Scotland Bill

Lord Maxton Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

My Lords, for all the reasons that I set out in my first contribution to this Committee when it convened some time ago to consider the Bill, I want to see this Bill passed. Consequently, I support the devolution of the tax powers to the Scottish Parliament and I want to see Clause 29 stand part of the Bill because, without that mechanism, the amendments relating to the commissioners for Revenue and Customs will not be able to work. I do not intend to delay the Committee with any debate or argument about what I think is genuinely a technical part of the Bill in terms of the mechanism for the implementation of its provisions.

My second point is by way of a bit of advice to the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon, whom I welcomed to the Committee earlier. He had an interesting baptism in the Committee. I am sure that he enjoyed the hour that he was at the Dispatch Box engaging, as he did, with my noble and learned friends and noble Lords around the Chamber. If he thought that that had a distinct quality about it, then he ain’t seen nothing yet if he succumbs to the invitation to engage in a discussion about the position of Scottish football clubs. We have already had a reference to behaviour on the internet with cyberattacks and so on, but the nature of the comments that will be unleashed on the internet if he is unwise enough to be attracted into debate and discussion about the health or welfare of any Scottish football club will be worse than he has ever seen.

[Lord Maxton]

Does my noble friend agree that perhaps that is why Mr Alex Salmond has decided that he is switching his loyalties to rugby?

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

Taking my own advice, I am utterly reluctant to express any opinion that is even marginally related to any football club in Scotland. Most people in Scotland know where my allegiances lie, and engaging in this debate would make it even worse for me. I apologise to my noble friend Lord Foulkes, who has been engaged in Scottish football. His support for Heart of Midlothian Football Club is well known and he has made an important contribution to Scottish football over the years. However, I think that he probably has more scars on his back from that time than he has from any political confrontations in Scotland. I just give the Minister a bit of gratuitous advice: he would be wise to take these matters away and perhaps write some very carefully worded letters to my noble friend and his noble friend if he thinks that these questions need answering.

I want to raise a point that I mentioned in my contribution to the debate on the previous group of amendments. I do this by reference to my contribution to the Second Reading of this Bill, which took place on 6 September 2011. During my contribution to that debate, I asked about the progress of the high-level implementation group and the joint Exchequer committee, which are complementary elements. The joint Exchequer committee, led by Ministers, and the high-level group of civil servants—from both the Civil Service that supports the Scottish Executive and the UK Civil Service—are to work out the process and deal with the challenges and issues in preparation for the implementation of the provisions that we have been debating when this Bill becomes an Act, as I hope it will.

I raise this because I have a suspicion—and I put it no higher than that as I share my motivation with the Committee—that perhaps from the Scotland side of this process of engagement there is less willingness to engage, and less capacity to engage, in the preparation for these issues than we will need if we are to meet the expectations that we all share that these devolved powers will be available to be used for the benefit of the Scottish people, broadly by about 2015. I do not expect the Minister to make any comments at the Dispatch Box about willingness, but I would be able to deduce from the detail of his answers whether there has been that willingness.

I raise this issue for one very good reason. There is an impression in Scotland that the Scottish Government are anxious to get their hands on these additional powers. In fact, they want more. It is not sufficient to say to the Scottish people that you want these powers; you have to explain to them what you are going to do with them when you get them and you have to convince the Scottish people that you are preparing yourself for these powers and for the use of them. I went on at some length at the beginning of this Committee about what I thought was happening in Scotland, and there was convincing evidence that the Scottish Government were falling down in all of those respects.

Therefore, can the Minister tell the Committee not just how many times the high-level implementation group has met but what progress is actually being made? Even if it has to be described generically, I will be satisfied by that, but I will keep pressing as long as this Bill is before this House to get more detail. What progress is being made to prepare the structure in Scotland to receive these powers or any powers that relate to the raising of taxation?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Commercial Secretary to the Treasury (Lord Sassoon)]

My Lords, this is proving to be an education, not least because we have another debate in which there are some points on which I can see the direct relevance to the clause we are discussing and a number of other points on which I am struggling a bit. They are all important points; I am just not quite clear what the connection is with a clause that has to do with the powers of HMRC.

Of course, the football question is directly relevant, and we must deal with football. I declare an interest here as a season ticket-holder of Arsenal Football Club —things are looking very good.

[Lord Maxton]

The noble Lord might be aware that Mr Ally McCoist, the manager of Rangers, was complaining bitterly because one of the things the new owner of Rangers had done was to sell the shares in Arsenal Football Club which apparently Rangers had held for a very long time.

[Lord Sassoon]

There is another thing I have learnt this evening. I am very grateful to the noble Lord.

I appreciate that this is very dangerous territory. The important point about the football is that this is a clause about the powers and duties of HMRC in relation to Scottish affairs. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, was trying to set a trap for me by getting me drawn into the tax affairs of an individual taxpayer, because of course the powers we are talking about here define, among other things, where information can be shared and what the limits are. If he was setting me a trap, I am doing my best not to walk into it—he was not setting me a trap, good. He will understand that I cannot possibly comment on the tax affairs of any individual taxpayer. I will simply say that there is nothing in the Bill that would change the circumstances of an individual—or a company—who is overdue in paying taxes to HMRC.

My noble friend Lord Lyell asked whether there was a difference between preferred creditor and ordinary creditor status between Scotland and the rest of the UK. I must confess that it is not an issue I have in the front of my mind, and I will write to him. I am sure it is a very important question, not only for football clubs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, makes a very important point. We have spent a lot of time in the debate today talking about the problems that surround devolution, but devolution in itself has been a very considerable achievement. It may not have gone as far as my noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen suggested, to kill nationalism stone dead, but it has put in place a system of government that has rectified some of the inequities that have existed for something like 300 years. Because of the nature of the debate that we have had as part of this legislation, we are missing out on making the case that devolution was a very considerable achievement. I do not think that anyone—and I am looking at the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth—would try to put the genie back in the bottle and go back to the previous status quo. Although what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is talking about is in essence a gesture, it is an opportunity for us to celebrate the fact that a transfer of powers was made very peacefully to the Scottish Parliament after the election of the Labour Government in 1997.

Many people misunderstand devolution, which has existed in Scotland for 300 years because of the nature of the Act of Union. The Scotland Act merely transferred that legislation, which often took place in this House in the middle of the night, and put it into a proper parliamentary context. By the time I became Secretary of State for Scotland, the Scotland Office was one department. When the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was Secretary of State for Scotland, he oversaw an empire of something like 13 different government departments. The model that we have now is the right one, and I support the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, in his argument for celebrating the cause of devolution rather than trying to hide it.

[Lord Maxton]

My Lords, I rise as somebody else who supported devolution. There have been one or two occasions during this evening when I have had my doubts, I must say—but in the main I have supported it, because in my view it is about democracy. That is what distinguishes it from independence, which almost certainly under the SNP would be democratic but does not have to be. It is not a prerequisite of an independent Scotland that it has to be a democratic state, but the fact is that devolution is about democracy. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, may sit there and pull faces, but he is one of the reasons why many of us argued strongly for the democratic process of devolution. What we had developed in Scotland was a Secretary of State for Scotland of a Conservative Government who, of course, increasingly had fewer and fewer Members in support in Scotland. Legislation which affected the whole of the people of Scotland was being put through this place with no democratic validity whatever.

There was an alternative, which was to abolish the Scotland Office and do away with separate Scottish legislation altogether. That was not seriously a political option in Scotland. The reason why we argued so strongly for devolution was because we felt that the only way you could get democratic legitimacy in Scotland was to give democratic powers to a Scottish Parliament to make legislation in Scotland for—

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

The hour is late and I am not going to make a speech, but I will just rise to the fly to say one thing. I opposed devolution because I thought that it would lead ultimately to the growth of the demands for independence and would benefit the nationalists, unlike the noble Lord, Lord Robertson. However, if I had realised how much damage devolution would do to the Labour Party in Scotland, I might have been tempted to go along with it.

[Lord Maxton]

However, the damage to the Labour Party in Scotland—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Which was self-inflicted.

[Lord Maxton]

It was partially self-inflicted, as my noble friend beside me says. However, that damage is also a short-term phenomenon and we will recover.

Certainly, we will recover once we have had the referendum on independence. I do not understand why Mr Alex Salmond does not want that referendum immediately, because this is his best chance of winning it. The longer he leaves it, in my view, the less chance he has of winning it. The arguments will no longer be about the way in which, or whether, we have the right to hold the referendum. It will be about the issues of what being an independent country, outside the United Kingdom, actually means: whether it will be part of Europe; whether it will have to apply to be part of Europe; and whether the rest of the United Kingdom will be part of Europe. Mr Alex Salmond seems to think that the rest of the United Kingdom would not necessarily be part of Europe, but it must be in his best interests to hope that it will be part of it. Can your Lordships imagine a Tory-dominated England, led by people such as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who would probably say: “Now we can get out of Europe—we don't have to be in it any longer. We can get out altogether and leave the European Union.”?

I always supported devolution on the basis of democracy. It was the right thing to do and it still is. I wish, however, that we could settle the issue of independence once and for all. If we get it out of the way, we could then deal with whether we apply, change or alter devolution. I am not necessarily convinced that we have to give enormous extra powers to the Scottish Parliament. In fact, there are some parts of the devolution settlement where we ought to be taking powers back from Scotland. For instance, broadcasting is one area over which they demand power, but powers like that should certainly be with this Parliament because they are now international rather than national. We should not therefore necessarily always be looking at giving powers to Scotland, and never taking them back.

We also have to look at what to my mind my late and very good friend Donald Dewar meant when he said that devolution is a process and not an end. The process was about extending democracy from the Scottish Parliament down to local government and local areas, so that you were giving powers to the people in the areas and the communities in which they lived. That to me is what Donald Dewar meant when he said that, not that it was the first step towards an independent Scotland.

[Baroness Adams of Craigielea]

On that point, was it not the case that the Scottish Parliament in fact did quite the opposite of that, and drew powers away from local government and brought them to the Scottish Parliament? In fact, they are the people who have not continued devolution. While this House has tried to keep the concept of devolution going, the Scottish Parliament has done exactly the opposite.

[Lord Maxton]

That is very much so and it was quite interesting, as I listened to the debate earlier on taxation, that the Scottish Government, led by Alex Salmond over the past—what is it now?—three or four years, have not allowed local authorities to increase their council tax. They have put a cap on it, so they have in fact restrained taxation at a local level. My noble friend is quite right. They have actually reduced the democratic rights and responsibilities of local government, whereas what ought to have been the next step was to say, “We have devolved power to a Scottish Parliament for democratic reasons. We now need to devolve further down, to give more democracy to our local communities and our people to take the decisions at their level that need to be taken at that level”. That to me is what devolution is about. It is not about independence; it is not actually about nationalism or nationality at all. In fact, nationalism has been the bugbear of devolution, not the natural progression of it. Therefore I support my noble friend's amendment, which would put “devolved” into this Bill.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak in this debate for the simple reason that I do not support the amendment and I feel that I am destroying my relationship with my noble friend Lord Forsyth bit by bit in a salami-slice fashion.