Scotland: Independence Referendum

Lord Robertson of Port Ellen Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robertson of Port Ellen (Lab)]

My Lords, we are fortunate that the noble Lord, Lord Lang, has obtained this debate today, because, as has been said, it draws attention to a critical issue for this country that applies to more than Scotland. This debate reflects the importance of that subject.

The noble Lord, Lord Lang, and I were on opposite sides of the House of Commons. I shadowed him for a brief period before he was replaced in government by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I remember having a discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Lang, relating to his hyperactive successor. The noble Lord, Lord Lang, said, “I come from the anaesthetic school of politics”. The anaesthetic school and the hyperactive school did not save the Conservative Party from oblivion, but the Scottish Parliament did. The electoral system that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, and I created has given us the likes of the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, who has enlightened us with her wisdom and charm today. That is one of the advantages of our electoral system, but there were some unintended consequences which I have no doubt the electorate will, in due course, remedy.

There is something bizarre, strange and surreal about a debate on dismembering the United Kingdom and creating a separate Scottish state. The nationalists do not like to be called separatists. The word “separation” is somewhat toxic to them—for good reason, because it means something. If you are going to create a separate state, you are a separatist, and we need to pin that to them. What is surreal is that Scotland is not an oppressed colony. Scots are not discriminated against. We are not disadvantaged inside the union; in fact, Scotland is the second most prosperous part of the UK after the south-east of England. Scots in their hundreds of thousands live and work in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, just as people from these other parts do in Scotland.

Scots play a huge, maybe disproportionate, role in British life. We wake up across the country to the voice of Jim Naughtie on the radio. During the day, we have Ken Bruce and Eddie Mair, and we go to bed after Kirsty Wark has filleted some hapless interviewee. Scottish voices dominate British industry, commerce, culture, academia, trade unions, institutions and organisations. We are not some persecuted minority yearning to escape oppression. We are all of us fortunate to live in a single-language, integrated country where people move, work, trade and socialise without any restraint, divisions or boundaries.

Our native Scottish culture—as diverse inside Scotland as it is different from that in other parts of the kingdom—is not intimidated or threatened by anyone. We have our own Parliament. The proudest part of my long political career is the part I played with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, in bringing about that Scottish Parliament, which now legislates on nearly every domestic issue that people care about. Within it, as my noble friend Lord McConnell has said, we experiment, we pilot, we make mistakes. We invent and tailor laws to what Scotland wants. It is, as John Smith once memorably said, the settled will of the Scottish people. We indeed have the best of both worlds: part of a strong country respected in the world and punching its real weight—that of a settled state—in the highest levels of global governance; and simultaneously controlling our domestic affairs within a genuine, unconstrained Scottish agenda.

I am proud to be Scottish. I am profoundly comfortable being a patriotic Scot—just as I care about being British and European. When I chaired the North Atlantic Council as secretary-general of NATO, I revelled when we had NATO Foreign Ministers’ meetings with an English Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, and a Welsh British Ambassador, Sir Emyr Jones Parry, jousting with a Scottish British secretary-general. It was not just entertaining—although it certainly was that—but there was on display a mix of cultures, comfortable and distinct in our own multi-identities inside a polyglot, voluntary, successful union of nations: a vivid example to a continent and a world bleeding throughout history from inter-nation violent conflicts.

That is the spirit of our union, now threatened by a totally unnecessary and unwanted divorce. Just like most divorces, as my noble friend Lady Liddell said, the separation will promise damage, turbulence, negativity and friction. It will do nothing to solve the global problems that face us today and will face future generations.