Scotland Bill

Baroness Adams of Craigielea Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton]

It was partially self-inflicted, as my noble friend beside me says. However, that damage is also a short-term phenomenon and we will recover.

Certainly, we will recover once we have had the referendum on independence. I do not understand why Mr Alex Salmond does not want that referendum immediately, because this is his best chance of winning it. The longer he leaves it, in my view, the less chance he has of winning it. The arguments will no longer be about the way in which, or whether, we have the right to hold the referendum. It will be about the issues of what being an independent country, outside the United Kingdom, actually means: whether it will be part of Europe; whether it will have to apply to be part of Europe; and whether the rest of the United Kingdom will be part of Europe. Mr Alex Salmond seems to think that the rest of the United Kingdom would not necessarily be part of Europe, but it must be in his best interests to hope that it will be part of it. Can your Lordships imagine a Tory-dominated England, led by people such as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who would probably say: “Now we can get out of Europe—we don't have to be in it any longer. We can get out altogether and leave the European Union.”?

I always supported devolution on the basis of democracy. It was the right thing to do and it still is. I wish, however, that we could settle the issue of independence once and for all. If we get it out of the way, we could then deal with whether we apply, change or alter devolution. I am not necessarily convinced that we have to give enormous extra powers to the Scottish Parliament. In fact, there are some parts of the devolution settlement where we ought to be taking powers back from Scotland. For instance, broadcasting is one area over which they demand power, but powers like that should certainly be with this Parliament because they are now international rather than national. We should not therefore necessarily always be looking at giving powers to Scotland, and never taking them back.

We also have to look at what to my mind my late and very good friend Donald Dewar meant when he said that devolution is a process and not an end. The process was about extending democracy from the Scottish Parliament down to local government and local areas, so that you were giving powers to the people in the areas and the communities in which they lived. That to me is what Donald Dewar meant when he said that, not that it was the first step towards an independent Scotland.

[Baroness Adams of Craigielea]

On that point, was it not the case that the Scottish Parliament in fact did quite the opposite of that, and drew powers away from local government and brought them to the Scottish Parliament? In fact, they are the people who have not continued devolution. While this House has tried to keep the concept of devolution going, the Scottish Parliament has done exactly the opposite.

[Lord Maxton]

That is very much so and it was quite interesting, as I listened to the debate earlier on taxation, that the Scottish Government, led by Alex Salmond over the past—what is it now?—three or four years, have not allowed local authorities to increase their council tax. They have put a cap on it, so they have in fact restrained taxation at a local level. My noble friend is quite right. They have actually reduced the democratic rights and responsibilities of local government, whereas what ought to have been the next step was to say, “We have devolved power to a Scottish Parliament for democratic reasons. We now need to devolve further down, to give more democracy to our local communities and our people to take the decisions at their level that need to be taken at that level”. That to me is what devolution is about. It is not about independence; it is not actually about nationalism or nationality at all. In fact, nationalism has been the bugbear of devolution, not the natural progression of it. Therefore I support my noble friend's amendment, which would put “devolved” into this Bill.