Scotland: Independence Referendum

Lord Empey Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Lang, on securing the debate. His comments and vision at the end of his speech on what a new unionism might look like is the missing ingredient in the current debate, in my opinion. The debate is about whether Scotland leaves the UK, whether it would be better off on its own—that sort of argument. Instead of making the debate about leaving the union as it is, we need to look at how the union could evolve and improve—how we could make things better. If the noble Lord is looking for a response, I can tell him that my party in Northern Ireland—the Ulster Unionist Party—is attracted to the ideas that he espouses and would love to participate in a debate on how we can help the United Kingdom to evolve.

Though I am a supporter of devolution, I am concerned at the way in which devolution is being treated in Whitehall. The issues of the regions are being pushed to one side. That is the mistake that was made on Northern Ireland from the 1920s; it was pushed to a desk at the back of the Home Office and ignored. We are all part of a union, and we should all have a say. The idea of pushing devolution to get the issues off the Whitehall desk is a fundamental error. Large amounts of money are being pumped into the regions, and the regional parliaments should not simply be ATMs that can distribute largesse locally, without any acknowledgement of where it comes from. In what is happening in Scotland, we see before us the downstream consequences of that fundamental mistake.

Of course it is perfectly possible for Scotland to be independent. The people of Scotland have the skills and ability to survive on their own. However, they will do so at a different level of economic and political influence. That is the risk that they run. The forensic approach of the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, a few moments ago was very sobering indeed. Of course, Scotland is not a single unit on this issue. The approach is totally different in the islands—Orkney, for instance. They are saying, “It’s not your oil, Mr Salmond, it’s our oil. It’s got to come through our front door before it gets to you. We don’t need you, Mr Salmond; we can be on our own”. What does that mean? I have never seen such a significant constitutional issue come before us so ill thought-through. Not a quarter of the major issues have even been addressed. We are taking a leap in the dark. The people of Scotland are being asked to walk over a cliff edge in the hope that the SNP will catch them as they fall. The issues are not even worked through in any coherent way.

As the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, made clear, there are also implications for Parliament. Sadly, there may be a few in the other place who look around and say, “If we didn’t have those 40 or so Scottish MPs we could have a different Government. We wouldn’t be dependent on other people any more”. What about the implications for this Chamber? Think of some of the voices that might be stilled in this Chamber. Maybe I will not go there—that might work against my argument—but the fact is that this Parliament would not survive unscathed.

I feel concerned that so little thought has been given to the downstream implications of this, and I am pleased that at least we have been looking at it from the other side of the argument—that the rest of us have some say in this. Following the Bank of England governor’s intervention yesterday, I can say for almost certain that those of us remaining in the United Kingdom in the event of a yes vote would have to determine our response on the currency issue. Are we seriously going to pick up after the Scottish National Party—guarantee it, be lender of last resort? Who in their right mind wants to be an independent country but have their money supply, interest rates, public spending and lender of last resort outside their borders? It is barking mad. That is not independence at all; that is servitude. You are a client state, like some of the old Soviet republics. Sufficient detail has not been debated.

This particularly applies to our Labour colleagues in Scotland: if you look back a few years, this country was led from Scotland. We had a Scottish Prime Minister, a Scottish Chancellor, a Scottish Home Secretary and a Scottish Defence Secretary. The G8 met in Scotland; all the world leaders were there. That will be thrown away. Scotland has punched above its weight consistently inside the union; all that will go. President Obama will not be ringing up; neither will anybody else. Particularly in Scotland, we need more vigour behind the campaign than there has been hitherto.

I will quote a poet for a moment, Robert Frost:

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out”.

I do not think that question has been asked. The nightmare of border posts is hard even to comprehend. I am sorry to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, who is not in his place, but the idea that we would take on the job of negotiating on behalf of the SNP is very difficult. Why should we clean up its mess? I want to see Scotland succeed and prosper but its place is within the union, not outside it.