United Kingdom: The Union

Lord Strathclyde Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, in this debate. It is an important debate, and one that takes place from time to time because it is right we should look at the stresses and strains that exist within our constitution and within the different parts of the United Kingdom.

I join the noble Lord in looking forward to the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Blackburn, and his valedictory few words; no doubt that will entertain all of us, and I am very keen to hear it.

We have had nearly 25 years of devolution—enough time for us to get used to it and for it bed down with our constitutional arrangements. But as the noble Lord has just pointed out, we have not done so. The stresses and strains are only too visible and too complicated, and it is clear that it will take considerably more time for them to bed down into a workable proposition.

The noble Lord mentioned his Act of Union Bill, which I regard as a good draft that we can all spend a great deal of time discussing. It is something that Governments should take seriously, because it points to a different intellectual approach to the governance of the country, rather than the one we have now. However, it is extremely hard to pursue that kind of debate politically when, in Scotland at any rate, we have a political party in power which is trying to tear up the United Kingdom as we speak and has so recently pledged itself to having a referendum in the next 12 months.

I will concentrate on Scotland, because I know and understand Scotland better than other parts of the United Kingdom, but some of what I will say has a read-across to the other parts. I will start with the need for co-operation, flagged up very much in the title of the Select Committee’s report. Co-operation seems to me fundamental to the workings of the British constitution, more so than mutual self-respect, which it goes without saying is important.

On co-operation—talking to each other and not doing things deliberately to undermine each other—I will give a very simple and personal example. As we overcame Covid through the use of vaccines, I went to my local GP and received two vaccines, several months apart. I received a certificate in the shape of a letter and then, miraculously, an app appeared on my phone. That was all very well and is an experience shared by most Peers. When it came to the third vaccination, the booster, I was spending a bit more time in London. I walked past a walk-in centre and, seeing no queue, I had it done quickly here. I explained that I was from Scotland and had a Scottish app, and they said, “That shouldn’t be a problem. I’m sure they’re all talking to each other.” No, they were not. There was no hint of co-operation at all and it took another two and a half months to get my Scottish app to recognise that I had already been boosted in England.

Translated many thousands of times, this all undermines the union we are talking about in very practical ways that are very visible to people in Scotland. The census was done differently in Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom—how utterly daft. The whole point of a census is that it is all done together, yet in Scotland we decided to do it rather differently and have been unable to achieve the kind of results achieved in the rest of the United Kingdom. The price of non-cooperation is unnecessary, expensive and bureaucratic processes, letting down people and affecting how they live. People are crying out for co-operation and that is what we should champion as much as possible.

People such as me who opposed devolution did so because we feared that there would be centralisation in Scotland. I am afraid to say that that is exactly what has happened. Local authorities have had their powers taken away to Edinburgh and the central belt dominates. None of this has done much good for the people of Scotland. Other parts of the United Kingdom can perhaps recognise what has happened.

I should say something about the SNP at this point. The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, mentioned the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I have said in the past and say so again today that it would be good for us to have a member of the SNP here. I know the SNP generally have a view that they should not send people here, but I wonder if it is not time for our Prime Minister to seek to do that. It is a voice that we do not hear in the House, but one that we really should have.

I therefore very much welcome the steps taken by the office of the Secretary of State for Scotland to try to fund local authority projects directly, looking at special instances where central money can be spent more wisely, so that devolution would mean real devolution down to local institutions.

There is another outstanding issue, that of tertiary education. If you are a Scottish student, it is very hard to be educated anywhere but in a Scottish university because of the way the funding works. In other words, Scottish students are excluded from the rest of the United Kingdom. This is not a sensible way of going forward. I do not offer a solution to that today, but central government should look at ways for students throughout the United Kingdom to be dealt with fairly.

My time is up. I very much hope that this debate will be taken seriously by the Government and that they will look at ways to strengthen the union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate and we should all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, not only for initiating the debate but for the work he has done in bringing forward practical suggestions as to how we might carry out reform. He has also triggered clear enthusiasm in this House for it to take initiatives which might propel thoughtful measures of reform to secure the future workings of the United Kingdom. I think we would all commend that, but I hope that we can find some way of organising a committee that will take it forward. I speak as someone who was a member of the Scottish Constitutional Convention for quite a few years, and I honestly believe that the Scotland Act—imperfect as it was—was infinitely better because of the convention than the previous example of the Labour Government’s attempt to do it without such background work. I believe that it was an extremely good initiative.

We are all grateful for the contributions of the right reverend Prelate during his two years here and in his valedictory address, which was short and sweet, but very much to the point. We wish him well in his future.

The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, made one particular point of detail which I need to take him up on: it is not true that Scottish students cannot study outside Scotland. In fact, it is worse than that: many Scottish students must study outside Scotland, because, although tuition fees are free, the number of places have been capped by the Scottish Government so that the vast majority of Scottish students cannot get into Scottish universities and, indeed, have to move. My own son has chosen to move; he is matriculating at a London university this coming year, having been disappointed about his participation in the Scottish system—

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for making my point considerably better than I did earlier on.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

It was a valid point, nevertheless.

It is also important that the dimension of England is addressed. We recognise that England is very much the largest component of the union, but it is also very diverse. The shortcomings of governance in England are real, and part of the tensions we are talking about, but a federalism based on English regions is not something that anyone really believes is the way forward.

I am sorry to say this, but it is clear that the union is in no way safe in the hands of this Government under their dysfunctional, incoherent and—frankly—careless leadership—or rather lack of it. As I have said, we all know that a tidy federal solution to the governance of the United Kingdom is not easy to achieve, even if there were a will for it, which there is not. However, that does not excuse us for not striving for a relationship among the component parts of the UK based on consensus, mutual respect, fair shares and, as has been said repeatedly, co-operation—all ultimately reinforced by a legal constitutional settlement and dispute resolution mechanism.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, that it is not about more power; it is about attitude and engagement. However, there must be a backstop with some kind of recourse and dispute resolution mechanism, because we have seen how the UK Government behave without one in relation to the devolved Administrations. I for one, privately, did not think that the vow at the end of the referendum in 2016 was necessary or helpful. I agree that lots of people were voting to stay in the United Kingdom as it was, without necessarily requiring change.

It is also an inescapable fact that the glue—the word used, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane—provided by the EU helped in regard to agreed rules and to secure the Good Friday agreement; after all, the EU is one of its guarantors. It also gave the devolved Administrations and the UK Government a degree of clarity and security. That has all been swept away by the return of EU powers to the UK. I am not trying to reverse that, but it has been aggravated by a ham-handed application, for example, of the internal market Act and, to a lesser extent, the Subsidy Control Act.

I am also a member of the Common Frameworks Scrutiny Committee, which is about to agree its final report. When first set out, it appeared that common frameworks offered the way to achieve the kind of partnership within the UK that would build confidence, and they still could. However, it is clear that they are in danger of being downgraded into a simple process rather than being rather more substantial policy agreements allowing for divergence.

Thanks to the excellent report by the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, we have new inter-government agreement, set out this year, which appears to offer a positive way forward, but, again, it depends on the will of the UK Government to apply it in spirit as well as in letter. It depends on that, and the UK Government, as always, have the upper hand. Frankly, the qualities needed are sadly lacking, and when they are not applied, there is no redress. But—and it is a big but—the strains on the union are not all one-way. The agreement signed by the Prime Minister to give appearance to his claim to get Brexit done was flawed at the outset, in terms of Northern Ireland in particular.

The Government’s own website made that clear. On the day during the election campaign when the Prime Minister was categorically denying that there would be extra bureaucracy between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the website showed exactly how much bureaucracy there would be. That was the price for no border on the island of Ireland, and the Government and the Prime Minister knew that. The intransigence of the DUP and the belligerence of the UK Government have aggravated a situation which could be substantially alleviated by an agreement, so the governance of Northern Ireland is stalled and the Good Friday agreement is at risk. I may be biased, but there is one glimmer of hope in this situation, which is the stagnation of support for the two more extreme parties and the strengthening of the middle ground in the form of Alliance—I must point out that it is the Liberal Democrats’ sister party.

It is true that in Wales we have an Administration who clearly want devolution to work—it is important that we acknowledge that—but are frustrated by the attitude of the UK Government to the extent of taking legal action. They have set up their own constitutional committee, and I hope it will come forward with positive proposals designed to secure devolution, not independence. However, if the Government cannot carry opinion in Wales, what hope do they have elsewhere?

Respect needs to be a two-way process. The DUP’s refusal to go back into government lets down the majority of people in Northern Ireland, who require a Government to take decisions. In Scotland, the SNP has shown scant regard for public opinion. Twice in a democratic vote, the people of Scotland have, in effect, supported the devolution settlement which has evolved, yet the SNP has shown no interest in making devolution work. Of course, as has been said, the nationalists campaign for independence, and that is their right, but Scotland has not voted for independence, and by undermining and trashing devolution and United Kingdom co-operation, the SNP is betraying the people of Scotland and letting them down.

The SNP claims it has a mandate for independence, but that is not the case. When the question was asked, independence was rejected, and opinion appears to be settled at about the same level. The coalition with the Greens has a majority and both parties support independence, but it is questionable whether that is really a mandate. The SNP appears to be a champion of first past the post at the moment and has questioned the legitimacy of pro-UK MSPs who are elected from the list, seemingly missing the irony that the Greens are entirely elected from the list. Is the Scottish Green Party a surrogate nationalist party or an environmental campaign party? Either way, its mandate is very unclear.

This raises another strain on the United Kingdom in the shape of an outdated, flawed and less than representative voting system. The SNP secured 3.88% of the UK vote in 2019 and 9% of the seats. The Conservatives secured 43.63% of the vote and 56% of the seats. Labour fell only six seats short of that vote share, and, yes, the Liberal Democrats, with 11% of the vote, secured less than 2% of the seats. This is important because it means that, with its sister party the Alliance, a UK-wide political grouping with three times as many votes as the SNP is severely squeezed in its participation in UK parliamentary business in the House of Commons, and that distorts the balance of the House of Commons, in which SNP MPs, on 45% of the Scottish vote, secured 81% of the Scottish seats. That is neither proportionate nor healthy.

In conclusion, I want to ask the SNP and its followers: “Do you speak Belgian?” I know noble Lords will appreciate the subtlety of that question. The SNP is suggesting to the people of Scotland that they have more in common with a country that has three languages, none of which is English or Belgian, than they do with their fellow citizens elsewhere in the UK. To reinforce this to nationalists, all things British are demeaned and vilified. That is easy when talking about the current Prime Minister, but when applied to values across our culture, it is insidious, nasty, divisive and unjustified.

The by-election today could well demonstrate that the character of the government of the United Kingdom is heading for a change. Destroying a centuries-old arrangement that has served us well, for all its strains, should not depend on the short-term vicissitudes of changing political colours. Politics should be more than demonising your opponents. The SNP has denied the obvious benefits of being part of the UK, and however compromised those are currently, it needs to recognise that a majority still wants the United Kingdom to thrive.