Devolution (Time) Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Tanlaw and Lord Anderson of Swansea
Lord Tanlaw
My Lords, I thank the Government for allowing time to debate the Second Reading of the Devolution (Time) Bill. I would like, with the leave of the House, to declare in full my interests and qualifications before moving this Private Member’s Bill, which would remove time from the reserved category in the Scottish and Welsh devolution legislation. First, I declare myself to be a Scot, who spent most of his early childhood in South Ayrshire and who, according to the speech references in this House of none other than the noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, was the only boy to wear the kilt at his prep school in Glenapp.
As this Bill is about the choice of maximising the period of daylight during the long winter months, it may be of interest to declare that, like most householders in south-west Scotland, we made our own electricity until 1951, when the grid eventually came to our glen. Before then, people in houses without an auxiliary generator used paraffin lamps to read and cook by and accumulator batteries to power the wireless sets. Later on in the 1950s and early 1960s, I fought three parliamentary by-elections as Liberal candidate for Galloway, which was, and still is, the largest Scottish farming constituency, of approximately 1,500 square miles. Therefore, I like to consider myself to be reasonably familiar with the problems connected to Scottish farming, and I can assure noble Lords that daylight saving to provide lighter evenings is definitely not one of them.
Secondly, my qualifications concerning time in general are based on my hobby as an amateur astronomer and horologist, for which I have been granted fellowships of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Horological Institute. Just for the record, I used these skills to design for the then Black Rod in the 1970s the first speech timer clock, which may not have been popular in some quarters when there was no timed limit to speeches. I was also personally responsible, as proprietor of the company which maintained the Great Clock in the Palace of Westminster, for switching the country from summer time to winter time, and vice versa.
The Devolution (Time) Bill is a very straightforward piece of legislation, perhaps one of the shortest to come before your Lordships for some time. Its primary purpose is simply to rectify the apparent anomaly included in the devolution Acts for Scotland and Wales, which keep time as a reserved subject for them, whereas Her Majesty’s Government have not considered it to be a reserved subject in the Northern Ireland devolution legislation. The Bill sets out to level the playing field for all parts of the United Kingdom, including England, with regard to all three devolved Governments having a choice of timescale best suited to the needs and geographical co-ordinates of their local electorates. It does not advocate any particular timescale.
I look forward to the Bill finding favour with both the coalition Government and Her Majesty’s Opposition in that it seems, on the face of it, to be well in keeping with the objectives of the current Localism Bill and the Scotland Bill that is soon to come before us. Both these Bills hand certain powers back to local people with the exception of a choice of a timescale by their devolved Governments. Therefore, I am puzzled that both the coalition Government and Her Majesty’s Opposition might apparently wish to oppose the Bill on the slightly absurd ground that it will, “break up the United Kingdom”. I will deal with that point later.
Meanwhile, it may be worth while for noble Lords to read in Hansard the differing political views on time as expressed on 3 December last year in the other place during the Second Reading of Rebecca Harris’s Private Member’s Bill, the Daylight Saving Bill. It will be seen that the Scottish National Party MP for the Western Isles even prophesied that daylight saving would plunge the Scottish people into darkness. However, he did not specify whether it was temporal or eternal. Nevertheless, the MP in question, Angus MacNeil, may have a point. We have all been fearful of the dark at one time or another since childhood and we are always susceptible to fears of this kind even as adults and especially during long winter power cuts in south-west Scotland.
However, we cannot complain when communities in more northern latitudes have to live through the winter without natural daylight. They do so in Norway and Sweden by having well-lit streets, flood-lit football pitches and indoor sports and farming facilities. Farming and forestry in Scotland also use modern indoor systems to maintain the livestock and forestry. Building operations are flood-lit. The dark is no longer a danger if modern lighting systems are in operation at the work site for postal workers, builders or rail track engineers who work only through the night. In fact, current health and safety regulations require that facility. In northern latitudes, there will always be many hours of darkness in the winter months during the working day, due to celestial mechanics over which we have no control. It has now been clearly established in the other place that political solutions cannot increase the hours of winter daylight; they can only adjust to them by choosing a timescale best suited to a local community and its geographical co-ordinates.
However, previous Private Members’ Bills, including my Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill, have foundered in the House of Commons on the political stance adopted by mainly Scottish MPs for no better reason than that their constituents might not accept a timescale imposed on them from south of the border, regardless of any facts that prove whether it would be beneficial to their constituents. I have no doubt, unless the coalition Government will support my Devolution (Time) Bill, that Rebecca Harris's Bill will suffer the same fate as previous Private Members’ Bills on the same subject for the same reasons.
However, if the coalition Government see fit to support the Bill before us, which imparts responsibility for the choice of timescale to the devolved Governments of Scotland and Wales, I see that as a problem solved. In fact, the Devolution (Time) Bill is a prerequisite for the safe passage not only of the current Daylight Saving Bill but any future legislation on the subject. An interesting side-effect of the successful passage of the Bill before us is that it would specifically allow English electors to decide on a timescale best suited to their needs without suffering from mischievous political interference from Scottish or Welsh MPs, who would then have the responsibility to decide their own electorate’s timescale. However, as noble Lords well know, Members of the Westminster Parliament with Scottish or Welsh constituencies would still carry the right to vote on the issues. In this case, I would assume that the political party managers could ensure that they would abstain on any vote connected with a timescale relating purely to English constituencies. Perhaps the noble Baroness could confirm that, and that that would also apply to Northern Irish MPs under existing legislation.
It is necessary to emphasise again what the Bill is not about. It is not about devolved Governments arbitrarily changing the timescale in different parts of the United Kingdom. It is about only the right to do so if their electorates require it. No Government, devolved or otherwise, will take that decision lightly or unilaterally unless it is considered to be in the best interests of their electorate.
The Bill is not about supporting one particular timescale in preference to another. Nor will it create conditions to bring forward an independent Scotland, as is believed in some quarters. Does the noble Baroness agree that that can be decided only by referendum, not by a change in the timescale? However, I am pleased to report that I understand that this devolution Bill has the support of the Scottish National Party, for the democratic reasons that I have set out. In fact, the Scottish National Party is the only political party, as far as I am aware from my preparations for this debate, which seems to understand the importance and full implications of the Bill, and does not confuse it with a referendum for independence. I could not get any response from the Welsh nationalist party, whose telephone seems to speak only Welsh.
The coalition Government must surely be aware that, as the law stands, the Northern Ireland Assembly has the power to decide its own timescale unilaterally, without reference to Westminster. That is unlike Scotland and Wales. At first sight, it is difficult to foresee any internal circumstances which might cause that to happen, although, as I shall explain, there could be pressures from beyond its borders which might cause the Northern Ireland Assembly to reconsider its position. Does the noble Baroness agree that there could be a situation in which that power might be exercised, such as one where the Republic of Ireland decided to switch to Central European Time because it was thought that it might assist in relieving its current economic crisis? In those circumstances, is it not realistic to assume that Northern Ireland would follow suit by harmonising the timescale with their brethren south of the border?
Can the noble Baroness tell us whether there is any agreement between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland that would prevent such a timescale change taking place under those or any other circumstances, a change which united the north and south of Ireland in sharing a timescale different to the one in operation in England, Scotland and Wales? If that were to happen under existing law, would Her Majesty's Government decide to follow suit, thus forcing the devolved Governments of Scotland and Wales to do likewise without prior consultation of their electorate? Alternatively, would Her Majesty's Government attempt to remake time a reserved item through amendments to the Northern Ireland devolution Act, thus preventing any change in the timescale of Northern Ireland without prior reference to Westminster? If a Devolution (Time) Bill were on the statute book, would the noble Baroness be content to let the English electorate and the devolved Governments of Scotland and Wales switch to timescales of their own choice?
I accept that, if that situation arose, it might just tempt an opportunist Scottish nationalist Government to go it alone for political rather than horological reasons, despite the risks involved, but I am not sure that it would necessarily be advantageous for the Scottish people to remain on GMT plus one, which they seem to prefer today, when the rest of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland selected GMT plus one and two as their time, for many good reasons, including better trading links with countries inside the European Union and the saving of electricity.
In conclusion, can the noble Baroness confirm that, when power was originally granted to the Northern Ireland Assembly to decide its own timescale, the Bill in question was not considered as undermining the constitutional structure of the United Kingdom? If so, can she also confirm that therefore there can be no reasonable objection to granting precisely the same powers to the devolved Governments of Scotland and Wales under the Devolution (Time) Bill.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
The noble Lord has spoken powerfully as a Scottish astronomer with the support of the Scottish National Party. Has he had any indication of any interest from Wales, as half the Bill relates to Wales?
Lord Tanlaw
I am so pleased that the noble Lord asked that question. As I was saying just before we assembled in the Chamber, I have been trying for a week to get hold of a spokesman from the Welsh nationalist party. I could only get recordings on telephones in Welsh. I have tried the House of Commons and the Welsh Assembly. Either the Welsh nationalist party must improve its communications or it does not have any views whatsoever.
Let me just repeat where I had got to, as we lost the track there. If in fact it is all right for Northern Ireland to choose its own timescale and it was not considered to be destructive to the union, can the noble Baroness confirm that there can be no reasonable objection to granting precisely the same powers to the devolved Governments of Scotland and Wales under the Devolution (Time) Bill before us this morning? Will she allow the Bill a safe passage through Committee in this House and on the Floor of the House of Commons for further consideration and debate? I beg to move.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
My Lords, I rise to speak briefly in the gap only because of a failure in communications, but when I read the word “devolution” in the Bill I became extremely curious. Whenever I see that word, my heart races as I think of all the wonderful debates we had in the 1970s and beyond. I was a full participant in those, usually held in draughty public halls in the University of Wales, where I was educated, and elsewhere. However, I confess to the noble Lord that throughout all those heady debates, I did not once hear the words “summer time” raised by any of the advocates, even the most extreme of separatists. So the starting point is that the debate on devolution has moved on and now there is an extremely broad consensus in favour, partly because of the reasonableness of the Welsh Assembly, which the noble Lord mentioned. Normally, people characterise us in Wales as poets and romantics and the Scots as dour engineers, but it is we in Wales who are the reasonable ones in respect of this matter. The debate has moved on and there is no public concern in Wales about this. Indeed, if the Bill were to make progress, I would certainly move for Wales to be excluded from its scope.
Lord Tanlaw
I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He has missed the point, as was the case on the other side of the House. This Bill just provides the choice for Scotland and Wales so that they can decide whether to change. I see no reason for Wales to change, and there is no obligation for it to do so under the Bill. It is a choice. Without that choice, the electorate may feel that it is being unduly pressurised by Westminster.
Lord Anderson of Swansea
I can assure the noble Lord that there would be no sense of being cheated or of losing out in Wales if we were not given the choice. I was intrigued by his test of public opinion in Wales, which comprised one failed telephone call—
Lord Anderson of Swansea
There were seven failed telephone calls to Plaid Cymru, which with all respect to my good friends in Plaid Cymru, is not, according to the public opinion polls taken during the recent Assembly elections, the most representative party in Wales. I do not think that there is any measure of interest in this in Wales. If there is no interest, there will have been no consultation, and I am sure that there will be no attempt to make a choice, even by those who look for every possible opportunity to find differences between Wales and England—between Hay-on-Wye and Hereford, or wherever. Whatever case there may be in Scotland and Northern Ireland because of the factor of latitude, there is no case in respect of my own country of Wales.