Scotland Bill

Lord McFall of Alcluith Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord McFall of Alcluith]

My Lords, I have just a few remarks to make on my noble friend’s amendment. I remember the then leader of the Labour Party, Tony Blair, saying to the Parliamentary Labour Party just after the Scottish elections that he did not realise that he had been so generous to the Conservatives in Scotland. He had revived them as a result of that issue.

Two issues are raised in this amendment. One is the alienation of the political class from the community, and the other is the community dimension. When I was elected in 1987, we had a percentage turnout in my constituency around the mid-70s. By the end it was down to 61 per cent, while the turnout for the Scottish Parliament was about 50 per cent. That is a big issue for us as politicians. We are alienating ourselves from the people, and the result is that that feeds disillusionment. Things were bad enough with the expenses scandal, but if we go on like this we will feed that disillusionment.

I remember talking many years ago in the European Parliament to an Irish politician, a newly elected MEP, so I said rather naively, “You must be quite tired and looking for a bit of a break”. “No”, he replied, “I was next on the list and I have just come in”. It struck me at the time that the link between the representative and the people of the community was broken, and that is a bad thing for politics and a bad thing for communities. We have to look at the alienation that exists at the moment, along with a loss of trust in the system and politicians.

The community dimension is very important because people are proud of the Member of Parliament who represents them and their interests. As others have said, Members are also proud in taking the interests of their communities to Parliament. The latest Bill which the Government have brought forward is indeed representation by numbers. In the long run we will suffer as a result of that situation.

I understand that there is no perfect system, but we walk into things with our eyes open. For example, the latest Bill the Government have put before us for House of Lords reform presents the possibility of Members being here for 15 years. It is obvious that they will feel that they are superior to the Members of the House of Commons as a result of that. Let us take the Finance Bill. The House of Lords cannot touch it, but that must be the first casualty because we will have elected Members here who have to go back to their constituencies. All politics is about priorities—it is about what is spent on health, education and transport. Can anyone say in all honesty that the people who are representatives here will not look at a Finance Bill as a result? If we pass the Bill, that will hit us like a train. We have an opportunity to be sensible about these issues and tie everything up. While I go along with my noble friend, I do not think that this is the time to put this forward. There are big issues on the agenda and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Foulkes for raising them in his amendment.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

My Lords, I know my limitations and that I will be unable to match the gratitude of the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, to my noble friend Lord Foulkes, but I will do my best. That is all I have to offer him. I thank him for bringing forward this amendment. I believe that he has made the case for a review of the electoral system used for elections to the Scottish Parliament. He made it by reminding us of the promise that the system would be kept under review; of the acceptance of the recommendations made in the Arbuthnott commission report in 2006; and, if I remember correctly, of the acceptance then that it would be appropriate to have a review of the electoral system for the Scottish Parliament following the May 2011 elections—which recommendation I recollect was accepted by Douglas Alexander, the then Secretary of State for Scotland. That acceptance may not have transferred to the new coalition Government and the present Secretary of State, but I suspect that if he reread Arbuthnott, he would come to the same conclusion in relation to that review as did Douglas Alexander.

For that reason, I accept that there is a case for a review. I was interested in the intervention made on my noble friend Lady Liddell by the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, who indicated that he had some reason to believe that the current leadership of the SNP in Scotland had welcomed the review and might be inclining towards the views of my noble friend Lord Foulkes about what system should replace the present one.

My noble friend expressed some surprise at that, but I am not surprised, because the SNP now has the constituencies. There is a tendency for a party’s view of the electoral system to reflect either its wish to hold on to the status quo or its desire to disturb it. That is exactly why my noble friend is right to suggest that the review needs to be carried out independently of politicians, and the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is right to support him.

Perhaps part of the problem with the present system was that it was a compromise agreement between political parties which had an objective to disturb the status quo. My own experience is that some of the concerns about the electoral system that is used for the Scottish Parliament are exaggerated, but I do not have comprehensive experience all over Scotland of how the system works. I know that people whose views I respect have concerns about it and they have been articulated here in our debate.

I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Steel, is partly responsible for forcing upon the Electoral Commission a numerical priority. We have had two experiences of this in Scotland. One was in a review of boundaries for the Scottish Parliament elections, when my recollection was that the instruction that went out to the Scottish Boundary Commission was in its interpretation so restrictive that it took the basic building block and just applied it numerically from one starting point across Scotland. With one or two exceptions, none of its recommendations survived the appeal process or presentation to the sheriff principal because they were ridiculous in relation to communities. I remember the debates about the constituency boundaries and voting systems Bill, when my noble friends were queuing up to say that that is exactly what would happen if we forced that structure, or any part of it, on the Boundary Commission again through that legislation. So, in a sense, this legislative body has exacerbated the problem through that legislation.

I accused the noble Lord—I hope not too seriously—of being part-author of that problem. However, he may not have voted against the attempts that were made to ameliorate the effect or to stop it, but I have a recollection, certainly, of people from his Benches voting against the amendments that were tabled through the best endeavours of people on this side of the House who knew exactly how it would work and tried to prevent it happening. If it does happen, some people will have been the authors of their own misfortune by creating a separation between communities and constituencies.

We have yet to see how the review of constituency boundaries will work out but I predict confidently that when people realise how they will take effect in their communities, Members of Parliament of all parties will be screaming from the rooftops. Not only that, communities from all over the country will come to Members of Parliament and politicians and say, “What are you doing here? What have you done?”—and it will be interesting to see how many people stick by the arguments that they made during the passage of the Bill as a justification for doing this. However, that is perhaps another matter. I did not introduce the issue into the debate but I have taken advantage of the opportunity to make my point.

Having supported the general tenor of the debate—that the time has come for a review—I say to my noble friend that I do not think this is the vehicle for it. Earlier in the debate I understood the Minister to indicate, possibly in anticipation of this amendment, that the Government were minded to explore whether the time had come for a review; that they were going to do so in an appropriate way by consulting across parties; and that the voting system for the Scottish Parliament could be included if there was consensus and agreement for such a review.

That is, of course, the way in which we should proceed with all constitutional change; we should consult and seek consensus so that we can go forward. No political party owns the constitution and we all have a responsibility to preserve certain parts of it to hand on to future generations. It belongs to the people, not to us, and we should ensure that we do not seek party advantage out of a review of the constitution. If there is to be constitutional change in this area, that is the appropriate way to do it—not by, with all due respect to my noble friend, a provision in this Bill.

The structure that my noble friend has suggested has many of the right ingredients for a review. The timing that he proposes, however, would, if we pass the amendment, divert us from what should be the focus of our attention for that period of time and until the referendum in Scotland—that is, making the progressive, proper, forward-looking argument for keeping Scotland in the union; we should not use any of our resources for considering the system for electing Members to the Scottish Parliament. In my view—and I am afraid to say that this is where my gratitude to my noble friend runs out—this is the wrong vehicle. I prefer the Minister’s indication that it will be done in an appropriate way by a review instituted with some degree of consensus. The discussion needs to go beyond political parties into civic Scotland. It is the wrong time, but I am grateful to my noble friend for allowing this debate.