Devolution (Scotland Referendum)

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

All the party leaders supported that, but it is the great joy of our democracy and the House that all 650 of us can give our views on those matters. Provided I do not take too long, many of us will do so today.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Hague]

I will make a bit of progress. Otherwise we will stop on that point.

As in Scotland, the Government have been making good on our promise to deliver further devolution to Wales, with the referendum on law-making powers, setting up the Silk commission and introducing the Wales Bill. The Bill takes forward almost all the recommendations of the Silk commission’s part I report and devolves a significant combination of tax and borrowing powers to the Assembly and to Welsh Ministers. It is important that Wales, too, is at the heart of the debate on how to make the United Kingdom work for all nations.

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[Sadiq Khan]

I have a huge amount of respect for the former Attorney-General, but I am afraid that it is inconsistent to accuse us on the one hand of failing to look at the total picture and on the other hand to suggest a Westminster stitch-up.

Clearly, part of the solution is greater devolution within England, and that has been at the centre of Labour’s policy review: reversing a century of centralisation with radical plans to devolve power and responsibility downwards.

[Mr Jenkin]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sadiq Khan]

I will give way to the Select Committee Chair in a moment. I want to make some progress first.

My Front-Bench colleagues have already announced ambitious plans that will be implemented should Labour form the next Government. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) has unveiled a new English deal in which the equivalent of £30 billion of spending would be transferred from Whitehall to city and county regions. My noble Friend Lord Adonis has outlined the way in which a future Labour Government will give local areas and city regions more powers over economic growth, transport and skills. There are other examples. In the context of my own brief, justice, I have announced plans to give local authorities more control over youth justice. They are closer to the issues, and the structure of incentives to cut crime and reoffending works much better on that scale.

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[Sadiq Khan]

I give way to the Chair of the Select Committee on Public Administration.

[Mr Jenkin]

We have to understand that dealing with the English votes on English laws question is more difficult for the Labour party because it has a vested interest in the power of its Scottish MPs over English matters, but it is wrong to pretend that the delegation of powers and functions to local authorities, which are Crown bodies, is equivalent to legislative devolution to Scotland. That is what makes the English votes on English laws question altogether different from what the right hon. Gentleman has just been talking about.

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[Michael Moore]

My right hon. and learned Friend rightly points to the history of engagement by the Labour party, the Liberal Democrats and, later on, the Conservatives. Now, we must hope that the SNP will engage in the process in the right spirit. The interventions from SNP Members this afternoon seem to being going against the spirit of welcoming the Smith commission; they seem to have prejudged it and decided that it will not work. I believe that John Swinney and Linda Fabiani will enter into the work of the commission in the right spirit to ensure that we can reach common ground; I hope that that is the correct judgment to make. It is the responsibility of all participants to create a package that will meet the ambitious aspirations of the people of Scotland, that will maximise the common ground between the political parties and those not of any party, and that will prove stable for Scotland and the UK more widely.

[Mr Jenkin]

Have we not seen SNP Members demonstrating in the House this afternoon that they are interested not in reaching solutions or long-standing agreements but in wrecking, in spoiling and in taking slight and injury in order to destabilise whatever settlement is agreed on here among the main parties?

[Michael Moore]

I certainly think that any attempt to create grievance about the process goes against the grain of what we understand to be the SNP’s willingness to be a full participant in the process. I believe, however, that John Swinney and Linda Fabiani will enter into their work with the commission in the right spirit and that they will be determined to work with others and respect the outcome of the referendum, which made it clear that Scotland should stay in the United Kingdom.

The different parties debated and set out their proposals for what they seek from the commission, according to the different principles that Lord Smith asked for, by the end of last week. It is important that we should adopt those principles, so that we can have a Parliament with the maximum range of powers to fulfil our ambitions for it. Those ambitions include an ability for the Scottish Parliament to raise more than half the money that it spends, while retaining at UK level sufficient fiscal capability and responsibility to allow the UK Parliament, and all the MPs who are part of it, to perform the functions that are best secured across the whole UK, including defence, the provision of a unified international presence, fiscal transfers and solidarity, social protection and equity, and the macro-economic foundations of our economy.

It is important that we entrench the Scottish Parliament to make it clear that there is no danger of its ever being taken away, which would be a political disaster. Now is a good moment to entrench it in the United Kingdom constitution. We must ensure that we maintain what is valuable about the United Kingdom, what people have argued and fought passionately for over the past three years, including the single market for businesses and a single welfare system whose core elements are available across the whole UK.

There is another dimension to this, which has formed part of the debate in England and in Scotland. Although it is not part of his official remit, I hope that Lord Smith will look hard at the issue of local devolution in Scotland, because the cries for decentralisation within Scotland are every bit as strong there as they are here.

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[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I fully concur with the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) that since the referendum in the north-east of England, the issues facing that region have not been pursued with the urgency that she demands. She was the agent for the yes campaign in that referendum and I was the Conservative shadow Minister who set up North East Says No. I am sure she accepts that there really was no appetite for that extra layer of government. However, both our parties pay lip service to decentralising the necessary powers and functions to the existing tiers of local government, but both have failed to do so. Such decentralisation would somewhat reduce the sense of isolation from the Westminster system that many parts of England—and Scotland—feel. If we do not learn that lesson from the Scottish referendum, we are really missing the point. I hope that we will build on the consensus.

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

I agree wholeheartedly with what my hon. Friend is saying about devolution within England. Does he agree that this is relevant to places like Cumbria and the north-east, which border Scotland, given that Scotland will be given greater powers? Those areas would like to have greater powers granted to them as well.

[Mr Jenkin]

I totally agree with that. I will come back to the question of English votes for English laws later.

I was overcome with relief at the outcome of the Scottish referendum. Both my parents were born in Edinburgh and half my family lives there—I say directly to the Scottish people: you are my kith and kin—and it would have broken my heart if we had found ourselves in separate sovereign states. I am heartily glad that Scotland voted no. However, it was a much closer vote than the Prime Minister intended when he first suggested that the referendum should take place, and we need to learn lessons from that. Given the nature of this debate, I wonder whether we are learning any lessons.

This scrappy, partisan debate is exactly the kind of thing that reflects badly on Westminster politics throughout the United Kingdom, and that was cleverly exploited by the yes campaign in Scotland. We should concede that to the Scottish National party representatives here today. We should also concede to them that the vow, however well intentioned it might have been, is in fact a bit of a muddle. It is indecipherable, and I do not think it made any difference to the result. It was ham-fisted. However, I congratulate the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on the passion that they brought to the debate.

[Pete Wishart]

This is a matter that we are trying to determine today. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) was duped about the vow?

[Mr Jenkin]

No, I think it was a panic reaction to a late poll. It was something that they were desperate to do. I believe that the very fact that it was a close poll was enough to turn people away from voting yes, because they suddenly realised that their vote might make a difference. Most pollsters would agree that that was the effect of the very close poll.

The vow stated:

“We agree that the UK exists to ensure opportunity and security for all by sharing our resources equitably across all four nations”.

That is fine; I think we would all agree with that. Then, however, it goes on to reaffirm the Barnett formula. There are two things about the Barnett formula, the first of which is that if Scotland is to raise more of its own resources, the formula will become a much less significant component of the allocation of resources. Secondly, the formula actually represents the opposite of

“sharing our resources equitably across all four nations”.

It cements in place an artificial bias in favour of funding in Scotland, which is no doubt why Scottish politicians campaign so vociferously in favour of it.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Jenkin]

I have given way twice already; I do apologise.

The House of Lords produced a very good report in 2009 which concluded

“that the Barnett formula should no longer be used to determine annual increases in the block grant for the United Kingdom’s devolved administrations.”

It stated:

“A new system which allocates resources to the devolved administrations based on an explicit assessment of their relative needs should be introduced.”

The question is: how are we going to get from A to B? Lord Strathclyde has recommended a convocation in which the four component parts of the Union should be represented on equal terms in a single body. The question of the fair allocation of resources among the four parts of the United Kingdom deserves to be discussed in such an impartial forum. This cannot be imposed by the Treasury. It cannot be imposed by a system that we have inherited from a period when there was no devolution and no devolved tax-raising powers at all, so we need a new system. If we are going to learn from this referendum, it would be much more honest if we all agreed that, over time, we will need to move on from the Barnett formula.

Let us deal with the question of what the promises mean. If we ever want evidence of the chaos in the no campaign, we need only see that, even after the referendum, we still have three separate proposals in this Command Paper for what is to be devolved, and an unseemly scrap between the Westminster parties over what should be devolved. I have no doubt that agreement will be reached, and I commend the SNP for being determined to bring its good will to the party in order to get an agreement, because that has to be our objective. However, as part of that agreement, there is now huge awareness across the United Kingdom of English votes on English laws.