House Committee

Debate between Lord Steel of Aikwood and Lord Sewel

Tuesday 25th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Chairman of Committees (Lord Sewel)]

My Lords, the House Committee has considered access privileges for those Members retiring under the provisions of the House of Lords Reform Act 2014. The House has previously agreed the procedure for marking those retirements.

In the interests of simplicity and striking a balance between acknowledging the contribution of retiring Members and avoiding unreasonable burden on the taxpayer, the House Committee has agreed that Members retiring under the Act should be entitled to a photo identity pass, may sit on the steps of the Throne, may use the Library—but not its research facilities—and have limited access to catering facilities.

These are the same modest privileges currently afforded to retired bishops, and I suggest to your Lordships on this occasion that what is good enough for the bishops is good enough for the rest of us. Those Members who cease to be Members as a consequence of non-attendance would not be entitled to any such access rights.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, I hate to press the Chairman of Committees on this matter, but, since the passage of the Act, the committee has not done anything to encourage retirement and get the numbers in this House down. Is the committee going to look at the various suggestions that have been made, or will we have a special Select Committee to do that?

[The Chairman of Committees]

I think that I can give some comfort to the noble Lord. What is going on may not necessarily show above the waterline, but quite a lot of friendly, informal activity is taking place underneath.

Procedure of the House Committee Report: Private Members’ Bill

Debate between Lord Steel of Aikwood and Lord Sewel

Thursday 9th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, I offer my support to the third report, which is the subject of the Motion moved by the Chairman. I fully support the idea that we should end the mad scramble for Private Members’ Bills after the State Opening of Parliament, which I was involved in at the start of this Session. I take the opportunity to inform the House that a particular Bill, in which noble Lords know I have an interest, has gone to the other place and has had a successful Second Reading. It is due to have its Committee stage as the Byles Bill on Wednesday and, with any luck, will be back here in time for us to turn it into law, four years later.

[The Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, on his little commercial, which is much appreciated by the House. Returning to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, I think it is important to understand that we have made great strides recently in increasing the opportunity for Back-Bench debates and contributions in your Lordships’ House. Cutting off a speakers list at a particular time was considered by the committee before it reached its current recommendation, but the difficulty is—dare I say?—that it creates the opportunity for rather mischievous behaviour in terms of flooding the list. That is one of the reservations that we had.

However, I recognise, and have some sympathy with, the general point that the noble Lord made. Having a very short speaking time is not a pleasant arrangement at all but is a product, in part, of the increase in the size of the active House. One thing that is happening is that the active House is getting larger and larger, and the proportion of our membership that is relatively inactive is declining. On the whole, it is a very good thing to have an active House rather than a largely inactive one—but, from time to time, we come close to the point where the House can operate only if a significant proportion of its membership is inactive. That is not a happy position to be in.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Steel of Aikwood and Lord Sewel

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sewel]

The noble Lord, as always, makes an interesting and important point. At this stage, I am not prepared to follow him completely, but it is something upon which we may wish to reflect as the debate progresses in our House.

Part of the confusion that we face on the whole business of a referendum, because the debate in Scotland for a long time assumed that it was within the powers of the Scottish Parliament to call a referendum on independence, is because—and we have seen this sort of tactic in a number of areas—the present First Minister has a very good knack of being able to make quite outlandish assertions, and make them so strongly and repeat them so many times that people come to accept their validity without any attempt to find out what the actual position is in reality and in law.

I hope that we progress with this Bill, but we must do so with a great deal of care.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, although I agree with many of the arguments advanced by my noble friend Lord Forsyth, I am glad that he is not going to press his amendment to a vote.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, suggested that my noble friend Lord Sanderson was being a bit unkind in using the word “devious” about Mr Salmond, and I take his point. Can I rephrase that and be positive and say that Mr Salmond is successfully manipulative? That is a compliment. I have said repeatedly that members of Her Majesty's Government underestimate him at their peril. He is not known as “smart Alec” for nothing north of the border. I remind the House that in the previous two general elections in Scotland he did not campaign on independence. He did not even campaign under the banner of the Scottish National Party. He campaigned on the basis of, “Alex Salmond for First Minister”. That tells you a great deal about how we have got to where we are. That campaign was very successful and manipulative.

There is another area that we have rather passed over. Before any Bill is introduced, the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament has to sign legislative competence, both under the Scotland Act and the European Convention on Human Rights. I used to take that matter very seriously indeed, and the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, will not mind me saying that there were occasions when I told the Executive that they could not expect me to act just as a rubber stamp. My legal advisers would send me back with a red box with perhaps 30 pages of their opinion on whether something was legislatively competent or not.

The referendum Bill, as outlined in Mr Salmond’s consultation paper yesterday, would have to come to the Scottish Parliament. Frankly, if I were Presiding Officer I would not sign a document that said that a referendum was within the competence of the Parliament because I do not believe that it is. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, may be correct that the Scottish Parliament can hold an expensive opinion poll, but it certainly cannot hold a referendum, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, just advanced. However, remember what happened after the most recent election. After the first Scottish election, I was elected as the Presiding Officer, and I came from the Liberal Democrats. In the second Parliament, the Presiding Officer, George Reid, came from the Scottish National Party. In the third Parliament, the Presiding Officer, Alex Fergusson, came from the Conservative Party.

On any understanding of common sense and good will, it was the Labour Party's turn to provide the Presiding Officer after the most recent election, but of course Mr Salmond does not do graciousness. He does not do consensus. He had a majority, so a member of the SNP was appointed as Presiding Officer. I make no criticism of her whatever; I think she has behaved perfectly well, but it puts her in an impossible position and has shown again how Mr Salmond's record is one of being successfully manipulative—as did the use of Edinburgh Castle yesterday, to which the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, referred and as does the question in the consultation paper. We were told over the past few days by every newspaper that Mr Salmond was being so kind that he was going to allow the Electoral Commission to be in charge of the referendum, but when we read the paper we find that it is in charge of the administration but not in charge of the question. That, again, has been successfully manipulated.

I just say to the House that we must be extremely careful in all our dealings with the present Scottish Government. The paper published yesterday is run through with the theme of successful manipulation. I think we should proceed with the Bill. I take the view—as, I think, does my party—that it is not strong enough. We want greater devolution to the Scottish Parliament in future, but that is not on the agenda now. This is a Bill produced by consensus, and for that reason we should press ahead with it.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord Steel of Aikwood and Lord Sewel

Tuesday 6th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

My Lords, the late Donald Dewar once observed that devolution is not an event but a process. I very much agree with that, and I believe that we should look at this Bill as the second.

[Lord Sewel]

This phrase that it is a process rather than an event is attributed to Donald Dewar. I spent some time trying to trace the source of that comment, but I could not find any occasion when Donald Dewar said it. It was said ad nauseam by the then Secretary of State for Wales, for very good reasons, if you looked at what Welsh devolution was.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood]

That has lengthened my speech already, before I finished my first half-sentence. Anyway, it was attributed to him, but the point is that it is true, and I regard this Bill as the second stage of the process of devolution, the 1998 Act being the first stage. It may not be the last stage; there may be a third or even, possibly, a fourth stage to come. I do not think we should be frightened of that. The truth is that we are wrestling all the time with the basic problem that we cannot have a proper federal constitution in this country because one component part is larger than the other three put together. That has been the difficulty with which Governments have had to wrestle, so we end up with what I have always called lopsided federalism.

When he opened, the Minister used a quotation from my Donald Dewar lecture in 2003 when I said that no self-respecting Parliament could exist permanently on the basis of a grant from another Parliament. I believe that is true, and although the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was very entertaining, he did not address that problem. This Bill at least attempts to do so. After I said that, people in my own party came to me and said, “You’ve made this pronouncement. We agree with it. Will you now chair a commission to work out what we do about it?”. I was very reluctant to do that because I tried to follow the precedent of Speakers of the House of the Commons and not engage in party-political activity. However, I regarded it as a constitutional issue, and so I said I would chair the commission, provided that there were people other than the usual party enthusiasts appointed to it. I was greatly assisted by my noble friend Lord Vallance, who had then just retired as chairman of British Telecom and is a former director of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and my right honourable friend Chris Huhne, with all his economic expertise.

We came up with what became known as the Steel commission report, which was subsequently the substance of our evidence to the Calman commission. The one difference between the two—this has been commented on by many in the Liberal Democrat ranks—is that our commission recommended a far wider sweep of tax-raising powers than is in this Bill or was recommended by the Calman commission. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, put his finger on it when he talked about the possibility of having a wider net of tax-raising powers rather than focusing simply on income tax. The fact is that the Calman commission was the product of a consensus agreement between the three parties taking part in it, and the Bill is the result of a consensus agreement. I have always believed that when it comes to constitutional reform, you cannot expect any one party to dictate how exactly it should proceed. If constitutional reform is going to succeed properly, it has to be on the basis of a broad range of consensus. I therefore find myself in support of the principles of the Bill in its tax-raising powers, although clearly in Committee we can have much more discussion along the lines that we have heard already.

I was very interested in the speech by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, about the fallout from the remarks by not just the First Minister but also by the Minister of Justice in Scotland about the Supreme Court decision on a human rights case. It seemed to me that they were quite paranoid about the court being in London and would be quite happy for cases to go to Strasbourg, which is a most bizarre position for them to adopt. I was incensed by the language used and the insult to prominent members of the Scottish judiciary who serve on the Supreme Court. I thought it was quite intolerable, and that is why I resigned as an adviser to the First Minister on the ministerial code of conduct. As I said to him in a letter at the time, I did so because if now that they had a majority that was how they were going to behave, there would be more and more complaints against Ministers, and I did not want to spend my time refereeing them. I do not regret that decision. However, the issue that they raised in the debate today was echoed by another Donald Dewar lecturer—namely, Elish Angiolini, the immediate past Lord Advocate—whose lecture I went and listened to. She devoted the latter part of her speech to this issue and clearly was not satisfied that we have yet solved the question of how we treat our engagement with the Humans Rights Act with the new Supreme Court. We should return in Committee to the points made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Davidson, and the noble Lord, Lord McCluskey, and treat them very seriously. I welcome what they said.

One minor point which I am pleased to see in the Bill, in Clause 4, is about the Presiding Officers in the Scottish Parliament. It is a direct result of the evidence which I gave to the Calman commission. We had the embarrassing situation in 2002 where, despite juggling hospital appointments with the Easter Recess, I had to take two weeks off from the Scottish Parliament for treatment for prostate cancer. My two deputies had a simply terrible time trying to cope with not just chairing the Parliament, because that is only part of the function, but chairing the committees, the Parliamentary Bureau and the corporate body. They had also to entertain the legions of visitors that we had, because the Foreign Office took it into its head to tell every visiting dignitary coming to this country, “You must go to Scotland and see this thing which has come to pass”. We had constantly to give lunches and dinners to visiting people. My two colleagues told me that they were run absolutely ragged during that fortnight. It was intolerable that the Parliament had no power to appoint a third deputy even for a temporary period. I am delighted that that minor flaw has been put right in the Bill before us.

I share the surprise of others who have spoken that the Bill is silent on the question of holding a referendum. Again to be fair to the Government, I point out that the election of the SNP Government in May came subsequently to the Calman commission’s deliberations and the drafting of the Bill. We should be quite open about that. The Bill has come to us; we shall have to deal with it in Committee; and we should look at that question. There is a real danger that Scotland will find itself sleepwalking into independence unless we tackle the matter. As others have said—the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, was right—this is quite plainly and clearly a reserved matter for the Westminster Government. It is not a question of the SNP Government saying, “Well, we’re elected, therefore we can have a non-binding referendum which we devise—and we organise, by the way, not the Electoral Commission”. That would be intolerable. We should make it quite clear in this Bill that, granted that the SNP has its majority and a mandate to hold a referendum, ensuring that it is done in a proper way is a matter for this Parliament. The Bill has to come to us late, but we have the responsibility to send it back to the Commons for further deliberation.

My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has asked some very pertinent questions of the SNP about what it means by independence, and I hope that we will in due course get answers to them. My heart sinks at the thought that we will have three years of debate and uncertainty about independence or not, with a permanent collective whinge from the Scottish Government that everything that goes well in Scotland is due to their magnificent government and everything that goes wrong is due entirely to Westminster. It is not a situation that we should allow to fester for three years.

The basic question which the SNP has to address is whether people in this country really want a situation where Scots people living and working in London are living and working in a foreign country, and English people living and working in Scotland are living and working in a foreign country. That is what independence means and we should not hesitate to say so.

I also believe that there is a common misunderstanding about the history of how the union came about. It is frequently said, “Oh, well, it was all bribery and corruption that the Scottish Parliament was abolished and people were against the union”. They were not against the union. In 1704, three years before the treaty was signed, Fletcher of Saltoun said that he was in favour of the union,

“to do away with bloody and destructive wars”.

The fact was that there was a perfectly good defence and foreign policy case for the union, just as there was an economic case following the collapse of the Darien scheme and the ridiculous notion that we in Scotland should compete with England in colonial adventures following that disaster.

When there were discussions between the two Parliaments in 1706, although the word “federal” may not have been used—it perhaps did not exist in those days—the discussion was of federal type constitution. When it became clear that the English representatives would not accept that, and that it had to be an incorporating union or nothing, that was the point at which there were riots in the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh. The truth is that the abolition of the Scottish Parliament was never accepted by the Scottish people. We saw that—although there were other factors as well—in 1715, 1745, through the 19th century, through the early part of the 20th century, the campaigns in the Labour Party, the Liberal Home Rule Bills and the covenant campaign of 1950 which attracted millions of signatures. The abolition of the Scottish Parliament was never accepted. The 1998 Act put right something that was done wrong in 1707. But that is a quite different argument from talking about going back to pre-1707 years and having a completely independent state north of the border.

This Bill is simply a fine-tuning of the 1998 provisions. So long as we treat it like that, it should deserve our support and go through to success.