Scotland Bill

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I will certainly not be drawn into speculation. I have already said that it must be in the Scottish Parliament’s interest to pass the legislative consent Motion in time for the Government and this House to consider possible amendments in response to anything it comes forward with, and, as I said, it could pass the Motion any day. However, beyond that there is nothing more useful that I can add.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

On the point of legislative consent, could my noble friend help me by explaining why we are proceeding with a Bill in the absence of a legislative consent Motion? If the Scottish Parliament decided not to pass it, we would all have been wasting our time.

[Lord Sassoon]

We have a Bill; it is important that we press on, and the legislative consent Motion could come at any time. This is idle speculation. It is important that the Motion gets passed, and we look forward to it, but it is in the hands of the Scottish Parliament. There is really nothing more I can usefully say. I certainly do not believe for one minute that we are wasting our time considering the important provisions in this Bill.

Let me move on to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell of Coatdyke, about the cost of all of this. The major cost will be to the systems that would support the tax changes and the possible new tax rate in Scotland. It is all set out in the impact assessment that is published alongside the Bill. However, for the Scottish rate of income tax, HMRC’s initial estimate is of £40 million to £45 million over a period of years up to the introduction in 2016-17. Clearly the final cost will be dependent on a number of decisions to be made at the implementation stage; and HMRC, HM Treasury, the Scotland Office, with the Scottish Government, will continue to work to determine the optimal implementation approach. The costs may vary in some way as those decisions are taken, but the indicative estimate at the moment is £40 million to £45 million.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, we need the legislative consent Motion. I am not sure I can help my noble friend much further on this. As I have said, it is in the interests of the Scottish Government to get on with the legislative consent Motion if they want consideration of any possible amendments to be taken in this House. I am repeating myself, but that really is as far as it goes. I do not think that these are questions of precedence so much as of practicality. As I said just now, there are a number of matters on which the Scottish Government would wish the provisions of the Bill to go further, so it is in their interests to bring forward the Motion.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I am grateful to my noble friend. So that we are clear about this, am I not right in saying that we do not need a legislative consent Motion? It may be that the courteous convention is that we take account of legislative consent, but that is a courtesy. This House is sovereign, and that is one of the reasons I asked my noble friend whether we were wasting our time. I was hoping that he would say that we are committed to this policy and that whether the Scottish Parliament passes the legislative consent Motion is not relevant. It would still become law and that is where we are or, alternatively, as part of our respect agenda we would not proceed without a legislative consent Motion. We seem to be in a rather fuzzy position where we are not really saying what our position is in respect of legislative consent, but when my noble friend said that we need a legislative consent Motion, that is clearly not correct.

[Lord Sassoon]

I am grateful to my noble friend for picking me up on that because the technical position is just as he states. However, in substance I stand by the remarks I made because just as we respect the conventions here, I would expect the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government to respect them as well, and we look forward to receiving the legislative consent Motion in due course and ahead of Third Reading. However, my noble friend has set out the constitutional position perfectly correctly.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

Perhaps I may add to that one other point that we will come to at a later stage in the Bill. There are clauses that deal with the issue of the referendum. The Scottish Parliament has set a date on its consultation period that falls after the likely date when Parliament will be prorogued, so it will not be possible to take account of the consultation process because of the timetable it has chosen.

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I really cannot comment on the date for Prorogation. We will see it when it comes, so that is pure speculation. Perhaps I may get back to the clause, albeit that that is an important matter. I want to finish my response to the questions about implementation put by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton. Earlier I touched briefly on his questions about the joint Exchequer committee, but to complete the picture in the context of this discussion, as I said, the committee met on 27 September. It was a useful first meeting, which agreed the principles relating to the mechanism for the block grant adjustment, as I think the noble Lord knows. It is important to stress again that discussions continue, outside the meetings of the joint Exchequer committee, on a bilateral basis on a range of issues across the Bill including the block grant. I repeat again that, although there are certain aspects on which we would like more progress and more focus, we are making good progress and I remain confident that we will agree on the measures set out in the Bill.

In conclusion, I believe that the provisions in Clause 29 are necessary and sensible as part of further tax devolution. I move that this clause stand part of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, I rise as somebody else who supported devolution. There have been one or two occasions during this evening when I have had my doubts, I must say—but in the main I have supported it, because in my view it is about democracy. That is what distinguishes it from independence, which almost certainly under the SNP would be democratic but does not have to be. It is not a prerequisite of an independent Scotland that it has to be a democratic state, but the fact is that devolution is about democracy. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, may sit there and pull faces, but he is one of the reasons why many of us argued strongly for the democratic process of devolution. What we had developed in Scotland was a Secretary of State for Scotland of a Conservative Government who, of course, increasingly had fewer and fewer Members in support in Scotland. Legislation which affected the whole of the people of Scotland was being put through this place with no democratic validity whatever.

There was an alternative, which was to abolish the Scotland Office and do away with separate Scottish legislation altogether. That was not seriously a political option in Scotland. The reason why we argued so strongly for devolution was because we felt that the only way you could get democratic legitimacy in Scotland was to give democratic powers to a Scottish Parliament to make legislation in Scotland for—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The hour is late and I am not going to make a speech, but I will just rise to the fly to say one thing. I opposed devolution because I thought that it would lead ultimately to the growth of the demands for independence and would benefit the nationalists, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. However, if I had realised how much damage devolution would do to the Labour Party in Scotland, I might have been tempted to go along with it.