Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedules 4 and 5 and Transfer of Functions to the Scottish Ministers etc.) Order 2015

Lord Empey Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2015 Lords Chamber

My noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness said in his introduction to this debate that he anticipated, as, indeed, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Scotland anticipated, that this process is now unstoppable. I say: godspeed.

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, would like to hear views from people in other parts of the United Kingdom on the implications of this order. He is right: there are implications. You cannot compartmentalise the United Kingdom and have such drastically different franchises in different parts of it. Of course, Scotland has its own law, and we understand that there are differences and nuances, but the one area that brings everybody together is elections to our national parliament and elections to the European Parliament, and below that we have other tiers. It seems utterly unsupportable in the long term that we have this pick-and-mix process where you have a franchise here for this, a franchise here for that, and a franchise here for somewhere else. It is just nonsense.

Without getting into the merits of the voting at 16 issue—a debate I am very happy to get into and certainly some of the arguments are meritorious and others need consideration—the methodology that has been adopted in this case is indefensible. Since 2012, and, indeed, even long before that, the Government have got Scotland completely wrong. The question was wrong and the timing was wrong. We are reacting to the tyranny of populism and nobody is thinking this through. If Alex Salmond got up and said, “15 years old”, we would be saying 15 years old today. He got his question, which was the wrong question, and everything he wanted. The logic is that if we do that, everything will go away. It will not.

[Lord Reid of Cardowan]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I just want to add something that he omitted. I refer to the exclusion of 800,000 Scottish people living in the same state from having a vote on the future of the country. It was an absolute disgrace and must never be allowed to happen again. If you want a historic reason for it, I point to the very reason for devolution, which was to recognise the distinct background on philosophy, culture and politics of the nations of the United Kingdom. The difference between Scotland and England has been that sovereignty in England lies in Parliament before the Crown, but for eight centuries sovereignty in Scotland has lain with the Scottish people, not the people in Scotland, but the Scottish people. Therefore, to exclude 800,000 Scots from a vote on the future of their country was not only a political expedient to gain advantage but was contrary to everything that lies intrinsically in the basic difference in politics between Scotland and England.

[Lord Empey]

The noble Lord, Lord Reid, has a very strong argument to make. The irony was that citizens from other parts of the European Union who happened to be registered in Scotland had a vote, even though they were not remotely in any sense Scottish. That seems to be another inconsistency.

The truth is that this order is a symptom of a fundamental flaw and malaise in the constitutional approach of our current Government. While this Government have done so many good things, the one area where they have been at their worst has been in dealing with constitutional matters. We have had one flaw after another. Some of us sat for years trying to work out a constitutional way forward for our own part of the United Kingdom. You cannot make this stuff up on the back of a fag packet and expect to have a system that will be respected in the long term.

The Minister made a point about the Smith commission and doing nothing to demerit the other parts of the United Kingdom. I understand that the clause was within the remit. However, the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, is irrefutable. Something such as this cannot be done in Scotland without implications for the rest of us. It is impossible. What will happen now? We will have a dog’s dinner of a franchise, which will apply in certain places. We have now invented a Welsh model, which is going to change things. How on earth can we say to 16 year-olds in Brighton, Belleek or Aberystwyth that people of their age in Scotland are fit to make a huge constitutional decision but those 16 year-olds are unfit to elect their local parish councillor? It is not sustainable and we all know that.

In many respects, I understand the panic that enveloped our leaders when they were a few days out from the referendum. One could see why. They saw things going down the drain, and there was a reaction of “We’ve got to do something to stop this”. There is no doubt that the right honourable Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath did have an influence, but he came on to the scene and basically bounced the leaders into these vows. He is now going on to part two of them, which takes us into an even deeper jungle.

I understand what the Minister is doing here but he must understand—he does understand because he is a very clever person—that this series of constitutional inconsistencies is unsupportable. It would not be possible to go out and argue this case in front of an audience and expect to be treated with respect as people would know that it had not been thought through and whether one calls it a commission or a constitutional convention it needs to have a sensible time limit. It cannot be seen to be put on to the long finger. We need to sit down and look at all of this. It is one awful mess. I am really distressed about it because I can see what is going to happen. We must not distinguish between our young people. Young people from those regions come together in universities or in further education or technical colleges. They mix with one another and they meet each other. We cannot have a situation where one young person is at one level and is treated as being at that level, while another person is treated as being at a different level. As was said by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that cannot be sustained.

I seriously suggest that the Minister should say to his colleagues—I am sure that he has tried to do so—that this blunderbuss, inconsistent approach which we have adopted will do permanent damage to our country. It will create constitutional chaos. We are making things up as we go along. Far from assuaging the rabid appetite of Scottish nationalism, this is feeding it. People can see that the more they shout for this, the more they get. It is not rocket science; it is Pavlov’s dog. It is the same thing. They shout and they roar, and they get a feed, and they do it again. Why would they not do it? That is the question I ask myself.

I have lived surrounded by people who also wanted different constitutional outcomes but who went to the use of force. Force did work for them to a very large extent until eventually we managed to pull the community together to face them down. We will not solve this problem by feeding it and running away from it. It has to be confronted and the arguments for the union must be put in a coherent and consistent manner. We will not maintain the union by producing measures which serve only to prove how hopeless the union must be if it needs such a mishmash of a constitutional mechanism. This will not be the last of it.