Claim of Right for Scotland

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Before I call Patrick Grady to move the motion, may I say that I have not yet had any written requests to speak in this debate? Mr Speaker has asked the Panel of Chairs to remind Members that it is the convention of the House that they should submit in writing to the Speaker’s Office if they want to speak in a debate.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Claim of Right for Scotland.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I know that you are a great champion of grassroots democracy, so I hope that a lot of what I have to say will strike a chord with you. This has not been the most straightforward debate to bring to Westminster Hall. Members who pay close attention to the Order Paper will have noticed that before the recess, it originally appeared in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant). He has the same initials as me, but I clearly have considerably worse handwriting than him—bad enough for even the stellar cryptographers in the Table Office to be stumped.

After sorting that out, the Clerks and Library specialists wanted to know which Claim of Right for Scotland I wanted to debate: the ancient claim dating to 1689, which asserts the right of appeal against perceived judicial injustice; the more modern claim, signed in 1989 as the founding document of the Scottish Constitutional Convention; or the claim adopted by the Scottish Parliament in 2012, in the context of the independence referendum. The answer is not one of those, but all of them—or, more accurately, their central assertion, endorsed in 1989 and 2012, which acknowledges the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs and the obligation on elected representatives that in all our actions and deliberations, the interests of the people of Scotland shall be paramount.

My argument is that the Claim of Right is not, or is no longer, an historical document. It is a concept, and indeed a fundamental principle, that underpins the democracy and constitutional framework of Scotland. It is as relevant today as it has ever been. The economy on the brink of recession; the Government hopelessly divided on Europe; the Labour party in turmoil; a woman Prime Minister in Downing Street; and Scotland living under yet another Conservative Government it did not vote for, pushing through damaging social policies against the will of the vast majority of people and parliamentarians—yes, that was the situation in 1989, when parliamentarians, councillors and church and civil society leaders gathered on the Mound in Edinburgh to sign the claim of right and begin the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention.

It is an historical fact that Scottish National party members were not present for the signing and did not take part in the convention. The SNP took part in early discussions, but withdrew when it became clear that the convention would not countenance independence. We argued at the time, and might still argue today, that to rule out such an option was to deny a key principle of the claim: the right to choose the best form of government. However, the claim signed in 1989 represented something of a consensus in the country that the democratic deficit experienced throughout the Thatcher years was becoming intolerable, and the convention paved the way for the Parliament that now meets in Holyrood. Today, the First Minister is outlining her programme for government, implementing as best she can with the powers available to that Parliament our vision of a more progressive and socially just Scotland.

The excellent briefing produced by the House of Commons Library for this debate contains an appendix showing the 1989 claim and its list of signatories. Some of the names are familiar: Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling, John McFall, David Steel, Jim Wallace, Archy Kirkwood. Some of those individuals can still be found at Westminster, although they go by slightly different styles and titles and work in another place with little in the way of a democratic mandate.

Another signatory is a constituent of mine, Elspeth Attwooll, a former Liberal Democrat MEP whom I credit for inspiring this debate. Before the European referendum, we both took part in a hustings where she reflected on what it meant to her to have been a signatory to the Claim of Right. It made me think about how far Scotland has come over the nearly 30 years since the claim was signed, and indeed over the years since the referendum on devolution, the 19th anniversary of which we will mark this coming Sunday. We have come far, but we still have much further to go.

The Brexit result is only the most glaring and recent example. Despite all the powers that have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament, Westminster still holds the purse strings. After three Scotland Acts since 1997, 70% of taxes and 85% of welfare spending, two of the most crucial levers of social and economic policy, remain reserved to Westminster. The Scottish Parliament, 58 out of 59 of Scotland’s MPs and local authorities across the country have all voted against the renewal of Trident, but it will still go ahead, less than 40 miles from our biggest population centre. The bedroom tax, welfare cuts, the undermining of energy and climate change policy, the threatened withdrawal from the European convention on human rights and even the removal of a tugboat from the west coast of Scotland are all directly against the will of the people of Scotland, as expressed democratically at the ballot box, yet all of them have been foisted on us by Westminster Governments.

It will undoubtedly be argued that the people of Scotland exercised their sovereignty on 18 September 2014. Some have argued that during those 15 hours when the polls were open, Scotland was truly an independent country: the future of our governance was in the hands of our people and nobody else. Disappointed though many of us were by the result of the referendum, we accept that Scotland voted to remain in the Union. However, voters were told repeatedly during the referendum that a no vote was not a vote for the status quo, and that choosing to stay in the Union would bring about a new relationship in which Scotland would lead the UK, not leave it. A vow was made to deliver something as near to federalism as possible, and a guarantee was given that Scotland would remain a member of the European Union.

As we approach the second anniversary of the referendum, none of those promises have been kept. There might have been a new status quo on the morning of 19 September 2014, but there was also one on the morning of 24 June 2016, when the Union for which people in Scotland voted came to an end. That United Kingdom—a United Kingdom that would remain part of the European Union, guaranteeing people in Scotland freedom of movement for themselves and their goods, capital and services across a continent to which we have always looked and of which we have always seen ourselves as a part—no longer exists. The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union said as much yesterday: Brexit means that the UK will leave the European Union. That is not what people in Scotland voted for, either in 2014 or in 2016. In choosing the form of government best suited to their needs, people in Scotland, on both occasions, chose a form of government that involved continuing membership of the European Union.

That is why the Scottish Government have pledged to work as constructively as possible to protect and defend Scotland’s interests within the Brexit process. I hope that the UK Government will work constructively with the new Scottish Government Minister for UK Negotiations on Scotland’s Place in Europe as they prepare for the article 50 process. The First Minister has appointed a standing council of expert advisers to help explore different options to maintain a relationship between Scotland and Europe that reflects the choice made by people in Scotland in the European referendum.

That is also why the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament must ultimately reserve the right to hold another referendum on independence for Scotland. If it becomes clear that the best or only way for Scotland to remain in the EU is to become an independent member of the EU, we must have the right to make that decision for ourselves.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

On the advantages of the EU, the hon. Gentleman will know that my party agrees with his—we voted in the Scottish Parliament to support the First Minister in taking every possible avenue to keep the advantages of the EU—but is he honestly telling the House that the solution is for Scotland to turn away from its much bigger trading partner, the UK?

[Patrick Grady]

I am saying that all the different options must be explored. The Scottish Government have committed on a cross-party basis to explore all those options as constructively as possible, but we must retain the right to revisit the question of our independent membership of the European Union if that becomes the best or only way to protect the benefits that we get from that membership. That is the crux of the Claim of Right: it is for the people of Scotland to choose the form of governance best suited to their needs. If our democratically elected Parliament decides on a cross- party basis—it will have to be on a cross-party basis, as we have a minority Government—to call for another independence referendum, will the UK Government seriously stand in the way?

The Edinburgh agreement may have been signed to pave the way for the 2014 referendum, but it is a de facto acknowledgment of both the general principle of the Claim of Right and the more specific question of whether Scotland has the right to become an independent country in a referendum. So when the former Prime Minister said in the Chamber that his county of Oxfordshire had voted to remain but that no one was calling for it to have an exemption from the UK-wide vote, he demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the constitutional framework in Scotland. Indeed, it was the same kind of misunderstanding that led one of his predecessors to describe the Scots Parliament as a “parish council”. There has never been a claim of right for Oxfordshire, as far as I am aware, nor has there been an Edinburgh agreement recognising Oxfordshire’s right to become an independent country, but such principles are now firmly established in Scotland—indeed, they always have been.

Historically, the monarchs in Scotland were Kings and Queens of Scots. They ruled at the sufferance of the people, rather than ruling over the land or exercising a sovereignty vested in their own person or in the Crown in Parliament, as the tradition has it here in Westminster—although, as I said in this Chamber yesterday, I was interested to hear how many converts to the idea of participatory democracy there were on the Government Benches, and how keen some of them had become to cede some of their hallowed parliamentary sovereignty to popular opinion expressed in a referendum.

One reason why I bid for this debate was that I heard a number of colleagues both in the Government and in the official Opposition say informally that there would not be another independence referendum because the Prime Minister would not allow it. That reminds me of the famous words of the convenor of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, Canon Kenyon Wright, who said at the opening of the convention:

“What if that other voice we all know so well responds by saying, ‘We say no, and we are the state’? Well, we say yes—and we are the people.”

So I ask the Government—I note that the Minister here today is the Deputy Leader of the House, not a Minister from the Scotland Office, because of course it has no junior Ministers—whether they accept the principle of the Claim of Right for Scotland. The Conservatives, uniquely among political parties in Scotland, refused both to sign the declaration in 1989 and to back it in the 2012 Scottish Parliament vote. Given the promises made during the independence referendum, the respect agenda and the partnership of nations we are supposed to belong to, will they reconsider?

If the Minister cannot bring himself to commit to something so momentous today, will he at least recognise that the differential result in the Brexit referendum means that there must be a differential response from the Government? Will they consider seriously any proposals that come forward from Scotland, whether they are about participation in Erasmus, the Horizon 2020 programme or, more fundamentally, efforts to build a coalition that protects the UK’s membership of the European single market? Will the Minister and the Government consider how effectively the voices of Scotland’s MPs of all parties are heard in this House? Surely it is time for a review of the English votes for English laws procedures, which are wasting parliamentary time and continue to undermine our supposedly equal status in this House.

There may be parallels with the prevailing political and economic situation in 1989, but this is 2016. Scotland’s voice is articulated not only by Members of Parliament here at Westminster, but in a modern, vibrant and diverse Parliament at Holyrood. Those of us who have been elected to the House of Commons come from a very different tradition from our predecessors. We have not come here to settle down, bide our time and hope for a seat in the House of Lords one day. When I leave this place, as I am well aware I will, it will be because I have decided not to put myself forward, because the voters have decided they want someone else, or because at last there will be no need for Scotland to send MPs to Westminster.

In the SNP, we make no secret of the fact that we think the form of government best suited to the needs of people in Scotland is an independent one. In the words of our party constitution, it is

“the restoration of Scottish national sovereignty by restoration of full powers to the Scottish Parliament, so that its authority is limited only by the sovereign power of the Scottish People to bind it with a written constitution and by such agreements as it may freely enter into with other nations or states or international organisations for the purpose of furthering international cooperation, world peace and the protection of the environment.”

But we also recognise that we have a job to do in persuading a majority of our fellow citizens of that case, which is why the second clause of our constitution is simply

“the furtherance of all Scottish interests.”

We make no special claim to the Claim of Right; it belongs, by definition, to everyone in Scotland, regardless of which political party they support or which constitutional option they prefer. But it encapsulates the right to decide and keep deciding the best form of government for their needs and for the time we live in.

When the Scottish Parliament debated and adopted the Claim of Right in 2012, it did not endorse the principle of independence, but it acknowledged the principle of deciding on independence, so the Claim of Right is not just an historical document or a scholarly debating point; it is a fundamental principle on which our democracy rests. If the UK Government are serious about maintaining the present Union as a partnership of equals, they need to understand that.

I hope that, 27 years since the declaration was signed, 19 years since the devolution referendum, 17 years since the Scottish Parliament was established, nine years since the first SNP Government were elected, two years since the independence referendum, 18 months since the UK general election, four months since the Scottish Parliament elections and three months since the European referendum, the Government might finally start to get the message.

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[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Bone, for calling me to speak; it is a great pleasure to serve with you in the Chair.

It is also a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), whose great passion for Brexit—I re-emphasise—has brought us to this particular position. We would not be having debates again about rerunning the independence referendum if the former Prime Minister had not gambled the UK farm and lost. Indeed, there was no apology in the 17 minutes of the right hon. Gentleman’s oratory for the campaign bus or for getting us into this constitutional quagmire.

I emphasise that the leader of the Scottish Conservative party, who had no other policies whatever, made it her one policy at the Scottish elections back in May to say to the Scottish people, “Vote Conservative and we will protect the Union.” Everything that has happened since then has risked the very United Kingdom that I and many people in this Chamber have voted for and worked very hard to protect.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) on securing this debate. There is one thing that I agree with the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath about: the fact that we never have debates in Westminster Hall on how to eradicate poverty in Scotland, on how to use the powers of the Scottish Parliament to make sure we can provide finances for public services, on how to close the attainment gap or on how to ensure that Scotland is outward-looking to the world. Instead, it is all grievance, it is all constitution, and it is all taking the debate and the agenda away from the issues that really matter in Scotland about public services and how the Scottish Parliament, by using its powers—or in this case, not using them—would be a good place to lie.

[Patrick Grady]

I point out again to both Members who have followed me, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) and the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), that the First Minister is at this moment addressing the Chamber of the Scottish Parliament to announce, among other things, £750 million to help to close the educational attainment gap, a guarantee that the health budget of Scotland will increase by at least £500 million more than inflation every year, and a doubling of the amount of free care available to all three and four-year-olds, and the most disadvantaged two-year-olds, across Scotland. The idea that the Scottish Government are not using the powers of the Scottish Parliament and are not delivering for the people of Scotland is simply false.

[Ian Murray]

I am delighted to hear that, because after 10 years it is about time that the Scottish Parliament started to invest in closing the educational attainment gap and in public services. That intervention by the hon. Gentleman highlights the fact that the Scottish Parliament has powers to make a difference in people’s lives, but in his speech to begin this debate he said that the Scottish Parliament has no powers whatever. Indeed, he even mentioned the tugboat that was taken away, as if the Scottish Parliament meets to discuss what it cannot do rather than trying to change the lives of people in the ways that it can.

Let us get back to this debate about the Claim of Right. It is worth just reading out the start of the declaration of the 1989 Claim of Right, which was indeed re-emphasised in the Scottish Parliament and voted on in 2012. It says:

“We, gathered as the Scottish Constitutional Convention, do hereby acknowledge the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs, and do hereby declare and pledge that in all our actions and deliberations their interests shall be paramount.”

We have heard much from the hon. Gentleman, who is the mover of the particular motion that we are debating today, about the importance of respecting Scottish sovereignty. Respecting the popular will is important, not only in Scotland but across the United Kingdom. Let us not forget that, as the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath mentioned, the Scottish National party, along with many Scottish Tories, did not participate in the constitutional convention; the SNP did not participate in that conversation with civic Scotland, politicians, groups, universities and business about what the future of devolution should look like. Moreover, the SNP did not accept the wording of the Claim of Right that that convention was founded upon. Indeed, it is only the Labour party and the Scottish Labour party that have been entirely consistent in upholding the words of the Claim of Right, because it pledged:

“To agree a scheme for an Assembly or Parliament for Scotland; To mobilise Scottish opinion and ensure the approval of the Scottish people for that scheme”.

It went on to say that it also pledged:

“To assert the right of the Scottish people to secure implementation of that scheme.”

When the Labour party was elected to Government in 1997, one of its first Bills delivered the referendum on devolution, mobilised popular support for its approval, asserted the sovereign right of the Scottish people, delivered on the result of the referendum and created the Scottish Parliament that we have today. There was no mention of all that from the hon. Member for Glasgow North; there was no mention of how we said to the Scottish people that we would deliver something, got into power and then delivered it, on the basis of what the Scottish people were telling us they wanted to happen.

To be fair, when the SNP was elected in 2011 on a manifesto that pledged an independence referendum, we respected the mandate for that referendum, too, because the Scottish people had voted for it. Consequently, in 2014 we had that referendum and that time the Scottish people voted to stay in the UK. So, taking the word of the Claim of Right as our guide, if we can, we acknowledged

“the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of Government best suited to their needs”.

The Scottish people voted for a powerful Scottish Parliament, but with Scotland being an integral part of the United Kingdom. The Claim of Right was put into practice: it was voted on in 2012 in the Scottish Parliament; the referendum happened in 2014; the Scottish people spoke; and

“the sovereign right of the Scottish people”

is to stay within the United Kingdom, but with a much more powerful Scottish Parliament. That was the spirit and the substance of the Claim of Right that we are discussing today.

I want to go back to the intervention from the hon. Member for Glasgow North. The Scottish Parliament is one of the most powerful devolved Parliaments in the world. It is about time that the politicians elected by the people looked back at that Claim of Right and said, “We were elected to deliver for the Scottish people with a powerful Scottish Parliament” and got on with the day job that they were elected to do. But every single day since the polls closed on 19 September 2014, the SNP has looked for any single trigger to get a different result in the referendum. That is surely the complete antithesis of the Claim of Right.

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[Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I should advise you that I did write to the Speaker’s Office and spoke to someone there today about giving a short speech. I promise to be brief, because we have already heard an eloquent speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) encapsulating all the points that I wished to make.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) for securing the debate here today at Westminster. The debate is not so much about a Claim of Right of the people of Scotland; it is more a claim by the SNP to have a right to determine the will of the Scottish people. There is nothing new in that position. I have heard it for almost 30 years. As has already been mentioned, we had a thorough, full debate during the Scottish referendum in the two years leading up to the September 2014 referendum.

All the issues were extensively discussed round the family kitchen tables, in schools, in businesses and at the highest political arena. Even during those debates the SNP repeatedly said through their senior politicians that the exercise of the sovereign will of the Scottish people would be a once in a lifetime, once in a generation matter. Implicit in that statement is that once in a lifetime, once in a generation must be about 40 or 50 years.

During that time, sovereign countries can enter and exit from international groupings, as, indeed, the United Kingdom is about to do by exiting from the international grouping of nations in the EU. At no point in the lead-up to the referendum did the SNP suggest that the exercise of the sovereign will of the Scottish people would be called into question, and that the SNP would have to assist the Scottish people once again—to help them think again and come to the answer that the SNP wants by having yet another referendum.

The SNP, rather shamelessly, has been doing nothing but grievance and gripe in the past two years, in this Chamber and in the House, and across the United Kingdom. All of us on the side of the United Kingdom are clear about why it is doing that; it is because it has one overriding objective, which is not to help the people of Scotland by furthering public services, reducing educational inequality and ensuring the quality of the Police Service of Scotland. Its objective is about none of those things: it is about ending the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

Thus the Scottish nationalists will never agree to any ambitious proposal for the United Kingdom, particularly with the challenges and opportunities that we now face with Brexit. They have no interest in agreeing on a path that will benefit the sovereign will of the Scottish people. The only path they want to adopt in the months and years to come is that of gripe and grievance. Today’s debate is an example of that.

[Patrick Grady]

I am hearing a lot of grievance, and I do not think it is coming from the SNP speakers. The hon. Gentleman has used that phrase several times. Do he and his colleague the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath accept in principle the sovereign right of the people of Scotland to determine their form of government? The Conservatives, uniquely in Scotland, have never endorsed that language, which is contained in the Claim of Right.

[Alberto Costa]

I am merely reiterating the claim made by the hon. Gentleman and saying that if he accepts the key principle of that claim, which is that sovereignty lies with the Scottish people, surely he agrees that two years ago that sovereignty was exercised when they said they wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom.

By the way, the Claim of Right does not define Scottish people. My right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath confirmed this afternoon that the SNP determined the rules for the 2014 referendum, which excluded thousands of Scots men and women—Scottish people like me—from determining the future of Scotland. I and many hundreds of people in my position had to accept those rules. The view proffered by the Scottish National party that it somehow represents the sovereign will of the Scottish people is entirely dishonest because of its refusal time and again to accept that sovereign will, which is to stay part of the United Kingdom.

We have heard about powers. The Scottish Parliament has had unique powers since its creation in the late 1990s. We have seen little exercise by the SNP majority Government—and now minority Government—of those real and tangible powers for the benefit of the Scottish people because they simply do not want to improve matters. My right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath used the word “paradox”; I would say that it is clear that the exercise of powers that would benefit the people of Scotland might lead to their telling the SNP, “Everything is working fine under the United Kingdom.” That would go against the SNP argument, so the paradox might go both ways.

The truth is that the SNP exists for one reason alone—to end Great Britain. There is nothing that hon. Members on both sides of the House who believe in the United Kingdom can do that will satisfy that constitutional thirst for the destruction of our great and sovereign United Kingdom.

Today’s debate is yet more smoke and mirrors—another excuse to get a headline in the Scottish media, saying that SNP politicians are somehow the only ones who have the people of Scotland in mind. That is wrong. All of us who love the United Kingdom have the intentions and wishes of the Scottish, Northern Irish, Welsh and English people at heart, to work together for the betterment of all our peoples throughout the United Kingdom. If there is any Claim of Right to be had, it is the Claim of Right to live a peaceful, tolerant, successful, stable life in a stable and successful country—the United Kingdom.

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[Patrick Grady]

I am very grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken time to participate in the debate in a very constructive and good-spirited manner. I was not trying to rerun the arguments of the independence referendum—my point is that the circumstances have changed significantly since then. What I wanted to understand—I am not entirely sure that it has become any clearer—is the Government’s position on the principle of the sovereignty of the people of Scotland. The Conservatives never endorsed the Claim of Right and, by the end of the day, still have not. That is going to be particularly important in the context of decisions that will come to this Parliament on the future of our membership of the European convention on human rights and on the possibility of a British Bill of Rights. It will be important for the decisions that the Scottish Parliament, founded on the back of the Claim of Right and a referendum, will have to make, on a cross-party basis, about the potential for any future independence referendum.

I have heard the accusations that we are navel-gazing and talking about constitutional matters. Well, the constitution is still reserved to Westminster. All the examples I gave of policies that are against the will of the people of Scotland are policies that are reserved to Westminster. While we have been debating this, the Scottish Government have been laying out their programme for government, for progressive reform, for a more socially just Scotland—an ambitious vision—using the powers that we have and that have been endorsed three times in Scottish general elections where the Scottish National party was elected to Government. I would say to the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), who said that the clue to our purpose is in our name, that our name is the Scottish National party and not the Scottish nationalist party.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Claim of Right for Scotland.