Scotland: Devolution

Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord McFall of Alcluith (Lab)]

My Lords, in the referendum, no has won the battle, but it has not won the war of words. Those words were pretty ugly, divisive and depressing throughout the referendum campaign. What we saw was an intolerant streak, demonstrated in the social and political debates; so much anger, venom and sneering contempt directed by individuals and groups at one another. The social media mirrored this throughout the referendum.

To have a decent debate you have to have a good tone at the top. That is where the First Minister and his deputy were lacking. They were lacking in the area of business. I was engaged with businesses for many months on this issue and they were afraid to put their heads above the parapet. I was engaged with academia, and that was a mirror image. The only one who stood out against that was Dr Louise Richardson of St Andrews University. In a personal call with Alex Salmond, she told him, no, she was going her own way. We also saw that with the SNP-inspired demonstration against the BBC for Nick Robinson asking a hard question—the sort of hard question that he asks politicians in Westminster day in and day out. Alex Salmond took exception to that.

What has happened is that Westminster has become a toxic term as a result of this debate. Both Alex Salmond and, indeed, Nigel Farage in his own way, have enhanced that toxicity. What does that mean? That means that Westminster is to be very much involved in ensuring that we progress this devolution debate. We need to ensure that we correct our politics and ask the question: how do we contain and how do we eliminate the disturbances that we have seen? There is something unnerving in the air—witness the social and political fragmentation. Westminster needs to reassert its authority and produce a confident voice in this debate; one that respects the constituent parts.

EVEL has been mentioned. If we go down this line as a primary consideration, we will not achieve that. Let us reflect on the situation. The English voice is alive and well in the mother of Parliaments: 650 constituencies with 533 English ones. That voice is alive. England remains the dominant nation. There is no need, as Vernon Bogdanor, the Prime Minister’s Oxford tutor, says, to beat the drum or blow the bugle. If we beat the drum and blow the bugle too much, that will strain the devolution settlement to breaking point—as will the 100% tax devolution to the Scottish Parliament. This is a slow way to independence. Why? If there is 100% tax devolution, Scottish MPs will not vote on the Finance Bill or indeed debate it as we do here. There will be no Scottish Chancellor and, given that the Prime Minister is the First Lord of the Treasury, there will be no Prime Minister from Scotland.

There is another way of getting independence. Members of Parliament and parliamentarians here have to realise that. If Westminster is to maintain its voice, there has to be no dereliction of duty by the Prime Minister in the future. A dereliction of duty was undertaken with the Edinburgh agreement. There was a casual treatment of the Edinburgh agreement by the Prime Minister. It was way in the future, so the timing, giving a two-year timescale, was given away—just like that. Also, the wording of the question was given away. The wording, style and tone of a question are crucial in determining the value and quality of the answer received. As one who campaigned, I can tell the House that it is very hard to enthuse people if one is proposing a negative. That should have been looked at at the very beginning. The constitutional debate since 1999 has been all about process; what further powers can be devolved to the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly? There has been little focus on the effectiveness of the delivery of politics. The concept of devolution as a process of events needs to be re-examined.

I have some very close friends who voted yes. I challenged them on why they were voting yes. I put it to them about the currency union, “Do you agree with Jim Sillars about stupidity on stilts?”. “Yes”. I asked about Trident and NATO. “Can you get rid of Trident while simultaneously getting in to a nuclear club? Do you think that is consistent?”. “No”. “What about EU admission? Do you think there will be problems about that? Will there be automatic entry?”. “No. There will be problems, but we are voting yes”. One highly sophisticated friend said to me that he voted yes and hoped that the result would be no. That illustrates the disconnection that there was. When I asked them why they were voting yes, they said it was for a fairer, more socially just society. But there was no means to deliver that. There is a disconnect and we must appreciate that here.

Arsène Wenger, in the Times this morning, made the point that we are moving from a thinking society to an emotional one. We are losing our sense of perspective on events because of the requirement for instant reactions and opinions. As Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman said in his bestselling book, instead of thinking fast, we should start to think slow. We have thought fast in the past and we have got ourselves into deep problems. We need a constitutional convention or a royal commission; one which is thought out; one where there is citizen engagement; one where we have to think out the purpose and the terms of reference. A constitutional convention or a royal commission is the way forward. We should do it slowly so that we get wise decisions out of it—wise decisions which can secure a union that is not safe yet and wise decisions which, through reconciliation and good disagreement, can secure the peace.