Scotland: Independence Referendum

Duke of Montrose Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Duke of Montrose (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, and, if he is the first Englishman to speak, to hear him nailing his Scottish qualifications so boldly to the mast. The House owes a debt of gratitude to my noble friend Lord Lang for securing a debate on this broad topic. I also thank my noble friend Lord MacGregor and his committee for the work they did and the report they produced.

The economy is the key area and the one in Scotland on which the issue is likely finally to be settled. A small indication of the problems that might arise for the rest of the UK can be speculated on from the fact that on independence, the rules of golf in England might be temporarily suspended. The authority of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews operates in most countries only if they already have their own national organisation with which it can be affiliated.

As we argue with each other in the field of politics, we allocate meaning to words and concepts that are narrower than their original meaning. In this case, it really does not have to follow that a Scottish nationalist is one who is looking for separation and independence. Surely the first feature of a nationalist is that they treasure the assets their country derives from the past and look to the best outcomes for the future. If the rationale proposed is only looking for a major break with what has gone before, then that is the role of an insurgent or a revolutionary rather than a nationalist. Perhaps those who adopt that label should consider which category they wish to belong to. In Scotland, there is a lot of rhetoric about the first concept, but much of the effort is to achieve the second.

I come from a family tradition that goes back at least 900 years in Scotland, and we have been intimately involved in her development. Whatever choice the Scottish people make, I for one will remain with Scotland. A fundamental element of that choice centres on deciding whether a secure future is assured by what has been characterised in the title of a well known play as the “black black oil” and has been regarded by many as Scotland’s black gold, or whether we should shape our future on what is on offer from Scotland’s grey gold: the brain power and inventiveness of her people, which was so well illustrated by my noble friend Lord Forsyth.

When we come to agriculture—I must declare an interest as a farmer in Scotland—there are numerous areas where we find differences. As the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, mentioned, Scotland has gone down a different road from time to time. Just the other day, we had a visit from my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary, who said how much Scottish agriculture benefits from participation in the common agricultural policy as part of the United Kingdom. What nobody seems to have told him was that at that moment the Scottish farming industry was seething. The fact was that EU moneys had been received under a scheme whose aim is to bring about what is termed “convergence”, because Scotland is lagging well behind the EU target for support compared to the aim of the policy. The UK Government then decided that they would apply their own idea of convergence and use the money as a way of offsetting the reductions that other parts of the United Kingdom would have experienced from the cuts that they had proposed in the Budget.

Looking today at the wider effects of Scottish independence, there are many ways, as my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton described, that the UK will be diminished. The issue that stands out for me is that if independence takes place, the remainder of the UK will become almost entirely dependent on external countries for its oil and gas. My noble friends Lord Lang and Lord Steel mentioned that Scotland will lose out on the EU rebate, but another element which will arise from a diminished UK and Scottish independence and which the rest of the UK might like to consider is that in terms of land area, Scotland, at 78,000 square kilometres, represents nearly one-third of the British Isles, but at the same time, at 89,000 square kilometres, it will take over responsibility for 59% of British territorial waters. When it comes to the UK economic zone and fishing, it will take over about three-quarters. This will have considerable implications for the Scots in terms of regulation and defence, but it is also a very considerable reduction in what the present UK represents.