Scotland Bill

Lord McCluskey Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord McCluskey (CB)]

My Lords, I was privileged to be part of Lord Elwyn-Jones’s Front-Bench team in 1978 when this House fully debated every detail of the Government’s Scotland Bill that was enacted that year. In 1998, I took part in the debates on the Scotland Act 1998. I helped to persuade this House to reject the disgraceful legislative proposal that that Bill contained to allow the Scottish judges—senior judges—to be dismissed by a political vote in the new Assembly.

In 2012, having been invited by the then First Minister of Scotland to chair a group to consider problems that had arisen—at least in his mind—between the Supreme Court and the Scottish courts. I was able to play a significant role in this House in persuading that the reforms suggested by the group that I had led be enacted into law. That was done by way of amendments to the Scotland Act 2012, with the extremely valuable assistance of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, who was then serving as Advocate-General.

I refer to these matters because in each instance I had direct personal experience of the many valuable improvements that this House has made to devolution legislation over the years. It is because of the outstandingly valuable work done in this House in relation to these matters that I am saddened by the absence from the House of any Peers placed here to speak as official representatives of the SNP. In the other place SNP Members put down many amendments to the Bill and might even have voted for one or two of them. However, in the absence from this House of any Peers speaking officially for the SNP, it is difficult to have the fullest and most convincing debate possible on the SNP’s ideas—in Committee or otherwise.

That is a pity because the merits of the SNP’s proposed amendments and ideas—and, indeed, its whole approach —deserve the kind of critical analysis that this House uniquely makes. The legislative debates here are seldom dominated by political point-scoring. Regrettably, too many Bills coming from the other place contain numerous provisions—as indeed this one does—especially technical ones that have never been debated at all. This House, with all its faults, invariably debates the entire Bill and every single amendment. In 1978 there was no time limit on any speeches and we often sat until 1 am, but we got the business done. We also have a very large number of experts in every field who have no political axe to grind, whose best days are behind them but who have not left their experience or learning behind them. They are well qualified to contribute to a fuller understanding of how our democratic institutions work—or, indeed, fail to work. They are able to analyse, critically and free of political bias, the technical merits of the many new and untested proposals contained in this extraordinary Bill.

As your Lordships have said, the proposals in the Bill emerged in the past few months as a result of hasty compromises that have left many of the participants, and others, deeply unhappy. How much better informed would our consideration of the Bill be if we had the advice of some of the experienced members of the SNP to respond to the analysis and criticisms that are likely to emerge? How much more satisfactory would it be if the amendments put on paper in the other House by the SNP were able to be moved in this House by persons committed to them and convinced of their value, and then tested by the experience of your Lordships? I do not pretend to have any inside knowledge as to why the SNP appears to have set its face against having party representatives contributing as Members of this House but I think that it is a mistake. The absence from this House of SNP Peers lends weight to a frequently repeated charge against the SNP—that it does not respond to reasoned criticisms of its policies but seeks instead to divert attention from the criticisms by attacking the process that yielded them. Too often its response to reasoned criticism appears to be, “Ignore the message, just shoot the messenger”.

I also regret to say that I am seriously disappointed by the quality and the capacity of the Members of the Scottish Parliament to scrutinise the Scottish Government’s measures sufficiently. I do not know if that was always so but those are the fruits of my observation over the past few years. There is a widespread perception in Scotland that pre-legislative scrutiny by committees in the Scottish Parliament does not work well at all; in fact, it works badly. There is also a public sense that too few of the Members of that Parliament have the expertise properly to assess and criticise the measures that are put before it by the Scottish Government, especially those of a technical character.

Those weaknesses are seriously compounded by two features of the Scottish Parliament. The first is that the Opposition are electorally weak and, because of a lack of numbers and resources, do not provide the vigorous and informed critique that a unicameral legislature needs. The second is that the Scottish National Party exercises an iron discipline over its Members in the Scottish Parliament because, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has reminded us, the overriding imperative of the governing party is to promote the cause of independence. Within the Scottish Parliament no dissent from government initiatives is permitted. The facade of unwavering unity must be maintained.

For example, I and a number of others recently welcomed the U-turn by the Scottish Government when they abandoned their previous policy of scrapping the long-standing evidential rules governing the use of corroboration in Scots criminal cases. The SNP MSPs first voted unanimously for the legislation abolishing the old rules. But when the former First Minister retired, the unanimous condemnation of corroboration as a bad thing turned overnight into a unanimous acclamation that corroboration was, after all, a good thing. Why was that? Simply because the new First Minister said so. The unquestioning obedience to the central diktat on each occasion was disturbingly sheepish. Radio 4 told us the other day of the local butcher who died and the organist at his funeral played, ironically, “Sheep May Safely Graze”. I will take the matter no further.

Finally, I am concerned that the weak Scottish unicameral Parliament will have real difficulty in dealing with the new and untested powers contained in the 2012 Act and the present Bill. The devolved Government will exercise greatly enhanced powers of which they have little or no experience. The Scottish Parliament itself is not well equipped, as we have said. Additionally, as others have pointed out, there is no second Chamber to allow an informed examination and critique of the new machinery and procedures required. There is no constitutional culture of conventions, never mind this particular convention, to govern the exercise of those powers. I hope, for the good of Scotland, that the SNP will not—as usual—lightly dismiss the advice that this expert House is sure to offer.

I conclude by expressing my real fear that once the Bill is enacted and brought into operation, it is more likely to compound our constitutional problems than to solve them. I am not an enthusiast for this Bill.