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United Kingdom: Treaty of Union

My Lords, it is a very great pleasure to participate in this debate, which has been outstanding. That is hardly surprising when you think that we have had two former Secretaries of State for Scotland speaking, an assorted number of other Cabinet Ministers, Scottish Office Ministers, and even the former Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament, as well as many noble Lords who have been experienced in Scottish matters for all their lives. The debate is also immensely timely, as so many noble Lords have said. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, who tabled this Motion. I wonder whether it has struck other Members of this House that, when this Government came in almost 10 years ago, devolution was their flagship policy, and yet how few have come forward today either to praise their achievement or to celebrate the union that has served this country so well. I much enjoyed the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord McNally. The House will know that the noble Lord has been unwell—not critically. I hoped that while he was away he might have improved on his jokes, making them newer and better. He has been trotting out the Strathclyde/Forsyth joke for at least seven years, and it is time for a new one. My noble friend Lord Forsyth of Drumlean is a proud Scot; he is a great lover and servant of Scotland and a great servant of the United Kingdom. I, too, am a Scot. Indeed, Mr Salmond, Sir Menzies Campbell and I are the three party leaders in the two Houses who were born in Scotland and live in Scotland. For the time being, that is. We all know that another Scot is shortly to receive his uncontested coronation at Westminster—and not even Macbeth yearned more longingly for that crown. It will be a major change in our politics; it will be the first time since the Scotland Act that a Prime Minister, with power to direct policy in every nook and cranny of our public life, has come from Scotland. I am one of those who still firmly believe that there should be no bar to a Member of Parliament from a Scottish constituency being Prime Minister. Mr Brown has suddenly started a new party turn, about Britishness. For most of us, the idea of Britain does not come as the revelatory moment that it seems to have done for Mr Brown. Was not my noble friend Lord Forsyth right when he said that knowledge of history is the key to understanding Britishness? I wonder how the noble and learned Lord will respond to that. As a Scot, I have never had any difficulty in feeling a sense of also being British or of loyalty to the union, and to be frank I do not understand why there should be any such difficulty. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord feels the same way. Yet, as my noble friend said, how dismal and pathetic it is that the Government have been so mealy-mouthed about the celebration of the 300th anniversary of our union, which was the creation of the greatest voluntary partnership in history. The facts are indisputable. The 18th century saw the flowering of the Scottish Enlightenment, and it was the union that forged the intellectual climate that inspired men such as David Hume and Adam Smith. The 19th century brought unprecedented prosperity and influence to Scotland as an industrial power and a participant in empire. As part of Britain, Scotland played its immense part in what my right honourable friend David Cameron called the greatest moral endeavour of the 20th century, the defeat of Nazi Germany. Within the union, Scottish statesmen, churchmen, military men, writers, painters, intellectuals, industrialists, philosophers, explorers and honest hard-working men and women of every call and station in life have shaped not just the face of Scotland but that of the United Kingdom and indeed of the whole world. I do not pretend for one moment that every aspect of it has been good; it never is in any union. But it would be sheer madness to throw it all away. Even Alex Salmond knows that, which is why he is trying to take the curse off the nationalist vote by promising a referendum and relying on the natural revulsionof the Scottish people at the ineptitude and incompetence of the Lib-Lab Administration at Holyrood. Yet it would be an enormous error to put Scotland in the hands of an unreconstructed party of socialist high spending such as the SNP. Scotland’s future, like Scotland’s past, must surely be one of enterprise, vigour and optimism. It is not one of cutting links with the union and setting sail for the Faroe Islands, the role model proposed for Scotland by the noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie. Even he did not say whether in his vision Scotland would keep the pound, join the euro, or create its own currency. We should face the fact that devolution has not been successful in sedating the separatist tiger. Given that the difficulties within the union flow from frequently quite unnecessary and avoidable misunderstandings, we certainly need to create no further institutional stimuli for separatism. My party has borne a great deal of criticism, much of it, as my noble friend and others have pointed out, quite unjustifiable, for defending the union over the past 30 years or so. My goodness, how great the historic responsibility is of the Labour Party in trying to push under the carpet the glaring unfairness unveiled in the West Lothian question. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who sat through much of this debate but is sadly no longer in his place, said a few years ago that the best way to deal with the West Lothian question was not to ask it. The behaviour of the whole Government has been to live out that Canute-like view of the world. I agree with my noble friend Lord Crickhowell, who said that the dog is barking and biting. Sadly, every opinion survey shows the growing impatience of the English with the unequal relationships that flow from the present arrangements. Scottish MPs, who cannot even vote on reserved matters in Scotland, swan down to Westminster to impose policies on England that would not be accepted at Holyrood. The West Lothian question is a problem. It not only needs to be asked; it needs to be answered. It is hardly controversial in Scotland that MPs elected by the local electorate should not meddle in, for instance, English education when they can do nothing for the problems of local schools in their own constituencies. We need a parliamentary solution to this parliamentary problem. It is a problem that exists far less in this House than in another place. My right honourable friend David Cameron has asked the Conservative Party’s democracy task force, led by Ken Clarke, to look at some solutions. We need to address the asymmetrical nature of current arrangements and we should do so in a calm and considered fashion. That does not include behaving like the honourable company of ostriches who inhabit the government Front Bench and the Liberal Democrat Benches; both those parties refuse to acknowledge the very existence of the problem. Alex Salmond could not ask for more effective allies in his campaign to break up the union, given the growing sense of unfairness, not as in the past in Scotland, but increasingly today in England. My party will fight, all the way, those in England or Scotland who see the solution as separation for Scotland. What about the end to the Barnett formula? Even some Labour politicians, such as Ken Livingstone, complain that Scotland gets far more of the national pot than it is entitled to. I do not believe that it is quite that simple. Other areas of the United Kingdom receive more per head than Scotland. We should remember that before rushing to conclusions. Perhaps the time has come for a genuine reassessment of spending criteria throughout the United Kingdom. If we address the inherent constitutional unfairness to England resulting from the Scotland Act, grievances such as that will not gain purchase. That is the challenge for the Government at Westminster and it is one that so far they have hopelessly failed. The 300 years of the union stand as an astonishingly successful example of inclusive, civic nationalism, combined with wider diversity. Devolution was not needed to protect Scotland’s legal or educational systems; that was inherent in the nature of the union. Together we have given the world so much. The message from this debate is that we should not be complacent about the dangers, but that, if we take the right action now, there is far more that our union still has to give, not just to the people of these islands, but also to the global community that we all inhabit.