Scotland: Independence

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, said, in his recent book My Scotland, Our Britain Gordon Brown draws attention to,

“what is unique about the modern United Kingdom—and distinguishes it not only from the US and other federal countries but from the European Union—is the extent to which UK citizenship guarantees fundamental social and economic, not just civil and political rights. It means that regardless of whether you are Scottish, English, Welsh or Northern Irish, you have a right to a UK-guaranteed pension; a right to UK-guaranteed assistance when unemployed; a right to fully funded health care free at the point of need; and a right to minimum standards of protection at work, including a UK-wide minimum wage and tax credits, no matter who you are and where you reside. The system of sharing across the UK creates a form of equality between the citizens of the four nations that no other group of countries can match for its depth and sophistication and this is arguably the defining characteristic of the Union today”.

We are surely right to care deeply about this and to campaign as hard as we can for its retention.

I want to deal with wider questions on the basis that the SNP’s independence referendum is defeated on 18 September, because the problem will not go away. The SNP is clearly peddling a lie when it asserts that Scotland can be a nation again only if it becomes a separate state. We are a nation. We have always been a nation, and what is more we have been successfully part of a world-class state for more than 300 years. Other speakers have explained what this has meant in practice and celebrated the contributions that Scots have been able to make on a world stage as part of the United Kingdom.

In Scotland, we control our institutions. We have a separate legal system, we are free to practise different religious practices and we have a distinctive culture. It is the best of both worlds, so what is the problem? It does not seem to be Scotland. My reading of the situation is that the people of Scotland would like to remain within the United Kingdom in the union that has lasted for more than 300 years, but that the conditions under which they are prepared to do so have changed and they need to be reflected in a new constitutional settlement. Like my noble friend Lord Richard, I believe that our present constitutional arrangements are a complete mess. The changes that need to be made are significant but not impossible to deliver, although there are consequences that may take time to be worked through.

This is a constitutional moment, an opportunity to sort out issues, that we must seize. The problem that we have to solve after 18 September is with the UK, not Scotland. There are three dimensions to it. The first is the sovereignty of the UK Parliament. Noble Lords will recall that in the run-up to the referendum on devolution, the sovereignty of the UK Parliament was reaffirmed and in the 1997 White Paper Scotland’s Parliament the Government said:

“The United Kingdom Parliament is and will remain sovereign in all matters”.

This claim was repeated in the assertion in the Scotland Act 1998 that the Scottish Parliament,

“does not affect the power of the Parliament of the United Kingdom to make laws for Scotland”.

With the benefit of hindsight, this now seems the wrong way round. Not only have we transferred significant powers to Brussels, for good reason, but one Parliament, two legislative Assemblies and a high-powered London authority are taking powers from the centre. Referendums, reflecting our new notion of popular sovereignty, are in effect required when important constitutional decisions are made.

Then there is local government. I think noble Lords enjoyed the rather delicious, bilious attack on the present arrangements by the noble Lord, Lord Haskins, and would wish for them to be changed. I also thought that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, was right to bring up the quotation from Jo Grimond, which correctly analyses where power resides.

It is a mistake to believe that Britain is in any meaningful way a unitary state today. In any case, in my view what Scotland wants is the certainty that in its own sphere the Scottish Parliament holds undisputed power and its decisions will not and cannot be overruled by Westminster. This should apply to all devolved Administrations. So the second problem that needs solving is the need to decentralise decision-making in Britain, which is not devolution, as has rightly been said, and should not be confused with it. Decentralisation is different.

What we now need is more than the simple devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which should happen; we need double devolution, which means that power will also go to the UK city regions and other areas so that London powers, at least, are operating in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Teesside. We could add to that the Midlands and the south-west. In practice, Parliament does not legislate on matters directly affecting Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or London, so would it be so different if devolved matters in England were left to city regions or an equivalent wording?

Thirdly, with regard to our own House, one further set of reforms might help to cement the new arrangements. The House of Lords could perhaps be replaced with an elected senate-like forum that represented the nations and regions, was sensitive to their needs and recognised that there are areas so controversial that they may cause polarisation, sufficiently strong to jeopardise the union, and therefore provided a forum where these issues could be resolved.

If we manage to seize the legislative moment—a constitutional moment that comes up only very rarely—and move to a more federal system, we will need a properly codified constitution. Federal systems all around the world are typically characterised by clear divisions of powers between different tiers of government, a set of autonomous institutions, a formal division of competences and rules for the resolution of conflict. As the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, the Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee and its advisers are doing a great job on this, and surely its time has come. It might be good if, as part of its programme, it could look at how responsibility for defence and security issues, the maintenance of our single economic market, welfare and guarantees for the funding of key services such as healthcare and pensions could be organised within the new federal system, while at the same time allowing for the proper and unfettered devolution of other powers without reservation.

Whatever the post-Scottish referendum arrangements are, the UK already looks more like a constitutional partnership of equals in what is in essence a voluntary multinational association. In some way it must make sense to codify the new division of powers and the new power-sharing, tax-sharing, risk-sharing and resource-sharing rules in a beautifully crafted and written codified constitution. As others have said, we should start working on that now.