Scottish Affairs (Royal Commission's Report)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 1 February 1955.

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Photo of Mr George Thomson Mr George Thomson , Dundee East 12:00, 1 February 1955

I cannot agree with the praise of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. J. R. H. Hutchison) for the Report that we are considering. It seems to me that when he suggests that those of us who are dissatisfied with the Report, and discontented with some of the things that still exist in Scotland, are being emotional, he is not being very accurate.

I do not think I have heard a more unemotional speech this afternoon than the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson), who gave a very straightforward and factual survey of various ways in which conditions in Scotland are still relatively worse than they are in England and Wales, and of our reasons for being anxious about them.

It also seems to me that those who feel that the suggestions made in the Report are constructive contributions towards solving the Scottish problems are themselves being guilty of some emotion and of concealing the facts from themselves. For instance, when it is suggested that we are going to solve Scotland's transport problem by adding to the many offices of the Secretary of State the new office of Scottish Minister of Transport, I think that those who gain satisfaction out of that idea are being emotional rather than realistic.

When the party opposite were in opposition, they appealed at every stage for greater Scottish control of Scottish affairs. They now put forward this proposition for a Scottish Minister of Transport as being a step in that direction, but, of course, in isolation, it can be quite the reverse. If we judge Scottish control of Scottish affairs in a democratic sense, what does this proposal mean in Parliamentary terms? It means that when Scottish Members of Parliament want to keep in touch with transport developments in Scotland, they will find their Questions transferred, at Question time, from the Minister of Transport to the Secretary of State for Scotland, which will lead to even greater congestion in the Questions to the Secretary of State, and, therefore, to an even more inadequate opportunity to deal with Scottish transport problems.

I agreed with the hon. and gallant Member for Berwick and East Lothian (Major Anstruther-Gray) when he looked this gift horse rather carefully in the mouth and said that he would really begin to believe in the suggestion that the Secretary of State should be responsible for transport in Scotland when he saw the Forth Road Bridge beginning to be built. I begin to feel that Members of the party opposite ought to change their slogan from "The Right Road for Britain" to "The Right Bridge for Britain." For my part, of course, the right bridge would not be the Forth Road Bridge, much as I would like to see it, but the Tay Road Bridge.

The point, however, is that by making the Scottish Secretary responsible for Scottish transport developments, we do not get to the crux of the transport problem or to the whole problem of Scottish Government. The fact is that the Forth Road Bridge, or the Tay Road Bridge, or the twin Whiteinch Tunnels, depend on the Treasury, and the Secretary of State will still have to go to the Treasury and fight his battles with them, just as the Minister of Transport had to do in the past.

In a country like Scotland, with its special economic handicaps, the difficult problem that faces us is how we are to get some sort of autonomous financial treatment for Scotland within the United Kingdom financial framework. It is all very well to talk about legislative devolution, as the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) did, but that will not solve the real problem for Scotland, which is a financial one of being able to get greater Scottish control of the money required in order to do the things that Scotland really needs.

The noble Lady the Member for Aberdeen, South (Lady Tweedsmuir) said that, in her view, the Goschen formula was an unsatisfactory one, and I completely agree with her. I think we have to deal with these things on their merits in each case. If we take the case of education, Scotland receives her funds strictly in accordance with the Goschen formula, which means, of course, that the actual initiative in education in Scotland is tied to what England does.

What we do in any year for education is decided, in fact, by what England is able to get out of the Treasury. We in Scotland have a university tradition which is very different from that of England, and today we have twice as many university students in proportion to the number in England, but we still only receive funds in accordance with the Goschen formula, and we have to readjust our education expenditure and relate it to something that has been decided not in relation to Scottish universities, but in relation to the needs of England.

I do not think that that is a very satisfactory proposition. My complaint against the Royal Commission's Report is that it does not face this very difficult problem and provide an answer to the question how we are to do away with the discrepancies between economic standards in Scotland and in England and Wales, pointed out by my lion. Friend the Member for Motherwell.

I have always felt that one of the less admirable of the Scottish traditions is the toast one hears quoted frequently: Here's tae us, wha's like us? That about sums up the atmosphere in which the Royal Commission's Report has been written. It has tackled the complicated and very difficult problem of Scottish government within a United Kingdom framework in a mood of complacency and self-satisfaction.

I should not have minded so much had it looked at the problem and said, "These are very difficult problems, but perhaps at the moment the way in which we are attempting to deal with them is about the best we can do." Instead, it went out of its way positively to suggest that the present arrangements are as near ideal as we are going to get. That was going a great deal too far.

I had a foreign visitor here recently, a student of political science, who asked if the Scottish Secretary was Scotland's Prime Minister. My reply to him was that the Secretary of State was not only in a sense Scotland's Prime Minister, but the difficulty was that he was the whole Scottish Cabinet into the bargain. On personal grounds we all very much regret the absence of the Secretary of State from our debates today, but it is significant that on the occasion of this debate on the present method of Scottish government and the burden it places on the Secretary of State, he should be indisposed and absent. He has ample reason for feeling overburdened by what we put on his shoulders. To pass over to him responsibility for electricity in Scotland, as has been done, and now responsibility for Scottish transport, is no solution to the problem. I think it will make things more difficult.

I was sorry that the Commission turned down the suggestion that some of the Under-Secretaries at the Scottish Office might be promoted and given Ministerial rank. I think there is something in that suggestion by which the Secretary of State would, in fact, be Scotland's Prime Minister at Cabinet level.

I was also sorry that the Commission turned down a suggestion that the Scottish Grand Committee might hold some of its meetings in Scotland. The hon. and gallant Member for Berwick and East Lothian supported the Commission in its rejection of that proposal. He said that the obstacles which the Commission mentioned were insuperable. To me it seems that the objections put forward were not in fact insuperable, although they were made out to be so.

If we could have meetings of the Scottish Grand Committee in Edinburgh that would have tremendous advantages, and would greatly stimulate the interest of the Scottish public in Scottish Parliamentary Government. I think it would stimulate the interest of Scottish newspapers in what goes on in Parliament in relation to Scottish business. It would certainly make things very much more easy for Scottish citizens wishing to obtain access to Members of Parliament to put their views before them. They would not then have to make an expensive overnight journey to meet their Members.

The Commission conceded the weight of these arguments, but said that it was difficult to carry out the proposals for two main reasons. They were that the Scottish Grand Committee would need to meet in Edinburgh at a time when Parliament was sitting in Westminster, or that some time would need to be taken out of the Parliamentary Recess. I do not think either of those difficulties is insuperable. I think it would be quite practicable to hold several Scottish Grand Committee meetings at week-ends in Edinburgh, perhaps on Fridays and Mondays. On Fridays most Scottish hon. Members try to get away to work in their constituencies and on Mondays Parliamentary business is often of less importance.

If we had a will to do it, it could be done. I do not suggest that it should be every week-end or even a large number of week-ends, but merely a few week-ends during the Parliamentary Session. It would be equally practicable, without interfering with the holidays of hon. Members, the work of hon. Members in their constituencies, or the political travels of hon. Members, to take a week out of the Parliamentary Recess for meetings of the Scottish Grand Committee.

The increase in the amount of time available for discussing Scottish business by even a small extension of this idea would be very great. At the moment we meet in the mornings for only 2½ hours, and very often the business we do in the mornings faces competition from other Committees. Even in the last Session— when the Grand Committee was working much harder, I suppose, than ever in its history—we met altogether for about 100 hours. If we had just one week of the Parliamentary Recess for meetings in Edinburgh we should meet for nearly half that amount of time—about 40 hours—and if we had two or three week-ends in addition we should have an amount of time for meetings of the Grand Committee equal to that during the whole Parliamentary Session of last year.

Of course, I am not suggesting that the meetings of the Scottish Grand Committee should be completely transferred to Edinburgh. The hon. and gallant Member for Berwick and East Lothian said that that would create very great difficulties in getting business through, but I do not see why we should not hold meetings here when we wish, and in Edinburgh when we wish. That would be an advance very acceptable to Scottish citizens. It is one to which we ought to give more attention.