Scotland Bill

Lord Maclennan of Rogart Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I follow on the theme of the importance of the tone of the debate. We all know the story of the north wind and the sun, who had an argument about which could make a man take his coat off. The north wind tried first and blew and blew and the man pulled his coat tighter and tighter around him. Then it was the sun's turn, and as the sun came out the man felt happy and warm and took his coat off.

I do not think that aggressive language helps the tone of the debate. We have heard words such as “devious”. Even in the phrase “successfully manipulative”, qualifying the word “manipulative” does not help. If and when a referendum takes place, it is certain that the appeal of the nationalists will be to the history of the union in the first place and the history of fighting and coercion. The argument against that is to look to the interests of a new union based on respect and mutual understanding. If the debate is conducted in that way, I think we have a much better chance of preserving the union.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Forsyth for moving his amendment to the Motion. It is an extremely valuable debate in which most of the relevant points have been made.

I remain concerned, and would like to hear my noble and learned friend’s views about the Scottish Parliament's failure to pass the legislative consent Motion in respect of the Bill. The difficulty is that such a Motion has not even been tabled—the point made by my noble friend—and its absence is crucial. Legislative consent needs to be affirmative; it cannot be presumed by its absence. In the absence of that Motion, Holyrood cannot even vote to reject the Bill, and its progress to the statute book here is as stymied as if there were a clear Motion opposing the Bill.

I understand that at least some members of the Scottish National Party, and of the committee in the Scottish Parliament that looked at the Scotland Bill, are interested in having discussions about its content. The leader of the Scottish National Party may be using his personal veto to prevent the Motion being tabled, but I noticed that Linda Fabiani, the committee’s chairman, asked the coalition Secretary of State to propose changes to the Bill. There has been no response that I am aware of to that request. I think that it would be appropriate to give a public response knowing what authority the Scottish Parliament has over the outcome of our deliberations. I wonder why we have not had some kind of indication.

The Bill is certainly based on broad cross-party consensus. It is possible, in the light of the changed circumstances, that that consensus may have moved on. Some may be more favourably disposed to even more fiscal devolution than was the Calman commission. I think that we ought to have that debate before we get tangled up in detail. We ought to have some idea of where the consensus now lies. I hope that my noble friend will be able to help us on that. It is an important Bill and a vital step along the path towards a fiscally decentralised United Kingdom.

However, there is another consideration that it is right to ventilate at the beginning of this process in the light of what has been said about the referendum. I believe that the bulk of the Scottish people are now not wholly satisfied with the devolution as it was enacted in 1998. There is quite a lot of evidence that there is a willingness—indeed a wish—to see more done. It does seem that, although this is a step in that direction, we could give the Scottish people a greater clarity and sense of the alternative to separation by having that discussion in the context of this Bill. That should certainly precede our deliberation of individual proposals and clauses. This is far too big an issue to have just a tinkering approach to the Bill, which seeks to implement Calman and in some ways goes beyond Calman. Can we hear from the Minister the Government’s thinking on those two points?

[The Earl of Mar and Kellie]

My Lords, when we considered the then Scotland Bill 12 or 13 years ago, the late Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish complained that the failure of the Scottish National Party to seek to appoint any Peers caused the Scottish debate to be similar to trying to debate with Banquo’s ghost. I think that the late Lord would agree that that was still a problem here.

Following on from what my noble friend said, this Bill is the result of a very considerable coalition, in the Calman commission, which brought about the Calman report. These parties ought to get on with delivering the Bill, which is fairly tame by comparison with what is actually wanted in Scotland.

Finally, in a single sentence, I hope that this House will try to avoid making the same mistakes it made in 1893 when considering Irish home rule.