament in fact did quite the opposite of that, and drew powers away from local government and brought them to the Scottish Parliament? In fact, they are the people who have not continued devolution. While this House has tried to keep the concept of devolution going, the Scottish Parliament has done exactly the opposite.
Lord Maxton
That is very much so and it was quite interesting, as I listened to the debate earlier on taxation, that the Scottish Government, led by Alex Salmond over the past—what is it now?—three or four years, have not allowed local authorities to increase their council tax. They have put a cap on it, so they have in fact restrained taxation at a local level. My noble friend is quite right. They have actually reduced the democratic rights and responsibilities of local government, whereas what ought to have been the next step was to say, “We have devolved power to a Scottish Parliament for democratic reasons. We now need to devolve further down, to give more democracy to our local communities and our people to take the decisions at their level that need to be taken at that level”. That to me is what devolution is about. It is not about independence; it is not actually about nationalism or nationality at all. In fact, nationalism has been the bugbear of devolution, not the natural progression of it. Therefore I support my noble friend's amendment, which would put “devolved” into this Bill.
Lord Browne of Ladyton
My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate for the simple reason that I do not support the amendment and I feel that I am destroying my relationship with my noble friend Lord Forsyth bit by bit in a salami-slice fashion.