Scotland Bill

Lord McCluskey Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Speaker (Baroness D'Souza)]

My Lords, if this amendment is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 2 by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord McCluskey (CB)]

My Lords, I had not expected to be on my feet just at this moment, but I will speak to Amendments 4 and 5. Amendment 4 asks that the word “only” should be inserted into line 11, so that the new provision would read:

“The only purpose of this section is … to signify the commitment of the Parliament and Government of the United Kingdom to the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government”.

The first question I have to ask the Minister is: if this is not the only purpose of the section, what other purpose or purposes does the section have? I do not see any value in having the words, “The purpose”, unless we make it clear that this is the only purpose.

My Amendment 5 would remove the words,

“with due regard to the other provisions of this Act”.

As I understand statutory interpretation, when a court or other body is called upon to understand an Act of Parliament, it may well be necessary, in the case of any kind of ambiguity, to look at any other provisions of the Act which bear upon the same matter. There is a duty in law and in custom for courts and others to have due regard to the other provisions of the Act, so I do not see what purpose this provision serves here. My own general approach is that the shorter legislation is, the better. Legislation is often too wordy and too confused. If the words are not necessary, they should not be there. That is the simple basis on which I speak to both the amendments standing in my name.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 7, which stands in my name, but before doing so I agree with what the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, just said about wordy legislation and endorse entirely what my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth said in his crisp, succinct introduction of his own two amendments. This is a very unsatisfactory Bill, brought about by extremely unsatisfactory circumstances. If we in your Lordships’ House are going to try to improve a bad Bill—as is for ever our task, and one which was never more needed than in the case of this Bill—we have to address certain very important aspects of it.

I concentrated my amendment on the whole subject of parliamentary sovereignty. Although the Scottish Parliament came about because of the wish of the Scottish people in a referendum, nevertheless it was created by Act of Parliament. If it is to be abolished, that should be done by Act of Parliament, too. I neither forecast nor advocate its abolition but if we are to have such a provision in this Bill—I doubt whether it is needed, and my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth made that position plain in his speech—it should be a parliamentary provision. That is why I suggest that it should be on the basis of a two-thirds majority in a vote of the House of Commons, in which 75% of the Members elected by Scottish constituencies vote for abolition. That provides as strong a parliamentary safeguard as can be envisaged. It is infinitely to be preferred to the referendum route.

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Secondly, let me just say to the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, on the 75% of Members of Parliament, that there was a time when we would have got the 75% of Scottish Members down the corridor because they are all SNP, and the SNP at one time, let us remember, was opposed to devolution. The party has been opposed to devolution in its past—and not that long ago either. It refused to be part of the Scottish convention, of which I was a member, as was, I think, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace. We both remember that the SNP refused to be part of that because it was opposed to devolution, as did the Tory party because it was opposed to devolution, too, but that is a different matter. The fact is we cannot bind, so I am giving some support to the amendments that have been tabled. Politically, when I find myself on the same side as the noble Lords, Lord Norton of Louth and Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, I really am in trouble.

[Lord McCluskey]

In the light of the debate so far, I should like to add something to what I said before. I remind the House that the purpose of legislation is to effect a change in the law—to state the law. Subsection (1) is a statement:

“The Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are a permanent part”.

Whether or not that changes the law, I do not know. Given the arguments about sovereignty, it may state the law at present but it cannot change it a week next Tuesday because, as my friend Sir Gerald Gordon, an expert lawyer in Scotland, said, there is no written constitution in Scotland in the United Kingdom, but it can be written in one sentence, and that is: “There shall be a Parliament at Westminster, and it can do what it likes”. Another version is: “There shall be a House of Commons at Westminster, and it can do what it likes”. Apparently, the Government do not hold to that view because, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has pointed out, it cannot do what it likes and must do what the Smith commission has decided it will have to do.

The point I want to make is the important one that subsection (1) makes a statement, although I do not know its legal effect at all. But when we look at subsection (2), where I want to add the word “only”, it states:

“The purpose”—

which probably means the only purpose—

“of this section is … to signify the commitment of the”,

UK Parliament et cetera to something or other. In other words, if you interpret subsection (1) by looking at subsection (2), which you have to do, of course, you find that its only purpose—or “the” purpose—is simply to make a statement of fact. I do not see how these things change the law.

The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, made remarks about the parliamentary draftsmen. They have my deep sympathy because they were given an appalling job to do, given the terms of the report and the whole background to it, including matters discussed at Second Reading. If this is the best they can do, maybe we can try to do better, but we are writing on water here.

[Lord Lang of Monkton (Con)]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak on these amendments because I thought that I would prefer to speak on Clause 1 stand part. However, it might save time if I speak now, not least because the debate has already ranged very widely over a number of more general points.

I also wanted to speak at an early stage to thank those noble Lords—in particular my noble friends Lord Norton of Louth and Lord Forsyth, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead—who made polite reference to the report of the Constitution Committee. My noble friend Lord Forsyth’s excellent speech in particular, in which he managed, in that wonderful tone of slightly supressed indignation, to quote from the report, reminded me just how strongly the committee felt about it when it prepared that report. Committees tend to present reports in fairly moderated terms, but these are very serious issues. Indeed, we were in a pretty bad mood to start with because we had already produced a report on the draft clauses, which came out some time before this Bill appeared, in which we drew the attention of the Government to some seven major points of constitutional principle that we thought should be replied to. The reply we eventually received was just more than two lines long. We had to express pretty considerable indignation at that.

While I am on the same theme, it is also a matter of regret to us that the Government have not yet been able to reply to our latest report, which we particularly hoped to have had ahead of the start of this Committee. I hope that that response will appear very soon.

In our report, we criticised very strongly the progeny of the Bill and the fact that the Government had committed to accept the Smith commission’s terms. I will not dwell on that point any longer; it has been very well covered by other noble Lords. We also placed strong emphasis on the importance of the position of the United Kingdom and, with all this demand-led devolution that has been going on, of stabilising and securing the sovereignty of the United Kingdom for the future. I am glad to say that another instalment of our work is on its way to your Lordships in due course on the union and devolution, which will cover that theme and, I hope, carry it forward.

Reverting to this debate, the clause we are looking at and the amendments to it are about sovereignty, which is a clear, absolute and easy-to-identify concept. All the amendments are about protecting it from potential inroads that arise from all the changes made in the other place that depart from the simple request made by the Smith commission. It is a declaratory clause. As my noble friend Lord Norton pointed out at Second Reading, by making a declaratory clause the core of a new parliamentary Bill it has been drawn up in the face of the Government’s own guidance on drafting legislation, which deplores such treatment.

Not only is it unwise, but it also compromises the subject by adding specific changes that were not requested by Smith. They are changes that weaken the principle of sovereignty, in particular the requirement under subsection (3) that there should be no abolition of the Scottish Parliament without a referendum for the Scottish people. Smith did not request that. That is not declaratory; it has specific substance. How does it protect the sovereignty of the United Kingdom?

I also ask my noble friend the Minister: why do the Government think that the Scottish National Party wanted that amendment to the Bill? It does not believe in permanence; it wants impermanence. It wants to undermine sovereignty and provoke the United Kingdom Parliament. Ultimately, it wants to break up the United Kingdom. Every extra concession granted makes that more possible.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, referred to political reality. Yes, no one believes that the Scottish Parliament will be abolished and no one wants it to be abolished—you cannot put the smoke back in the bottle—but why compromise the position with qualifications of this kind in this important Bill? The Scottish National Party talks a lot about the sovereignty of the people—what one might call the “Braveheart philosophy”—but we have to wonder whether the clause makes the issue justiciable. Might some Scottish judge at some future date rule that the combination of permanence and a Scottish referendum in a statute overpowers the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament? I do not know the answer to that, but I know that at Second Reading a number of my noble and learned friends identified this area as one that needed close attention.

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[Lord Keen of Elie]

I would be pleased to clarify. We were speaking theoretically in the context of the supremacy and sovereignty of this Parliament. In the light of the referendum finding that the Scottish Parliament should be abolished, it would be necessary for legislation to be put forward. It would in theory be possible for that legislation to be defeated in this Parliament. That is all that I was saying. However, we are in the realms of extreme speculation here—or it appears to me that we are.

[Lord McCluskey]

My noble and learned friend Lord Hope has pointed out the possible difficulty in the current wording. I am very fond, as are many Scots, of the well-known tennis player called Andy Murray. Is he one of the “people of Scotland” in new Section 63A(3)?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am not in a position to say whether he or any other individual falls into that category, and at this stage I would not speculate on his status.

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Tabled by

[Lord McCluskey]

4: Clause 1, page 1, line 11, after first “The” insert “only”

[Lord McCluskey]

In light of the answer relating to the word “only”, to the effect that it is implied by the use of the definite article, I see no need to pursue this at this stage. I will not move this amendment and I intimate an intention not to move Amendment 5.

Amendments 4 and 5 not moved.

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[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

It has to be remembered that this Bill is amending the Scotland Act. This provision, which my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean wants to put in, happens to be there already in Section 28(7). That is my objection. Repetition may be a good idea, for all I know, but it is there already. The point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, about unnecessary legislation might come into this. There does not seem to be much need for it, especially when Clause 1 refers to the other provisions of the Scotland Act, into which this is being embedded.

[Lord McCluskey]

The actual wording of Section 28(7), which I do not suppose many noble Lords will have memorised, reads:

“This section does not affect the power of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to make laws for Scotland”.

It does not talk about the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament at all. It talks about its continuing power to make laws for Scotland.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I hesitate to rise again—

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[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, these amendments, on the whole, move us forward. They are an improvement on what is presently an unsatisfactory provision in the Bill. I drew attention to this at Second Reading, but in doing so I was hardly doing anything novel. Attention was drawn to the problem in the last Parliament by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the other place and by the Constitution Committee of this House. The point was made that this did not even put the Smith commission recommendation in statute. The commission recommended putting the convention on a statutory footing, but the clause as drafted does not do that; it merely takes the words of Lord Sewel and puts them into the clause. It does not provide legal certainty. We are in an unusual position; indeed, this has not happened before. Conventions have been transposed into statute previously, but once in statute, the convention is dead and the statute provides legal certainty.

What we have here is an attempt to provide something in statute while retaining the flexibility of the convention —which basically carries on as a convention. We have to make a decision: either it is a convention, in which case it is not in statute and we just carry on as before—the convention is widely accepted for what it is and is not really in doubt—or we actually put it in statute so that we have legal certainty and clarity, and it is not then likely to come before the courts. The problem with the wording at the moment is that there is that possibility. One could remove “normally”, which would be a major step forward; or we could go with Amendment 12, which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, has put forward and which I have put my name to, because it provides legal certainty.

If the Government want to retain the flexibility of a convention, there would have to be some additional provision stipulating quite clearly any exceptional circumstances. That could be, for example, through Amendment 18, in the name of my noble friend Lord Cormack, which does stipulate those circumstances. One might have to take that further in defining what constitutes a national emergency, but it does refine the provision. Either the Government accept an amendment like that or they have to come up with their own. They could accept Amendment 12 and, if they wish, qualify it, but the onus is on the Government. However, I am quite clear that we really cannot proceed with Clause 2 as presently worded. As I say, either we have a convention or we have legal certainty in statute. I do not think we can try to have both.

[Lord McCluskey]

My Lords, I was happy to add my name to Amendment 14 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. People keep apologising for not being lawyers, but I think it is time a lawyer apologised for being a lawyer. I am a lawyer and I want to say this. It is commonly said by judges up and down the country that words in a statute should be like a piece of crystal—absolutely clear and unambiguous. They should be clear, unambiguous and definitive, but the word “normally” has no fixed meaning at all. I looked it up in a number of dictionaries. In one, the first definition of “normally” was “rectangular”—I do not know where that takes us.

We use a lot of elastic words from time to time, such as “reasonable”, “appropriate”, “usually” or “a piece of string”. There is no clear meaning or definition to these words, but the difference between a word in a statute and a convention is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Lang, said, a convention is fluid and flexible. You can develop it all the time in the light of experience—qualify it, extend it and so on—but you cannot do that with the words of a statute. My problem is that I do not know what a court would make of the word “normally”.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)]

Could the noble and learned Lord tell me what “normally” normally means?

[Lord McCluskey]

That depends on the context in which it is used. Normally, “normally” means “usually”—but “norm” means a standard and the main definition in some dictionaries is of conforming to a standard. I cannot understand with regard to devolved matters of legislation what the standard would be. That is why I tabled Amendment 19. If you leave in “normally”, in effect the decision on whether the circumstances are such as to allow the Parliament of the UK to legislate is one for that Parliament to take. That is the first point. In other words, I do not care who decides it, but someone must decide it.

If you do not decide it in this sort of way—namely, by giving the job to a Parliament—you will leave the job to a court. I have no idea what a court would make of the word “normally”. How would a court judge what is normal in the context of devolved and other legislation without hearing evidence? Must a court then hear a lot of evidence from constitutional experts, who are unlikely to be unanimous if today’s proceedings are anything to go by? They are not unanimous and I do not think a court would be able to rule on the matter without hearing evidence. I would hate to see the courts having to deal with this kind of matter, albeit that it would be a bonanza for lawyers—of whom I confess to being one.

[The Duke of Montrose (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Lang in what he said. The wording of this clause reflects what I understood that Lord Sewel said in this House at the time of the passing of the Bill. It says that,

“the Parliament of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate with regard to devolved matters”.

When that was said before, I think that all of us here—my noble friend Lord Lang reinforced this—thought that it referred to Schedule 5, non-devolved matters, so that a Sewel Motion would be needed for anything discussed in this House outwith Schedule 5.

I have watched over the years as this matter has gradually crept out. The noble Lord, Lord Stephen, mentioned the various steps along which the Civil Service has progressed in making this convention. It was always a fairly constitutional matter and they were chipping away at what we understood could or could not be discussed. To just leave the wording as it is tells only half the story. We must find out what exactly the convention has developed into and what wording would describe it if we want to have it as either a convention or whatever it is. At least we have it on the Floor of the House now and can begin to look at what it should be.

Having seen the wording when the Bill was published, I asked a Written Question of my noble friend the Minister. I asked,

“how many times the Scottish Parliament has passed a legislative consent motion … regarding matters that were not at that time devolved under Schedule 5 to the Scotland Act … and in each case what reason was given”.

The Minister kindly replied with one example, but I think there must be many more. His example was that,

“section 10 of the Scotland Act 2012 made provision for certain elements in relation to air weapons to be within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament”,

the argument being that things that were about to be devolved should be subject to a legislative consent Motion. We need to know exactly how far this goes and what its meaning will be.

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[Lord Keen of Elie]

The noble and learned Lord acknowledges that there would be no remedy other than a political remedy in that context, or appears to do so. He shakes his head; nevertheless, there is no remedy except a political remedy. This underlines the importance of the words “recognised as” and “normally” where they appear in Clause 2.

However, the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, spoke to his Amendment 19, a proposal that it should be expressly stated that the clause is not justiciable and does not give rise to justiciable rights. That is a matter that I would be pleased to discuss with him, albeit that the Government’s position at present is that there is no requirement to expressly state that in the context of a clause that, on the face of it, is implicitly not justiciable. That would be my position on Amendment 19.

[Lord McCluskey]

On that point, this provision can be put in to render the matter not justiciable, but that is in the context that the decision would in fact be taken by the UK Parliament and that decision could not be challenged in court. The point about the Sewel convention, which the Minister says is being enshrined in legislation, is that the effect changes entirely because the Sewel convention was not justiciable at all, as I understand it, whereas the statute is always justiciable. The court cannot say, “We don’t want to give it a meaning”; the court has to find a meaning because it always has to answer the question before it.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

In that context, it would be declaring that this is a clause that gives rise to only a political remedy, and that it was not for the court to intervene and determine whether a particular piece of legislation was normal or abnormal. That would not be an issue for the court, and that is the position of the Government with regard to the clause. That could be made clearer, or could be made express, but, as I say, I would be happy to discuss that in the light of the noble and learned Lord’s proposed amendment.

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[Lord Keen of Elie]

In a sense, this is connected to my earlier observation that at the end of the day the clause is not justiciable. It will be for Parliament at the time to decide that it is or is not going to legislate for Scotland in a devolved matter. The term “normally” means “usually” or “generally”, but Parliament at the time may decide that it is going to legislate for Scotland in respect of a devolved matter. There is no limit on that power, as is expressly provided by Section 28(7) of the Scotland Act 1998. There is no limit on this Parliament’s sovereignty and supremacy in respect of that matter. The Sewel convention merely says that normally it will not do so; that is all.

[Lord McCluskey]

Does the Minister realise that if the UK Government decide that the situation is abnormal and therefore decide to legislate, and the Scottish Government go to a Scottish court and say, “We don’t agree with the judgment about normality”, the court will have to make a judgment about that if the word “normally” remains in the wording. There is no mechanism for that other than the court having to sit down and decide what it thinks Parliament intended when it used the word “normally”.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

With respect to the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, I do not accept that proposition. It would be for the court to say that Parliament decides whether it is normal to legislate for Scotland in a devolved matter. It is not for us to interrogate that decision by Parliament. “Normally” means just that—no more, no less. It is not for the courts to say, “We don’t think the situation was abnormal”. That is a political decision.

[Lord McCluskey]

My Lords—

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I will not accept an intervention at this stage.