Committee (4th Day)

Part of Scotland Bill – in the House of Lords at 7:00 pm on 15 March 2012.

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Photo of Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Conservative 7:00, 15 March 2012

I have to say to my noble friend that at 7 pm on a Thursday night, after six hours of this Bill, to use an argument about wasting time is grave to say the least. The whole process that we are going through is in order to work out an appropriate Bill in terms of the Calman recommendations. If he is saying that if we make aggregates tax a devolved tax, although it might change as a result of changes arising from the legal challenge, I can just about get there, but when he says that it is about cross-border issues, presumably that refers to such issues between countries in the European Union and not within countries in the European Union. If we are now starting to say that we cannot devolve measures because of cross-border issues within the United Kingdom, are we not ceding a very important principle? He surely is not talking about the Scottish border in this context.