Constitutional Settlement

Debate between Lord Steel of Aikwood and Lord Lawson of Blaby

Thursday 11th October 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, if I were in church, I would simply say “Amen” to that speech and sit down; I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes. But we are not, and I begin by expressing my sincere thanks to my noble friend Lord Maclennan for his wisdom in enabling the House to have this debate. He has done the House a great service, and also with the tone and content of his introduction.

When Mr Salmond first said that he would hold a referendum in Scotland in two years’ time, I was extremely concerned. I thought that, as time went on, people in Scotland would become thoroughly bored with the whole issue. You cannot open a newspaper but for somebody, either a politician or a journalist, pontificating on some aspect of putative independence. I have also found—and I am sure that other Scottish Peers have had the same experience—that as you travel abroad people immediately ask, “Are you going to be independent?”. The whole thing is an unsettling, long-drawn-out, boring process.

However, in fact it has had one benefit, which may be slightly surprising. It was well revealed in an opinion poll published in the Scotsman a couple of days ago. The number of people who were undecided at the start of the process has greatly diminished, and the people who were uncertain have moved to the “no to independence” camp. According to that poll, the support for those who agree that Scotland should negotiate independence has slumped from 40% to 28%, while those who are clearly opposed have grown from 37% to 53%. So the effect of this long-drawn-out debate has been to focus the public mind on the consequences of independence. Therefore, the potential risk to which my noble friend refers in his Motion has diminished. None the less, it is still a risk and we should be aware of it.

It is not really surprising that this has happened when you consider the number of issues that have been raised: the cost of independence and the cost of establishing a separate social security system. There is the question of what currency we have. It used to be SNP policy to join Europe and the euro; enthusiasm for that course seems to have disappeared in recent months. Are they going to be dependent on the Bank of England, in which case what kind of independence is that? That is another question that crept up. What is going to happen in defence? The SNP is currently going through a whole rethink about whether Scotland should be in or out of NATO. Of course, Scotland has always contributed much more than our population suggests to the defence forces of the country, so that has become a big issue.

So it has gone on. I am one of those who believe that the people of Scotland have a right to be independent if they wish to be. I do not argue that it is impossible to have an independent country, but I think that most people have come around to the view that it would simply be a great and unnecessary leap in the dark. Why are they going to make it? Why do we not instead intend to pursue the line of those who have been heading the devo-plus campaign to build on what we already have, and try to make it, as others have said, somewhat more coherent than it is at the moment?

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

My noble friend mentioned the question of what currency an independent Scotland would have. Does he think it not slightly curious that, when events in the eurozone have shown conclusively that it is impossible to have a single currency without full political union, Alex Salmond is promoting a single currency and at the same time wants to break up a perfectly workable, working political union? Is that not rather odd?

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

It is certainly very odd. I am grateful to my noble friend; he has taken a little time out of what I want to say.

I pick up a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kerr: the absence of any SNP representation here. As some may know, I have recently been elected chairman of the Scottish Peers Association; there is clearly no end to my political ambitions. In this onerous post, I wrote to the First Minister and relayed what we all felt during the Scotland Bill: that there was an absence of any SNP membership here in the House. I have invited him, therefore, to come and address the Scottish Peers Association, and he has accepted. Members will have an opportunity, at some point of his choosing, to hear what he has to say. That is really quite important. I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said about pursuing certain people who should be Members of this House, and I have been privately lobbying the Prime Minister on exactly the same basis.

The point I want to make in this short speech, to follow up what the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, said, is that there is a clear potential role for the reformed House of Lords in dealing with a uniform structure for the United Kingdom. My noble friend’s plea for some kind of constitutional convention is a wise one. Of course, although the House of Lords Bill has been withdrawn, the issue has not gone away. My right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister has made it clear that he intends to come back to the fundamental question of how the House of Lords should be constituted after the next election.

My simple hope is that, in the mean time, while there is this inevitable period before that happens, there should be some fundamental rethinking about what would be the role of the House of Lords before we get around the drafting yet another Bill. That role should take account of the different elements in the United Kingdom.

Some of my Liberal Democrat colleagues outside this place have been unkind enough to suggest that I have drifted away from what I said as leader of the Liberal Party. I therefore want to quote from the 1979 party manifesto:

“The House of Lords should be replaced by a new, democratically chosen second chamber which includes representatives of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom and UK members of the European Parliament”.

More than 30 years later, I have not changed my view. I stand by what I said in the 1979 manifesto. If fresh legislation is going to come forward in another two or three years, we should go back to that principle and make sure that the new House of Lords has a clear role in a reformed United Kingdom. That is one of the key issues, which my noble friend is right to say that a constitutional convention should tackle.

In the mean time, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to the “Steel Bill”, I say that I could not get in on the exchanges on Tuesday, but I wanted to correct what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said from the Opposition Front Bench. He said that the Government were opposed to it. That is not the case. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, was right to say that the Bill is “languishing” in the House of Commons. I have invented a new word: I wish to “unlanguish” it. I am glad to say that it is no longer the “Steel Bill”. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, made an important point: it has gone from this House. If you go and get a copy through the Commons, it no longer has my name on it. It is a Bill brought from the Lords and, as such, it should not be treated in the queue for private Members’ legislation. I very much hope that the Government, even at this late date, will agree that this modest proposal to get a retirement scheme, which will result in getting our numbers down, should be pursued.

However, the main thing is that there is great scope here for a new role for a reformed Chamber. I hope very much that minds will be concentrating on that in the next two or three years.