Queen’s Speech

Lord Soley Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

Listening to the contributions on the constitution today has left me feeling rather more optimistic than I have felt for a very long time about the possibility of getting consensus on the way forward. I include in those thoughts the opening comments by the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, which I thought were quite thoughtful. I know that he cannot use the dreaded phrase “constitutional convention”, because it is not the Government’s policy, but I hope he and his colleagues on the Front Bench will take back to the Prime Minister the very strong feeling, coming from all parts of this House, that we need some form of constitutional convention to get us out of the situation that we now find ourselves in.

If the Minister does take that back, he may well be asked, “What do they mean by a constitutional convention?”. He has had a few suggestions today, but let me say that, first of all, it has to be a process. There is already a bit of an example, which my noble friend Lord Foulkes referred to. With the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, he runs a committee which I have attended a number of times and which includes Members of all parties and both Houses and also many local government officers and councillors. It is already discussing aspects of what needs to change, particularly around the area of devolution.

One of the key questions that a constitutional conference will have to address is: what is the United Kingdom for? I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Lawson, who pointed out that you need to have a sense of identity. I have been educated and have worked and lived in England and Scotland. I have never thought of myself as English; I have never thought of myself as Scottish; I have always thought of myself as British and as a typical mixture of these islands. I also remember—I cannot quote dates on it, but it must be 15 or 20 years ago—when I began to notice that the English flag was being waved much more frequently in England than was the union jack. That was a significant change. The same was happening in Scotland, although it was far more advanced there because of the long history of the use of the saltire, but in both cases the use of the local flags—if I may call them that for the moment—was overtaking the use of the national flag, the union jack.

The change in language will also be noticed. In this respect, the Scottish National Party has been extraordinarily effective in its use of language. It suddenly became the “Edinburgh Parliament”, and Westminster became a remote colonial Government who were imposing some terrible rule on the Scots. Of course, the danger of that argument is that, when you talk to people in Shetland and Orkney, they refer to Holyrood in Edinburgh in much the same way as the SNP refers to Westminster. The same is true when you talk to people in England. You do not have to go very far outside London—and I mean not very far outside London—to hear people referring to the Westminster Parliament as though, again, it is some remote thing.

One issue that we have to address in all this—and it underpins what happened in the recent election—is the collapse in support for the two major parties. The Labour Party and the Tory party have become shadows of their former selves, and the same is obviously now true of the Liberal Democrats. The temptation for people to look for a sense of unity and to try to find something more locally is not surprising. I suggest that it is also in the nature of modern industry and modern economies that people look to make decisions closer to their own area. That is profoundly important, and it is why devolution is so important, but that then takes us back to the question of what the UK is for.

The danger is that we will be a group of separate entities all squabbling among ourselves, much as happened before the Act of Union. Later, as Alex Salmond might like to remember, Bonnie Prince Charlie wanted to bring back the divine right of kings, which, fortunately, was not what most of the Scottish and English people wanted at the time. The temptation to break up in that way is very great and we have to address it. If we are going to address it through a constitutional conference, we have to make sure that we have the right links between parliamentarians of both Houses, between local authorities and, as someone else mentioned, between all the people outside; otherwise, you are in danger of having politicians lecturing the public when they are already regarded with some suspicion by the public.

One of the most troubling things is the loss of confidence in politicians. We all know that—we have known it for some time—and there are many reasons for it. However, I also think that that confidence can be won back because the joy that the SNP is no doubt feeling—fair enough; it won a particularly big victory—will not necessarily last. I managed to achieve a majority in one election of some 20,000, which was a bigger majority than I had ever had before by a very long way, but I always reminded myself that it was not because I was the most popular politician; it was because I was the least unpopular and the Tory party was infinitely more unpopular at that point than we were.

The same happened recently. Both after the election and on many occasions before it, people said to me, “I didn’t want to vote for the Tories, but I couldn’t bring myself to vote for you”. In other words, the Tory party is not necessarily the most popular party at the moment but it is the least unpopular, and that should remind all of us that we address this by recognising that the public have lost a lot of confidence in the constitutional structure of this country. If you had tried to discuss the constitution on the doorsteps during the election, you would not have got very far—people would not have been very interested—but when you asked people, “Do you have any confidence in the way the country’s being run by government?”, or by the local authority or whatever, very often the answer was, “No, they’re all in it for themselves”.

That is a very important message because it is really saying that the constitution is not working. If we who are making it work—or trying to make it work—can grasp that message and work at it, we can begin to offer the public the structures that they need. But we need to work out what those structures are. Quite rightly, a number of comments have been made that, over the years, we have made so many changes that now there is a lack of clarity, which brings us back to the constitutional conference. I ask the noble Lord to take back that we need the constitutional conference and to avoid please the EVEL option of English votes for English laws.

Why is that so dangerous? Why was it so dangerous when the Prime Minister used the fear of the Scottish nationalists controlling the Labour Party in the election? It is dangerous because it waves the English flag in front of the Scottish flag. If you do that, you provoke the very divisions that we all fear. It is a fatal mistake. One can make the point, as did my noble friend Lord Foulkes, that the only major party which did a deal to get the SNP in office was the Tory party for about four years in the Assembly. However, that is not the key issue. It is that, if you say “English votes for English laws”, and use that as a fear factor in the election, you create the feeling in Scotland of them and us, which plays right into the hands of the SNP. I understand that it is done because we all want to win elections, and the Prime Minister did it rather well. So full marks if you are looking at it from that point of view.

However, that part is over and we have to put it in the past. It has come out a lot in this debate that we have an opportunity to try to formulate a process that we will call, for the want of a better term, a constitutional convention, which has to work out what the United Kingdom is for. Apart from obvious things such as foreign policy, defence and so on, it is also about a sense of equality between the parts of the United Kingdom. I always felt that we made a fatal mistake when we allowed people to have cheaper educational fees in Scotland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. Again, it gave a difference. Those are the issues that need to be addressed. The constitutional conference is the way to do it. I urge the Ministers to take this back because it has been a common theme from so many people in this debate.