Scotland Bill

Debate between Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale and Lord Bishop of Chester

Thursday 26th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I hope I can be forgiven, as a Sassenach bishop, for making a brief contribution. When I go to Burns suppers at this time of year, I find myself with rather better Scottish credentials than many of those who present themselves in kilts: I have two degrees from a Scottish university and one wife from Scotland, as well as a home there. I am probably the only bishop who will have a vote in the referendum, if I understand the franchise correctly. I am tempted to take a poll of all my Scottish friends who will be disenfranchised before I decide how to cast my vote.

I have a specific question for the Minister, which has not been raised so far. The Second Reading debate was in September and we are now entering Committee at the end of January. An awful lot has happened in that time. In the mists of history, I was a chemist and one of the few things that I learnt was that, when you have several variables on the go at the same time, it is difficult to know what is really happening. In doing an experiment, you change one variable to see what the result is before you bring another variable into play. The referendum might be held in the midst of the implementation of the significant additional devolution that is enshrined in the Scotland Bill, not least in the area of taxation, which throws down the gauntlet as regards fiscal matters. Have the Government given any thought to the awkwardness of holding the referendum and that discussion while we are further down the line of implementing this Bill? That rather undergirds what the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said and the last part of his Motion. If we are to go ahead with this Bill, we have to do so with the full consent of the Scottish Parliament. If we do not, it will be a very awkward and messy discussion. It is already marred by a great deal of awkwardness and messiness for various reasons.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

My Lords, the result of last year’s election in Scotland produced two significant developments which should affect today’s discussion. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, on bringing this matter to the Chamber. There is a need to discuss the Government’s overall strategy in relation to this Bill and the other matters that affect its progress.

The first significant impact of last year’s election result in Scotland is that there will come a point when, for the first time since devolution and the innovation of the legislative consent Motion, which my noble friend Lord Sewel introduced, there will be a significant issue—subject to a legislative consent Motion—on which the two Parliaments disagree. The second significant development and impact was that the majority achieved by the Scottish National Party in those elections gave the First Minister the opportunity to use that majority ruthlessly—he has been very clear about this—to determine, if he could, the rules, organisation and timing of the referendum.

Perhaps to the surprise of many of my colleagues, I welcomed the Prime Minister’s intervention this month, but I have two regrets about it as well. The first is that it was several months too late and should have occurred at a much earlier stage in the debate. None the less, it is welcome. The second is that it appears yet again to be part of a government strategy which, to be honest, has regularly since last May seemed to be all over the place, with different Ministers saying different things, the Prime Minister sometimes intervening and sometimes not, and the Government changing their position on different aspects of a referendum or other matters from time to time, or at least giving the impression of doing so.

This debate gives us an opportunity to say to the Government and to the Prime Minister that there needs to be a much more coherent approach to this. It is vital that the referendum, whenever it takes place, does so under fair rules agreed between the parties, not just by the nationalist majority in the Scottish Parliament but by all the parties, as occurred in 1997. The new Labour Government in 1997 gained more votes than did the Scottish National Party in Scotland last May, yet that summer they worked not just with the Liberal Democrats, who were our colleagues in the Constitutional Convention—the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, was a leading figure in that discussion—but with the nationalists, who were against devolution up until that referendum, and with the Conservatives, who at that point were in opposition in the House of Commons. That is the approach that must determine the organisation of this referendum. Any interventions that help us secure that are, in my view, welcome. If the Government are to succeed in this effort, they need to be more coherent and more consistent in their approach to tackling these issues.

As regards the legislative consent Motion, we have to understand that if we have a process that works relatively comfortably when the two Governments are working in agreement and when the two Governments are of, or largely of, the same party, there will be times when the legislative consent Motion is not going to happen because the Scottish Parliament is of a different political composition. You cannot have the principle of the legislative consent Motion and then ride roughshod over it. I know that that is not the intention of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, and it would certainly not be his approach, but we have to be very cautious about making too much progress on this Bill in advance of further discussion taking place with the Scottish Parliament, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has said. There is a point of principle on the LCM. We need to be careful how we proceed. I understand the desire of many Members on both Front Benches and elsewhere to make progress on the Bill, but we need to make sure that any such progress and any further interventions on the issue of a referendum should proceed in a coherent fashion and that the Government should follow through with a proper strategy to engage the Scottish Government in discussions—not just do interviews on Sunday mornings on the BBC—even if they have to force them to the table to do that, to make sure that the Scots get the referendum they deserve.