Governance of the Union (Constitution Committee Report)

Lord McInnes of Kilwinning Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)]

My Lords, I was amused to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, about the lack of activity of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, during the referendum. Unlike the noble Lord, I was involved in that campaign; my job was to be sent along, by my Labour and Liberal Democrat comrades in Better Together, to tell the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, to do less in the referendum rather than more.

As other noble Lords have, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and her committee on an excellent, thoughtful and clear-eyed assessment of the governance of the union. I will focus my remarks on a couple of salient points.

I found a breath of fresh air the acknowledgment in the report of how much the governance of the union requires a constructive attitude and culture from all parties. The chemistry is just as important as the physics of the processes and structures that are put in place. It is a great testament to the union that it has been sustained in what have been very choppy political waters. That demonstrates to me that many of the structures and joint working arrangements are actually working pretty well. As we have read in the report, many of them were set up in 2022 with the joint agreement of the UK Government and the devolved Administrations. Perhaps things were not quite as bad after 2019 as some of us may remember.

However, the greatest threat to the union will always be if it is seen to fail to operate. If the governance of the United Kingdom is seen to be broken, why should that union not be clearly questioned? Her late Majesty the Queen famously said that the monarchy needed to be seen to be believed. In my view, this is just as important for the functioning of the governance and joint working of the structures of the union. I therefore welcome the establishment and optical importance of the Council of the Nations and Regions of the UK. However—this will not come as a surprise to the Minister, as I have asked her about it in your Lordships’ House—I believe that body is less important than the Prime Minister and Heads of Devolved Governments Council.

The Council of the Nations and Regions should not be in any way a replacement for regular meetings between the Prime Minister and First Ministers, who all, as Crown Ministers, have a wider responsibility than purely to their regions. I do not want to denigrate the roles of the mayors or indeed that of the Deputy Prime Minister, but there needs to be a very close and connected working relationship between the Prime Minister and the First Ministers—and, in the case of Northern Ireland, the Deputy First Minister as well. What does the Minister foresee as the timetable for prime ministerial and First Minister council meetings going forward? The report suggests that there were inevitably tensions between the UK Government centrally and the devolved Administrations during Covid, but that was actually the time when there was cause for regular contact between the Prime Minister and First Ministers, which can only have been a good thing.

My second point of emphasis, to echo the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, is to support the importance of the relevant territorial offices being engaged in all bilaterals between individual departments and devolved Administrations. The Civil Service landscape across departments varies in expertise when dealing with the devolved Administrations. I know that it is not common for the Treasury to be praised for joint working, but it had an excellent team when I was in government, which understood nuance and joint working with the devolved Administrations. However, in too many departments, to echo the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, including the Foreign Office, devolved Administrations were often not taken very seriously and continuity to ensure that good relations were built was not always there. Can the Minister suggest how the territorial offices’ role is going to be improved in these areas?

Since 2016, the union faced a difficult time as the implications of Brexit and Covid were wrestled with, just at the same time as there was an Administration in Holyrood prepared to do anything to fulfil their aspiration for the end of the union. I ask noble Lords to reflect that perhaps that was the reason why perhaps not everything could be shared with the devolved Administration in Edinburgh as it should perhaps have been. With this excellent report, I hope that the Government will continue to focus on strengthening structures while also encouraging a constructive culture of working for the people across the United Kingdom.