Scotland: Independence

Lord Crickhowell Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crickhowell (Con)]

My Lords, during the debate on Scotland held here on 30 January, I said:

“With children and grandchildren who have blood and genes drawn almost equally from Wales, England, Ireland and Scotland, I say with particular fervour that I dread the possibility of a divorce at the heart of the United Kingdom family”.—[Official Report, 30/1/14; col. 1392.]

As a Welshman I had joined with those who had made the positive case for the retention of the union.

Today, as a member of the Constitution Committee that produced the report so admirably introduced by my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton, I want to say something about the comments that it has provoked. One of the nastiest features of the yes campaign has been the flood of insults thrown at those who take a different view. I suppose it was inevitable that the SNP would lash out at the House of Lords and a report by one of its committees. A leader in the Guardian said that the SNP ignored the substance of the report and that that was a mistake. The report, it suggested,

“is a serious attempt to look at some of the central legal and procedural implications of a yes vote”.

The committee,

“took evidence from some formidably well-informed witnesses”.

Exactly. This is not a report which sets out to make a political, economic or social case one way or another; we have left that to others. What we have sought to do is to explore the constitutional implications of a yes vote, and we have identified a number of important issues that need to be resolved between a yes vote and Scotland actually becoming independent. All our conclusions are based on the evidence that was presented to us. We heard from academic experts, the UK Government and commentators on Scottish politics. We received a wide range of written evidence, including from the Scottish Government. The SNP critics have taken particular exception to our conclusion that MPs representing Scottish constituencies should not negotiate for the rest of the UK, hold those negotiators to account or ratify the outcome of the negotiations. That conclusion was based on the views expressed by our witnesses, most powerfully by Professor Alan Boyle, professor of public international law at Edinburgh University. The very fact that this matter has already provoked strong reactions suggests that we were right to propose that, in the event of a yes vote, the Government should, in advance of the 2015 general election, lay before Parliament a proposal that would put this matter beyond doubt.

SNP MPs have been equally hostile to our view that there is no constitutional principle by which the Scottish Government’s timetable should bind the UK Government. We say:

“The UK Government should not put the interests of the rest of the UK at risk by attempting to stick to that timetable. Any negotiations should take as long as necessary”.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, has doubted our conclusion in paragraph 97 regarding the Government acting as the negotiator. We attempted to deal with the criticism that he made in paragraph 98, where we proposed that there should be close consultation with the Official Opposition and the Governments of the devolved Assemblies.

The Constitution Committee has not been alone in reaching evidence-based conclusions about the Scottish referendum. Starting in 2012, the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh began a series of 11 seminars where presentations were made and discussions held. The record has now been published. On reading it, I was struck by the way in which the evidence closely matched the evidence that we received. Even the most passionate nationalists can hardly dismiss the conclusions of the British Academy, which was established in 1902 and is the UK’s expert body that speaks for the humanities and the arts, and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, which was established in 1783 and is an enduring memorial to the Scottish Enlightenment of the 18th century, representing all academic subjects as well as the arts, culture, business and enterprise.

Among the factors that the study by these distinguished bodies exposes are what Donald Rumsfeld described as known unknowns. These make nonsense of many of the certainties contained in the Scottish Government’s White Paper, among them the timetable to which I have referred. Negotiations that would follow a yes vote with the UK Government, with the EU and with NATO will all feel the impact of elections—and the outcomes, as we have heard during this debate, are highly unpredictable. The complexities of the issues on which negotiations will have to take place are vividly described in five pages of the introduction.

Professor Vernon Bogdanor pointed out during the constitutional seminar that the Scottish nationalists have various aspirations for an independent Scotland, such as shared currency and social union, but that an independent Scotland would have no right to these things. It could only propose them and see whether the rest of the UK would agree to them in negotiations. A yes vote in the referendum is a vote to become a citizen of another country, distinct from the UK, after which it would not be possible for Scotland to pick and choose which aspects of the union it wished to enjoy. An independent Scotland would have to negotiate for those things that it now enjoys as a right. A yes vote is a vote for uncertainty.

With all the political parties now offering more devolution for Scotland and Wales, another huge question has to be addressed. Our own special adviser, Professor Tomkins, pointed out at the same seminar that if there is a no vote the interesting question will be: what happens next? He suggested that in the event of a no outcome, what needs to happen is for the future of Scotland’s constitutional position to be put in the context of the whole of the UK. He argued that the voices of the Governments and peoples in Northern Ireland, Wales and the north of England have to be brought to the table. At the moment, he observed, there is no table for these voices to be heard; one has to be built.

I am sure that Professor Tomkins is right but I would go further, as have many speakers in this debate today. We should not be awaiting the outcome of the referendum; we should be beginning to construct a table for the voices to be heard. At Questions yesterday the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, suggested a constitutional commission to examine further devolution and decentralisation. Others have suggested a convention. My noble friend Lord Strathclyde suggested a committee representing the Parliaments and Assemblies of the whole United Kingdom.

Whatever method we adopt, we need to pursue with vigour a holistic solution to what is now an urgent problem. The more that this Parliament makes it clear that this is a question that is being considered with urgency, and that finding a solution will be a high priority for the next Government, whoever forms that Government, the more likely it is that the people of Scotland will want to remain within the union and play a major part in fundamentally reshaping it—in shaping the new, reformed United Kingdom referred to by the noble Lords, Lord McConnell and Lord Stephen—rather than see it happen without them and face alone the huge uncertainties outside.