Scotland: Devolution

Lord Steel of Aikwood Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to follow two former Secretaries of State for Scotland in this debate, given the important speeches that they made.

I begin by echoing something that was said by the Moderator in the sermon during the reconciliation service at St Giles’ Cathedral. He pointed out that despite the flaws, which the noble Baroness was quite right to mention, the fact is that the turnout produced an enthusiasm for political discussion and debate in Scotland that we have not seen before. It was 84%; we have not seen a turnout like that since my by-election in 1965. That gives me the chance to say how proud I was that the Scottish Borders was the area that produced the strongest positive no vote in the referendum—apart, of course, from the Orkney Islands, before my noble and learned friend intervenes. However, I discount Orkney because I think that if there had been a yes vote, they would have followed that by voting to go back to Denmark. On the mainland of Scotland, the borders had the highest turnout.

The immediate consequence of the referendum is the appointment of the Smith commission. I am perhaps a little more optimistic about it than many others are. I know that it has been given a tight timetable but my former constituent, the noble Lord, Lord Smith, is an extremely able and patient man. More importantly, I notice that each of the four political parties has appointed to that commission people of good common sense. I include in that the SNP because while it could have produced some wild cards, both John Swinney and Linda Fabiani, who I know from my time in the Scottish Parliament, are sensible people who will work with the others in that commission to try to produce a consensus agreement. It is perfectly obvious that no political party will emerge from that commission with everything that it wants. That cannot be done but if there is good will in that commission, which has certainly got off to a good start, there is no reason why it cannot come up, in a very few weeks’ time, with a package of further measures amounting to the maximum of home rule consistent with common sense.

Going beyond that, we have to look at what happened on the morning after the referendum. The Prime Minister made a great mistake by coming out into Downing Street at seven o’clock in the morning. Nobody, not even the Prime Minister, should be out at seven in the morning making pronouncements on anything, in my view. I am glad that my noble friend Lord Ashdown is not his place because I used to stop him phoning me at 6 am. In fact, I gave a general instruction that nobody was to phone me before 10 am, which is a much more sensible approach. However, it was a disastrous statement that the Prime Minister made at 7 am. Trying to link the immediate issue of further powers to Scotland with the English question was a serious error.

However, we have the report of the McKay commission, which was published some years ago and has been around a long time. It proposed simply that there should be an English, or an English and Welsh, Grand Committee. I see nothing wrong with that. My noble friend Lord Tyler was right to say that it might just be a talking shop but I was a member of the Scottish Grand Committee in my early days, which was a talking shop but quite a good one. We had debates on our own issues and dealt with the early stages of legislation, although at the end of the day the whole House of Commons had a vote. There is no reason why an English Grand Committee could not be composed on the same basis.

Admittedly, in the early days of the Scottish Grand Committee we had conscripted English members to make up the party balance. That was madness; they were usually appointed by the Whips on the basis of their being guilty of misconduct. They would say, “Two days on the Scottish Grand Committee for you if you don’t turn up for the three-line whip tonight”. Eventually, they were abolished. My noble friend Lord Hamilton, who is not in his place, claims not to remember an episode which brought the conscripted members to an end but I remember it. We were having a debate on tourism in Scotland and, to our horror, Mr Archie Hamilton MP got to his feet. This was unheard of, as the conscripted members were not supposed to speak. He began his speech by saying, “I recognise that by intervening in this debate, I run the risk of not being appointed to this committee again”. That was what led to the end of the conscripted members. In its latter years the Scottish Grand Committee, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth will well remember, operated without a government majority. That did not do it any harm. It was a perfectly workable instrument, as I believe an English Grand Committee could be, too, without upsetting the basic nature of our constitution.

In the end, we will have to take a long-term look at our systems of government. I am one of those who strongly support either a constitutional convention or, as the noble Baroness suggested, a royal commission. I do not know which would be the better instrument but it would need to take time. If you count the pre-period of the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly, then the Scottish Constitutional Convention, of which I had the honour to be the joint chairman, took nearly 10 years to come up with the devolution proposals. We cannot even pretend that we got those 100% right. It is not a quick-fix issue. I believe that we have to move in a more federal direction. That is where a replacement for this House—a senate elected by the component parts of the United Kingdom—makes good sense. It needs all parties, including my own, to rethink their policies on this so that we come up with a proposal for a proper United Kingdom Parliament, where the upper House really represents the component parts of the United Kingdom.

Out of the Scottish referendum can come good, and I am more optimistic than perhaps some others in this debate. I wish it well.