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United Kingdom: Treaty of Union

My Lords, I feel that I must begin by making a confession. Frequently on occasions such as this when I am preparing my speech and listening to the previous speakers, I find that I have got bored. It has been the opposite on this occasion, which is testimony to the timeliness of my noble friend Lord Forsyth introducing this debate. I have enjoyed and have become more interested in the topic as it has proceeded. I do not know whether many other noble Lords went in the autumn last year to the Sir Thomas More lecture at Lincoln’s Inn. Our judge in the European Court of Justice, Sir Konrad Schiemann, explained that in his view we are living at an interesting time in history because the nature of international relations is changing as the very nature of the world and society we live in is changing. Of course, political systems are propelled by what is going on in the outside world, and not the other way around. In Sir Konrad’s view, one of the consequences of this change is that we are moving back towards a slightly different and older hierarchy of loyalties. Instead, perhaps, of a 19th century mono-focus on the nation, we are returning to a world where there is a hierarchy of complementary and not conflicting loyalties, among which obviously one can find: one’s family; religion; in my case, the Conservative Party; Cumbria where I live, which, interestingly, was once part of Scotland until captured by William Rufus; the north of England; England as a whole; and Britain and Europe. In this context, I believe that the absolutely crucial political circumstance for stability in a free society is that any person or community must be prepared to accept the legitimacy of a decision with which they fundamentally disagree. If that breaks down, we are all in trouble. I think that the circumstances where that can apply may and do change over time. It is interesting to look at the relationships that existed between England and Scotland during the past 1,000 years. I learnt from those who taught me that roughly from the time of St Margaret and Malcolm III about 1,000 years ago until the English Plantagenet incursions, the countries were coming closer together. Obviously, after the Plantagenet involvement, they drifted further apart. Then we had James VI of Scotland becoming James I of England and the pendulum swung again. It may be that the pendulum is swinging a bit in the opposite direction now, although I pray for reasons I will mention later that it will not go as far as a schism or partition. I agree with those who argue—I have to admit to being a Buchanan-Smithite Conservative—that the pre-devolution relationship between England and Scotland had become unsatisfactory and unfair. That is because it was perceived—I think that it was the case—that the English were telling the Scots what to do, not because it was necessary for good governance but because the system in place made it inevitable in the circumstances of the time that that happened. I say this with some diffidence in the presence of a number of distinguished Conservatives, but, as a Conservative from the north of England, and from the perspective of the north of England, part of the problem that the Conservative Party has had is that it was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being the emanation of the sentiments of a south-east of England golf club. In the late 1980s and 1990s, there was an idea that real northerners and real Scots do not vote Tory. It was not a matter of predilection, it was a matter of definition, which is why I am glad that our new leader is trying to change that—and more strength to his arm, say I. Whatever words one uses, it is difficult to be a credible unionist party if you have very little support in some of the component parts of that union. I believe that the problem of devolution is that it has created another problem which is more or less the mirror-reversal of the previous difficulty; that is, Scots have an excessive and unnecessary role in England. Here, there is an interesting parallel with the early years of the reign of James I in this country when there was widespread criticism of the Scots King and his favourites, for which one can now read Prime Minister and Cabinet Ministers. As J M Barrie put it in the early part of the last century, "““There are few more impressive sites in the world than a Scotsman on the make””." In particular, it seems that it is felt that Scots politicians have too much political say in English domestic affairs and, as other noble Lords have said, that Scotland gets too much money from England, which means that they can have things that we are told we cannot afford—for example, university top-up fees. It may even be untrue, but that does not matter because it is the perception that matters. These things rankle with people a lot. As they say, something must be done to get things back in kilter. I do not want noble Lords to get me wrong: I do not think that it necessarily follows from that that we have to mirror what has happened in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland in England. We need an English solution to an English problem which is compatible with the framework of the union. The party opposite appreciated that there was a potential problem and thought that they had solved it with their plans for regional government, but I do not think that regional government was the answer, as the people of the north-east of England said emphatically, because it entirely fails the test of political legitimacy. There is no natural homogeneity over the regions that have been identified. I believe, as does a noble Lord who spoke earlier, that Spain provides an extremely interesting and instructive example of the wayin which internal constitutional change can beexercised. We want to be clear that there is nowhere an immutably precise constitutional definition of the union. It is something more than the sum of its component parts. It is also important that as the world evolves, in order for institutions to survive, they must evolve with it. I am an Englishman by birth. I believe that my Englishness is enhanced by being British. I am a British genetic mongrel: I am a bit English, but principally Anglo-Irish—not that they exist any more because of the collapse of another union. Perhaps I may now illustrate that in literary terms: my culture is as much Carlyle and Scott or Yeats and Synge as Milton and Shakespeare. It seems to me that the identity of Britishness is a curious combination of what in continental jurisdiction is known as ““jus solis””, or where you come from, and ““jus sanguinis””, or who your ancestors are. It is that combination that I think is so potent, and which makes Britishness so precious and why, if the union were to break up, we would all be losers. That would be as true for the English as for the Scots.