Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedule 5) Order 2013 — Motion to Approve

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 4:30 pm on 16 January 2013.

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Photo of Lord Reid of Cardowan Lord Reid of Cardowan Labour 4:30, 16 January 2013

My Lords, it is a great privilege and challenge to follow the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, on a subject such as this. On this occasion he probably has more support from more people in Scotland than he ever did when he was Secretary of State for Scotland. When he started his reminiscences, it showed how long he has been involved with these matters. He mentioned that he was a leading member of the students' union at the University of St Andrews in the days when Gordon Brown was rector of Edinburgh University. I was student president at Stirling University and a certain Mr Alistair Darling was student president at the University of Aberdeen. As he pointed out, in those days-no doubt because of his own prowess-there were some 1,500 members of St Andrews Conservative Association and only four members of the SNP. This is presumably why St Andrews did not belong to the National Union of Students but followed the policy of absolute separatism in those days. I agree with a great deal of what the noble Lord said but I am glad he is not pushing the amendment to a vote for reasons that I will explain. It also liberates me to agree with him more than I would have done.

Two distinct questions are being debated around this order. The first is whether the Government made a good fist of the negotiations, the handling of the communication of their argument and the consultation with Parliament. The noble Lord has just given a pretty devastating critique of all three. The second is how we, as parliamentarians, were to respond, and whether our tactical differences over the mishandling of an amalgam or ensemble of tactical questions were sufficient for us to take a strategic decision to vote to renege on that agreement. That would have placed us in an extremely difficult position because, although I agree with a great deal of his criticism, had we taken such a vote, it would have played into the hands of those in Scotland who wish to portray the Westminster Parliament as somehow opposed to this whole exercise.

I just want to make one correction. It was never promised that devolution would stop the aspirations of the Scottish people for independence or separatism or anything else. What was said was that, all other things being equal, it would minimise the chances of the people of Scotland separating themselves from the people of England. That is still absolutely true, although you would have to speculate where we would now be if, throughout the period of Mrs Thatcher and afterwards, we had never given Scotland any degree of devolution, which is the correct way of balancing that.

I will give way to the noble Lord who, in his normal, non-partisan fashion, will deal with questions concerning devolution.