Scotland: Independence Referendum

Lord Maxton Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maxton (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Lang, for introducing this debate. I go back far enough with the noble Lord. He was the Scottish Whip and I was the opposition Scottish Whip at the same time. That was way back in the 1980s. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, or Annabel as many of us would prefer to call her, on her maiden speech and the very good way in which she introduced herself to this House. I hope that she will have a long career within the second Chamber of the Houses of Parliament.

I suppose that I am almost unique. I speak with an English accent but I am, unlike the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, 100% Scots. My mother and father were both Scottish. I will have a vote in the Scottish referendum because I live in Scotland. My wife will have a vote, my three sons will have votes and two of their wives will have votes. But my brothers and my sister who live in England, and their children and their wives, will not have votes. They will suddenly become foreigners if Scotland votes yes. It cannot be right for that to happen. It must not be allowed to happen and we must make sure that the vote is a clear-cut no. I say to those who quite rightly have said that a yes vote is for ever, I am hoping that a no vote will last if not for ever, then for a very long time, and that it will be a long time before this issue is raised again.

I have always been a supporter of devolution. I believe in devolution, but devolution is about democracy. In fact, what has happened in Scotland is that nationalism has been the enemy of devolution, not its friend. It has stopped the natural process of devolution taking place in Scotland. Devolution is about giving power to the people to take decisions within their own communities, at the level at which they ought to be taken, in a democratic fashion. What has happened in Scotland is that devolution has stopped in Edinburgh with the Scottish Parliament. There has been no devolution downwards towards local authorities. There have been changes in the way that we vote in local authorities but not in the powers that they have. We now have a single Scottish police force and a single Scottish fire service and we will continue down that line.

Far from being a friend of devolution, if anything, nationalism and the SNP have been the enemy of devolution and have stopped devolution from evolving as it ought to have done—not just in Scotland but in the rest of the United Kingdom. Devolution could have happened in the United Kingdom if, to be honest, the example of what had happened in Scotland had not been there for the people in the rest of the United Kingdom to see. One of my major reasons for speaking today is to say that and say that nationalism and devolution are not the same thing and we must not confuse them.

Yes, we have to move on. We have to take this opportunity of saying that we have to change the way in which the United Kingdom is governed. What I have to say will not surprise noble Lords who have heard me speak before. The concept of a separate Scottish independent nation state—that is what independence means—in the modern world is so old-fashioned and out of date that it is unbelievable. We may be Scots. I am a Scot. I have a son who played sport at a reasonable level for Scotland. But the idea that we should have a separate state as small as Scotland in a global economy is old-fashioned, out of date and not to be contemplated.

If we are going to look at our constitution, please let us take this opportunity to look forward using the ways in which we now can look at the world. We can buy our goods across the world, which is why the young people are not now in Scotland, despite what Mr Alex Salmond thought, supporting the yes vote. They will support the no vote because they believe in an international world—a world bigger and broader than a nation state, where economies are bigger and broader. Even the United Kingdom national government are no longer able to control properly and fully the economy in which we operate because so much of the economy is now outside our control. It is even outside European control.

When we look at our constitution, yes, let us examine it, but this is not just about handing more power to Scotland: it is about ensuring that we now have a modern constitution within the modern world. I hope that point will be taken.