Scotland Bill

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy for the position that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has so eloquently set out. A huge amount has happened in the Scottish debate since these issues were discussed in the House of Commons some months ago. We have to take into account the nature of the change in that debate. If the coalition Government had not agreed to defer the discussion of the referendum sections of the Bill, I would have urged the noble Lord to test the opinion of the House on this Bill, whether or not this is Thursday. We must bear in mind the respect for the Scottish people, and it is to the Government’s credit that they have delayed those sections of the Bill until after the end of the consultation process. The consultation document is excellent.

One reason why I believe that this Parliament is so rubbished by the First Minister and the Scottish National Party is because they have consistently failed to make their mark in this Parliament and in elections to this Parliament. The political parties represented here have a mandate from the Scottish people as well, and we are all clearly parties proud to be part of the United Kingdom. I am a proud Scot, a Scot who is proud of being Scottish and of being British—and I am also pretty proud of being European as well. Many of our antecedents fought on the battlefields of Europe under a British flag, and they did so for freedoms that we enjoy today.

The First Minister wants the referendum to be held in 2014 because of the anniversary of Bannockburn. It is also the centenary of the First World War, when my family paid a price, as did many families, for the freedoms that we enjoy. So we should not be taken up by this “Braveheart” rhetoric of the First Minister.

I am very conscious that it is the will of the Government and of many members of my own Front Bench to proceed with this Bill, and I concede to that. There is a wee bit of an element of tidying up here—I always thought that tidying up in January was an affliction that visited the female of the species and that the male had some sort of genetic in-built gear that stopped the tidying up—as I am told that we must not allow this Bill to go into the next Session of Parliament. I am one of those people who is a wee bit sceptical about a self-regulating Chamber, but people tell me that when you have a self-regulating House you are able to do the will of the House, and I believe that it would be the will of the House to give us extra time to consider the next phase of the legislation.

As I indicated at Second Reading, I wish to probe the Minister about the cost of some of the elements within this Bill, not least of the amendments to taxation. We need to get this discussion and debate on to a grown-up level and learn how the disaggregation of taxation in the United Kingdom will be brought about. If possible, I would love to have a debate on the disaggregation of social security in the United Kingdom, because that is something that the nationalists prepare to move on from very quickly indeed.

Let me be a bit controversial. I do not think that the First Minister wants independence. He is frightened of independence. Why else would he say, “Keep the monarchy, keep the Army and keep sterling”—although going into monetary union without fiscal union is something that we should have learnt one or two lessons about. He is frightened of the consequences; he wants the rhetoric but does not want to take the hard decisions.

I urge noble Lords when we consider this Bill to take the opportunity to probe more deeply into what this concept of additional measures of devolution would mean, because I would not want us this time next year or the following year to come back to these issues, particularly around taxation. I look forward to the debates on these matters, but I thank the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for putting this Motion on the Order Paper. To our English colleagues it gives some sort of flavour to the issues that we have to address in Scotland, and I am absolutely confident that every one of us in this House, given the oath that we swear when we take our seats, believes that we are proud to be British, just as many of us are proud to be Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and English.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, I rise with some trepidation, as I did at Second Reading, to intervene but briefly in this debate, because Wales is not Scotland and Plaid Cymru is not the SNP. But I could not sit here and hear my good friend Alex Salmond being bad-mouthed in the way that he has been already in this debate, and no doubt we will hear more of that.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Wigley]

Well, it is for noble Lords to decide for themselves whether the noises made in this Chamber and heard in Scotland will help or hinder the outcome of a referendum that they wish to hear.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is exactly what the cybernats say. Is it not to try to shut us up that they are saying that?

[Lord Wigley]

No, indeed, it is not to shut anybody up but to raise the question that every noble Lord or noble Baroness will answer for himself or herself about the words that they choose in following this very important debate with regard to the future relationships of the countries of the United Kingdom. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, rubbished the way in which Alex Salmond had introduced the question, referring to it as a rigged question. He did not, however, read the question out. It is:

“Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?”.

I have enough respect for the people of Scotland being able to make a judgment on that, whichever way it goes, because the question is absolutely clear-cut. One can of course have different versions of a question, but that is not a rigged question.

[Lord Gordon of Strathblane]

On a point of clarification, I would vote yes to Scotland being an independent country. We are independent at the moment. We are in a marriage with England, and I am quite happy to renew our marriage vows at any time, but that does not mean we are not independent.

[Lord Wigley]

Of course the definition of “independent” is certain to be central to the debate, but all that argument will not be on the ballot paper. The ballot paper has to have a question that reflects the debate that has taken place, and I have no doubt that there will be a debate in detail about the implications of an independent country. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, raised the question regarding a referendum possibly not being valid if it is organised from Scotland. However, as we well remember from the debates of the 1970s, the referenda on the then proposed assemblies for Scotland and for Wales were consultative referenda, as any referendum is in the context of our Parliament.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord, who is being very generous, but we have just had a referendum on AV which I criticised in this House because, in fairness, it was a binding referendum. It is not true to say that every referendum has been consultative. The difficulty with Alex Salmond’s referendum is that it is simply consultative, but we need to resolve this matter. For example, the Royal Bank of Scotland would not be able to operate in an independent Scotland and if we are going to draw this out till 2016, what is going to happen to the security of our jobs and so on? We need to resolve this one way or the other; that is the criticism. On the point of the question, could the noble Lord, as the spokesman in this place for Alex Salmond, help me? Why is he refusing to agree that that question, which the noble Lord says is fair, should be looked at and determined by the Electoral Commission?

[Lord Wigley]

I am very grateful for that intervention. I am not going to go after the Royal Bank of Scotland because no doubt we will come to those issues later in the Bill, and I hope to be participating then. With regard to the latter point, Alex Salmond said yesterday:

“The question is designed to comply with the Electoral Commission's guidelines which are that referendum questions should present the options clearly, simply and neutrally. The question we have published today aims to be all three, and will be subject to testing using a sample of voters”.

That accepts that he will have discussions with the Electoral Commission, and I understand that the Secretary of State for Scotland has welcomed that.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

I do not know what the Secretary of State for Scotland has said, but what the First Minister said is what the noble Lord just read out, and it is typical of the weasel words that are used. When he is asked specifically, “Will the question be changed if the Electoral Commission advises that it should be?”, we get no response. Does the noble Lord agree that if the Electoral Commission, as the regulator, suggested a change then any fair minded First Minister would agree to it and agree to that principle?

[Lord Wigley]

Clearly, anyone concerned with the question will take great note of what the Electoral Commission says. I make it clear to the noble Lord that I am not here answering on behalf of Alex Salmond, but I wanted to stand up and say a word on his behalf when I heard certain words being used—we heard the phrase “weasel words” a moment ago—and his good faith being questioned. He has been described as cunning, a gambler, devious and frightened. I put it to noble Lords that if the debate is going to be pursued in that tone, what will be the outcome and the reaction in Scotland? I leave it at that.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard]

My Lords, I am ashamed, as a Scotsman and a Scots unionist, that it took a Welshman to make that point. I agree about the language.

I felt uneasy on 10 January when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, presented the Government’s consultation paper to us. There was enormous cross-Chamber unanimity that it was a jolly good document, that it was right in law and that it was right on the question and its timing. All the blue bonnets from over the border, the Forsyths, the Foulkeses, the Steels, the Langs—the Scottish political aristocracy of yesteryear—were all strongly in support of what the United Kingdom Government said in their consultation paper. A different view was taken by quite a large proportion of the Scottish people, for whom this all may have seemed a little odd. I do not disagree with the noble Lord on what he said about the law; the paper is mainly about the law and reserved powers and the power in Section 30. However, it is not clear beyond peradventure in Scotland that the terms and the timing of the question need to be settled by us, not by the Scottish Parliament. I am not saying that the people who disagree with that are right but merely that it is a question for debate.

In the debate that I have referred to, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, put a number of interesting questions to the Scottish National Party and he has done so again today. He has made an interesting, lively, jocular debating speech, asking questions of the SNP. I feel sorry for the Minister who has to answer the debate; it is not really his job to answer for the SNP. Here is my serious point: why is there not someone in this Chamber who does answer for the Scottish National Party? I know the answer, but it would be highly desirable that all parties that are represented in this Chamber should make informal representations to the missing party. I do not support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth; we should go ahead with the Bill and the Government’s timetabling proposals seem absolutely right to me, but our debates on the Bill would be greatly assisted if we had half a dozen people here who actually believed in the policies of the SNP, perhaps because they were members of it.