Scotland Bill

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reid]

That is a fair point. I would not propose having constituencies with anywhere near as many as 100,000 electors. Off the top of my head, I recall that the average Scottish Parliament constituency has about 55,000 electors, so the figure used would be close to that. Having individual constituencies that represent natural communities would make the work of the individual MSP much easier, because they would be representing a natural community, rather than a constituency that crosses a council or health authority boundary.

My preference would be to have the Parliament elected by the single transferable vote system in multi-Member constituencies—the same system that we use for local government. All MSPs would then be equal and we would not have the problem of conflict between constituency and regional list Members. I also outlined earlier how we could improve the present system. The important thing, however, is that we must have a proportional system in the Scottish Parliament. That is the only fair way for the whole of Scotland to be represented in the Parliament. It is what the Constitutional Convention agreed and what the Scottish people voted for in the referendum, so I urge the Committee to reject this backward-looking new clause and not to overturn the settled will of the Scottish people.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I do not think that anybody in this House can doubt the tenacity of the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) on this issue. In the course of the past 12 years or so, he has been absolutely consistent in his contempt for list Members of the Scottish Parliament and the whole concept of proportional representation. I am sure that what he says about there being a large constituency for his views is true and I certainly saw a lot of people nodding along with his speech. I want to explore the issue today to try to see what level of support there is for his views, particularly in the Labour party.

The amendment was tabled in the name of the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire and in the names of five of his hon. Friends—a substantial and significant amount of Scottish Labour Members. An awful lot of Scottish Labour Members support the notion that this House should dictate the membership and voting arrangements for the Scottish Parliament. He also says that there is more support in the Labour movement more widely. If that is the case, it alarms and shocks me and we should hear more about it. If a substantial minority—

[Mark Lazarowicz]

rose—

[Fiona O'Donnell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) first.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I think that my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Fiona O'Donnell) and I are going to make the same point. Arguments can be made—I hope to make them in a moment—against the exposition laid out by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe), but if the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is going to start playing the numbers game—we have had enough mathematics and arithmetic in the past hour or so—five out of 41 means just under one eighth of the Scottish Labour MPs, or less than 12.5%. Let us not overdo that argument.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful for that intervention, but it still seems an awful lot—almost an eighth, and there are six signatories. It also seems to me that the numbers are growing. I saw the heads nodding in agreement with the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire and I suggest and suspect that he has growing support. If he remains tenacious on this issue, his view might prevail in the Labour party. That is the direction in which things are going and that is what we are beginning to see.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

I think that we have heard this point; is it on the same issue?

[Fiona O'Donnell]

It is.

[Pete Wishart]

Oh, go on then.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm for the subject. If I might help him with the maths, the equivalent proportion of Scottish National party Members would be seven eighths of one MP.

[Pete Wishart]

We really are having arithmetic and mathematics lectures today.

I think that the momentum is with the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire. Opinion is moving in the same direction as him and I think it is starting to go with him. I looked around and saw some of the enthusiasm from some of his hon. Friends this afternoon and I think the Labour party has a genuine problem. I have a solution, however, Mr Hoyle, in which you might be interested. I understand that the Labour party is holding an important conference this weekend, so the hon. Gentleman should get a day return—not the Caledonian sleeper—up to Oban and have this debate with the Labour party. The Scottish people need to know what the Labour party is doing.

I believe that the Labour party is split from top to bottom on this issue and that has to be resolved. I know that up at Oban it will be the usual whinge-fest.

[Graeme Morrice]

The SNP has a preoccupation with the Labour party; why does not the hon. Gentleman simply address the issue?

[Pete Wishart]

I am offering a solution so that the issue can be resolved and fixed up once and for all. The Scottish people want to know what the Labour party thinks. Labour designed this mechanism; let us see what it thinks about it now.

[Mr Davidson]

The hon. Gentleman has suggested that my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe), should take a train to Oban. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is so up to date with current political affairs that he is unaware that the Labour party conference is in Glasgow. I would be grateful if he explained to us exactly how being in Oban would help my colleague to explain to his friends, meeting in Glasgow, why they should change their policy?

[Pete Wishart]

We are having a few difficulties with trains in this Committee. First there was the Caledonian sleeper and now there is this train to Oban. I will, of course, apologise to the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire. I say to him: “Take the train to Glasgow for goodness’ sake, but whatever you do, take that train, because we need to know the settled will of the Labour party in all this.” I suspect that the sentiment and views expressed by the hon. Gentleman are gaining currency in the Labour party—

[Mr Donohoe]

And in the Tory party.

[Pete Wishart]

He says that—

[Mr Davidson]

And with the Liberals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

People are nodding their heads. I detect that this is becoming a real issue. Frankly, it scares and alarms me if that is the debate within the Labour party. Whether it is a substantial minority or a majority within the Labour party who feel this way, the Scottish people need to know about this. They need to be aware that this is the Labour party’s intention. These two new clauses are totally wrong and it is appalling if a substantial minority in the Labour party believe this is the way forward. They would remove one of the central pillars of the Scottish Parliament—its internal democracy. They would remove all the proportionality that has been agreed and is the settled will of the Scottish Parliament.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

I have given way to the hon. Lady already, so I will move on.

The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire and many of his colleagues want to return to the good old days of the old Glasgow council, when 69 Labour members, out of 79, were elected on 48% of the vote. That is democracy Labour-style—90% of members on 40% of the vote. Thank goodness we will not be going back to that. People are saying that is right and that it is what they want and I believe that that underpins all these measures—the Labour party benefiting massively from first past the post.

In the past few years, this issue has consistently come up. In the 10 years that I have been in the House, we have had these debates about Arbuthnott and other matters. We were told that we could not call the Scottish Government a Government and that we had to call them the Scottish Executive. I remember the days of the timid, unadventurous Labour Executive, always casting their eyes southwards to London, awaiting orders, instructions and directions about what to do, but those days have gone. We now have an SNP Government in Scotland and we will never again have the House of Commons clicking its fingers and the Scottish Parliament doing that dance. I look forward to that.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

We are moving completely off the new clause and I think we ought to get back to it. I know that the hon. Gentleman has been tempted by all the interventions, but we ought to stick to the new clause.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful, Mr Hoyle.

I do not think that the signatories to the new clauses singularly loathe the additional member system—they also loathe the single transferable vote for local government in Scotland and everything to do with proportional representation.

[Graeme Morrice]

indicated assent.

[Pete Wishart]

That is their view. They want the death of PR in Scotland.

A few interesting things came out of the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire’s contribution, the most interesting of which was about list Members. I think he has to take this up with the Labour list Members in the highlands, in north-east Scotland and in mid-Scotland and Fife. I know that SNP list Members are particularly active within the larger constituencies and do a fantastic job.

[Mr Donohoe]

I shall try to be as quick as possible. I did not touch on this in my speech, but does not the list Member have to notify the constituency Member before they come in on a case or make notification of it? In the 12 years of the Scottish Parliament, in Ayrshire there has not been a single case brought to the attention of a constituency Member.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman will have had his own experiences with these issues.

An hon. Member has pointed out that there have been problems with list Members on a couple of occasions, but I am surprised that it is only a couple of occasions. List Members seem to co-exist with first-past-the-post Members on reasonably good terms. I recognise a number of issues and problems that have been identified by a number of Members.

[Graeme Morrice]

Further to my intervention earlier in the debate, is the hon. Gentleman aware of the situation of one Scottish National party MSP, Alex Neil, who was admonished by the Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament for giving the impression, despite the fact that he is the regional list MSP for Central Scotland, that somehow he was a local constituency MSP for Airdrie and Shotts, which has its own directly elected constituency MSP?

[Pete Wishart]

It seems that the hon. Gentleman feels it necessary to name others who cannot defend themselves in this House.

As I said, I am astounded that there have been so few such issues. That case is probably notable because it has happened so rarely. First-past-the-post Members have co-existed with regional Members in a friendly and consensual way. That is a feature of the Scottish Parliament that will continue.

The hon. Member for Livingston (Graeme Morrice) is right. There are difficulties identifying Members of the Scottish Parliament. I find it difficult to recognise first-past-the-post Labour Members in the Scottish Parliament, particularly those on the Front Bench, and I think the Scottish people have great difficulty recognising a number of them, too.

[Mr Donohoe]

Name the MSPs.

[Pete Wishart]

I will name one MSP with lofty ambitions. He has the ambition to be the First Minister of Scotland. When he went out there, we found that 50% of the Scottish people did not recognise him, and another 33% just did not like him.

[Fiona O'Donnell]

I wonder which party in Scotland the hon. Gentleman would say has the best record on constitutional reform—the parties in the Scottish Constitutional Convention, Labour and Lib Dems who delivered STV for local government, or an SNP Government who could not even deliver a referendum.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. That is not relevant to the new clause either.

[Pete Wishart]

The point was well made. The voting mechanism was not designed by the SNP, but we still won, which was remarkable. We hear Labour Members of Parliament down here disparage and knock the current arrangements. Those are their arrangements. When the Liberals were arguing in the Scottish Constitutional Convention—hon. Members may correct me if I am wrong—they would probably have been arguing for STV. That would be the preferred option. AMS was Labour’s system, which the Liberals agreed with in order to ensure proportionality. For Labour Members to make such a fuss about AMS now is a bit rich, given that it is their system. Our preferred system, if the hon. Lady wants to know, is full single transferable vote. That is what we want for Scotland.

[Mr Weir]

Does my hon. Friend notice a pattern? I understand that the Labour Front-Bench team is in favour of AV for this place, but many Labour Back Benchers are not.

[Pete Wishart]

I am sure that Mr Hoyle would not allow me to be tempted into discussing AV, but the mess that Labour Members get into when dealing with voting arrangements dumbfounds me. They seem to be for and against AV, just as they seem to be for and against proportionality in the Scottish Parliament. They are split from top to bottom on both issues, and they will be found out when they are questioned on the subject in the next few weeks.

[Thomas Docherty]

I appreciate that as the SNP’s Chief Whip, the hon. Gentleman believes in absolute loyalty to a single position. It might help him to understand that we have a free vote on the issue because we believe in a broad consensus.

[Pete Wishart]

I am no longer the Chief Whip, but I thank the hon. Gentleman for promoting me back to that distinguished role. I look forward to the outcome of a free vote in the Labour party. It will be fascinating. We will pay keen attention to who supports the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire in all this. I hope they are true to their convictions—[Interruption.] Oh, it is not a free vote, we hear.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Whether or not Labour Members have a free vote is not relevant to new clause 1. Let us get back to the new clause, and I am sure Mr Wishart would not want to keep repeating himself.

[Pete Wishart]

Indeed, Mr Hoyle. I hope I was not repeating myself, but I was interested in that free vote concept. I would love to have seen a free vote on the matter under discussion. I hope that the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire will press the new clause to a Division so that we get an opportunity to see who is for and who is against. Labour is totally split on the issue, and the Scottish people need to see where the Labour party is in all this. We in the SNP will of course oppose the new clause, because we believe in fair votes and in the right of the Scottish Parliament to make its own decisions and arrangements on voting and membership. That is how normal, self-respecting Parliaments do their business.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am sure that you will be pleased to hear that I intend to address the new clause, Mr Hoyle.

I want to put the case against what my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr Donohoe) has proposed, and to put the case for a system of proportional representation for the Scottish Parliament. The current system should be retained. We could have an interesting academic argument about whether to have the additional Member system or a different form of PR, but AMS is the proportional system that we have now in the Scottish Parliament, and I want to defend that system. Overall, it has worked well, and it should be retained in the interests of Scotland.

The first argument in favour of that system—or, indeed, any system of PR for the Scottish Parliament—is about fairness. I agree with the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) on that. Some people seem to take the view that fairness is a luxury for politicians. I do not accept that—fairness is something that we should all be concerned about. Any system in which the seats that one party wins can be grossly disproportionate to the votes that it gets is an unfair system. We have seen some of those distorting effects at the UK level, but at the Scottish level the first-past-the-post system could have much more disproportionate effects, precisely because of the multi-party system in Scotland. We have four parties in Scotland which, according to the opinion polls, get 6% or more of the vote—if we were to add the Lib Dems and their 5%, we would have a five-party system. With that breakdown between the parties, it would be quite feasible for a party with just 30% of the vote to get an absolute majority in the Scottish Parliament. Whatever our perspective might be, that cannot be justified or defended.

Some of my right hon. and hon. Friends take the view that because—as they believe—Labour tends to gain under that disproportionate system, we should support first past the post against any form of proportional representation. However, I do not accept that first past the post always benefits the Labour party. I am old enough to remember the 18 years of Conservative Government, when the Conservatives, never with the majority of the votes cast, nevertheless had a majority of the seats in Westminster, and sometimes a very large majority, so Labour does not always gain from the first-past-the-post system.

It would also be dangerous for my Labour colleagues or anyone else to assume that first past the post would always benefit Labour in Scotland. As the Liberal Democrats have discovered, no party can assume that its recent levels of support will be maintained indefinitely. Parties go up and down, and we cannot necessarily assume that if the Scottish Parliament had first past the post but no regional list system, the constituency votes in the last parliamentary elections would have been the same, because people might have chosen to vote differently if they had had only one vote instead of two. We cannot assume that Labour would always win an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament under first past the post.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I agree. That is one reason why I do not support STV for the Scottish Parliament or local government, and I will come on to that point as it relates to the Scottish Parliament in a moment.

We should bear in mind some of the arguments made in 1997—those of us who have been around for some time can remember them—on why it was important that there should be a vote on the system of PR in the referendum on the Scottish Parliament, rather than putting a first-past-the-post system to voters. That is precisely because it was recognised, even by some people who were hostile to or sceptical about PR, that if the electors had been offered a choice of a Scottish Parliament with a first-past-the-post system, some might have voted against it because they would be concerned that one party in one part of the country might at some future stage dominate the Parliament, which would have undermined support for the yes vote in the 1997 referendum.

[Pete Wishart]

Looking around the Chamber, I see four Labour Members who are against the hon. Gentleman and three who support him. Does he feel that in the Labour party he is beginning to lose the argument in favour of PR?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am not sure that I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point—

[Pete Wishart]

There are four Members against him and three for him.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I think that we are going down a road that will not take the argument much further forward.

When the Constitutional Convention drew up the plans for a Scottish Parliament, there was a strong case that the Parliament should be elected by a system of PR, and there is certainly no case for changing that, even if we look at it simply from the narrow point of view of Labour’s party political advantage, which, as I have said, we should not do. It is also about how democracy can be improved and how the public relate to the political process, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) has said.

If we accept that there should be some system of PR for the Scottish Parliament—I know that there are Members on both sides of the House who do not accept that—the obvious question is which PR system should be put in place. There is a wide range of PR systems, as there is a wide range of electoral systems generally, and there are arguments for and against all of them. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun has pointed out some of the disadvantages, and I agree with her about the STV system that currently operates in local government. Some council wards in my constituency, for example, now have 28,000 voters, and so local councillors are in no sense local in the way that they had been, and I presume that that is the case in her constituency.

If we had an STV system for Scottish Parliament elections, Edinburgh would have four MPs for the entire area, but no local MPs. There might be two Labour Members, one Tory and one SNP, according to present opinion polls, but that would certainly not allow any of them to have a local affiliation in the parts of Edinburgh where there is a strong local identity, such as my constituency of Edinburgh North and Leith. STV would certainly not be the right answer. I do not think that anyone would seriously go for the complete proportional list system in which seats are allocated to parties simply on the basis of the number of votes received nationwide. That would give too much power to the parties, so no one would support that system. Therefore, the additional Member system, which combines the constituency element, so that people know who their local MSP is, and the top-up level, which balances out the disproportionate effects of the first-past-the-post system, is in my view the best compromise, which is why it should be maintained.

There are certainly problems with how some list Members operate. I could refer to one Member in my region and the way in which she has presented herself in the run-up to Scottish Parliament elections, and other examples could undoubtedly be provided from across the country of MSPs from different parties acting that way.

In my case, I have been fortunate, but by and large we have had no great problems of representation in working with list MSPs. There are times when we have political disagreements, but there are also times when we can work together in the interests of the area. Perhaps I have just been fortunate, but I do not think that there have been the dramatic difficulties that my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire has suggested.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davidson]

It is true to say that the devolution settlement achieved at the time of the referendum represented the settled will of the Scottish people, but that does not mean that there can never be any further change of any kind. In our debates on the Bill, we have identified difficulties and we have tried to resolve them and to move things forward by making changes. On the question of the electoral system, we first have to ask whether there are any problems and, if there are, whether there is a solution.

I believe that there are some difficulties with the existing system. For example, the public have never entirely understood how losers become winners. They see people standing for election in a constituency and losing, only to pop up as an MSP anyway. The situation is made far worse when some of those who lost pretend to be the MSP for the constituency in which they stood and were defeated. That was certainly the case for a considerable number of years in Glasgow Pollok, where Johann Lamont was elected by first past the post. Kenny Gibson, from the SNP, who came second, then pretended to be the local MSP. Tommy Sheridan, from the horizontal road to socialism party, who is now detained elsewhere, also pretended to be the MSP for that constituency. That was undoubtedly unhelpful, because different people would turn up at local meetings, events, protests and campaigns pretending to be the MSP. This is a genuine issue that needs to be addressed.

We have already heard the outrageous story of Alex Neil printing posters saying that he was the MSP for Airdrie and Shotts when patently he was not. That was a deliberate attempt to deceive the electorate. The fact that there is an election coming up in the near future can only be coincidence, but that was none the less a deliberate attempt to deceive. We also had a situation in the Govan constituency, the one beside mine, where Nicola Sturgeon camped out. She has now won that seat, but she did so partly because she had pretended to be the list MSP for that constituency. These are all clear difficulties in the present system and they need to be looked at.

Related to that problem is the cherry-picking not just of issues but of individual items of casework, especially in relation to immigration cases but to others as well. As an MP, I have had a string of cases in which MSPs have taken up people’s complaints about immigration, told them that they could do something about it, led them down a path that led nowhere at all, then told them to come and see me. By that time, a considerable period had passed and some of the people had consulted lawyers based on what they had been mis-told. The same thing has happened with social security cases. We need a change in the rules that would stop list MSPs, in particular, cherry-picking.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman has listed certain instances of transgressions by SNP regional list Members. What is the Labour party doing?

[Mr Davidson]

My understanding is that list Labour MSPs are perfect in every way and have done nothing incorrect or outside the rules. I presume that there are no examples of Labour MSPs misbehaving in such a way; otherwise, we would have heard about them. The fact that the SNP has not raised a single example of a Labour MSP doing anything untoward is an indication of where the balance of advantage in this argument lies.

A further difficulty with the existing system is the way in which getting on the list is so key to success in the proportional representation section of the ballot. That means that the party machine, which controls access to the list, has a much greater say than the electorate in who goes to the Scottish Parliament, because the electorate can only vote for the list—they have no say in who is on it. The loyalty of those who are on the list must therefore be directed not towards the electorate but towards their party managers; otherwise, they run the risk of being put off the list next time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davidson]

That is an excellent point, and I am glad that it has been made.

[Pete Wishart]

On a point of clarification about the supremacy of first past the post, as the hon. Gentleman would have it, is he saying that no other electoral system throughout the world brings out a greater number of voters for a national general election?

[Mr Davidson]

I will not say that, because I suspect hon. Members could cite the case of Albania or somewhere similar. However, in our case it seems pretty clear that there is a correlation between turnout and the simplicity and comprehensibility of first past the post.

Let us not confuse ourselves about how the system that we have in the Scottish Parliament came about. It was not on tablets of stone brought down from the mountain by Moses; it came from a backroom deal between the leaderships of the Labour party and the Liberals to ensure that they had a majority. That is no more than has happened between the Liberals and the Conservatives in the coalition. It is a shabby deal which, as the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) said, involves compromises. Let us not sanctify the electoral system with a false impression that a popular uprising demanded it.

[Pete Wishart]

AMS was Labour’s preferred system at the constitutional convention. What is interesting about the hon. Gentleman’s remarks—I hope he will come to this point—is that he believes that this place should dictate to the Scottish Parliament the ending of the current voting arrangements and the existence of regional Members. Would he like to impose an end to proportional representation on the Scottish Parliament?

[Mr Davidson]

I havenae decided what is the best system. I have outlined faults in the existing system. Do I believe that this House has the right to decide the voting system for the Scottish Parliament? Yes, I do, actually.

[Pete Wishart]

You think it should?

[Mr Davidson]

Yes, I think it should, in exactly the same way that the Scottish Parliament decided the voting system for local authorities without any discussion or agreement. If the Scottish Parliament is to be allowed to decide its voting system, so should local authorities. It is good enough for the SNP and its allies to impose a system on others, and what goes around comes around.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Connarty]

The arrangement is perfectly legal under the present system. I am saying that the system should be more constrained and more disciplined, and that the resources should be more focused. I believe that the public are questioning why the office is there, what its purpose is, and whether it constitutes a distortion of what is due to them, the electorate. I keep returning to this point. What did we promise the electorate? What we promised them we have not delivered, and we should therefore consider doing something better. The new clauses represent serious challenges to the existing system, and should be treated as such.

[Pete Wishart]

Notwithstanding the fact that AMS was the Labour solution in the Constitutional Convention, there is another elegant solution to deal with a number of the hon. Gentleman’s concerns. Under STV, there would not be two distinct categories of Members of the Scottish Parliament. However, I presume that he wishes to end proportionality and return to Labour fiefdoms such as Glasgow council, 90% of whose members received 40% of the votes. Is that what he wants?

[Michael Connarty]

I should like Glasgow city council—which is a wonderful council—to be properly resourced, rather than having its budget cut by 3.7%. That is what the Scottish Government have just done, at a time when the city needs more resources. Other areas with a large proportion of SNP councillors are experiencing very small cuts. That is another abuse for which the people will take the Government of Scotland to task, and will take the SNP to task in particular.

Proportionality has not worked in our system. I do not approve of the single transferable vote. I do not believe in that kind of proportionality, because I think that it moves so far away from the idea of accountability that the public reject it, and I do not think that we will get very far with any other amendment that appears to distort what we have in the House of Commons at present. When a Member of Parliament is elected, he or she is accountable. People know whom they elected, why they elected them, and how to get rid of them. If we cannot introduce a system that provides some credibility, the Scottish Parliament will go spinning off into the future with no credibility at all. I therefore hope that the Committee will pass new clauses 1 and 2.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mundell]

Indeed there are, but the Conservative party has been clear and absolutely consistent in its policy. It has not changed its policy to suit the electoral needs of individual constituency MSPs who fear for their future.

[Pete Wishart]

The Minister rightly says that the Conservatives have been consistent about this—the list has saved the neck of the Conservative party in Scotland. Has he any idea what the Labour Front-Bench team’s position is on this matter? We have not heard a contribution from Labour Front Benchers on this; all we have heard are the siren voices of the “first-past-the-posters” at the back. Labour seems to be split from top to bottom on this issue, but does the Minister have any idea as to its view?

[David Mundell]

The hon. Gentleman probably shares my belief that the Labour party view will be what is in the interests of the Labour party, and not necessarily what is in the interests of the electorate in individual constituencies in Scotland.

--- Later in debate ---

New clause 12 deals with Scottish maritime boundaries. It seeks to require the consent of the Scottish Parliament to any order made under section 126(2) of the Scotland Act 1998, and to require a boundary order to be issued in 2012. Again, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Calman commission did not recommend that provision, and as far as I am aware it was not raised with him.

[Pete Wishart]

The Minister keeps going on about things not being raised by the Calman commission, but nor was Antarctica or appeals to the Supreme Court. The Minister cannot have it both ways. The Government are introducing some stuff that was not in Calman, so surely they can consider other stuff that was similarly not in Calman.

[David Mundell]

As the hon. Gentleman is aware, the issue of Antarctica was fully considered by the Scottish Parliament’s Bill Committee and the Scottish Affairs Committee. It was not simply plucked out of the air and dealt with in an amendment in this place.

I understand the SNP’s dogmatic opposition to the Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order 1999 and its view that if Scotland had more ocean under its control, that ocean would benefit from SNP policies, but I am afraid that it is not a view I subscribe to. As the SNP knows, the Scottish Adjacent Waters Boundaries Order has two effects. First, it determines the boundary of waters that are to be treated as internal waters or the territorial sea of the UK adjacent to Scotland. That is relevant to the definition of “Scotland” in section 126(1) of the 1998 Act, which is used for the purpose of exercising devolved functions and the extent of the Scottish Parliament’s legislative competence. Similar provision is made in legislation relating to Northern Ireland and Wales for the purposes of their devolution settlements.

Secondly, the order determines the boundary of those waters to be treated as sea within British fishery limits adjacent to Scotland. That is relevant to the definition of “the Scottish zone”—in section 126(1) of the 1998 Act—in which the Scottish Parliament has legislative competence to regulate sea fisheries in accordance with the EU’s common fisheries policy and where fishermen are subject to Scots law. Scottish Ministers also have various Executive functions that are exercisable in the Scottish zone in relation to matters such as licensing and planning.

Crucially, the order defines boundaries off both the west and east coasts using the median line mythology recommended by the UN convention on the law of the sea. It is always interesting when we find the SNP in disagreement with the UN because it does not suit its purposes. This is the standard international mythology—methodology for defining water boundaries. It is illogical to use it off the west coast but deploy a boundary based on historical practice off the east coast. The Government have no plans to redefine the nautical boundaries between Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. We cannot accept that a boundary order should be issued in 2012 when no reason has been given for the need to do so other than SNP dogma. Although we recognise the strength of feeling on the coastguard, which is an important topic of debate, I urge the hon. Gentleman not to press his new clause.