Consumer Scotland Act 2020 (Consequential Provisions and Modifications) Order 2022 – Lord Offord of Garvel.
Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2020 and Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2014 (Consequential Modifications) Order 2022 – Lord Offord of Garvel.
Lord Offord of Garvel: The UK Government’s furlough and self-employed support schemes supported more than 900,000 Scottish jobs at their peak and more than 100,000 Scottish businesses have benefitted from £4 billion of UK Government Covid loans. Going forward, the Government is directly investing £191 million in Scotland through the Community Renewal Fund, Community Ownership fund and Levelling Up Fund. The UK...
Draft Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 (Disability Assistance and Information-Sharing) (Consequential Provision and Modifications) Order 2022 – Lord Offord of Garvel.
Lord Offord of Garvel: My Lords, Her Majesty’s Government are clearly of the view that now is not the time to talk about another independence referendum in Scotland. People across Scotland want to see both our Governments working together on the issues that matter to them: tackling the cost of living, protecting our long-term energy security, leading the international response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine...
Lord Offord of Garvel: The noble Lord referenced the £20 million that the Scottish Government have ring-fenced and the 20 civil servants put together for this referendum. The minute the First Minister announced that she wanted to publish a prospectus for independence, the Secretary of State for Scotland said: “right-minded Scots would agree that using civil service resources to design a prospectus for...
Lord Offord of Garvel: I thank my noble friend and agree with her that the next leader has a great responsibility to protect the union. I note that they will be the 56th Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. So far, we have had 55, of whom 11 were Scots, so that is a healthy 20% representation, which is one of the reasons why this union has been so successful: Scottish voices have been heard. We must ensure that...
Lord Offord of Garvel: This is obviously now on its way to the Supreme Court. The UK Government are very clear that this is outside of competence—this is a reserved, not a devolved, matter. This now goes to the Supreme Court, which will adjudicate on it in the autumn. However, in the meantime, they press ahead: we have another glossy document called Renewing Democracy through Independence, which a professor at...
Lord Offord of Garvel: I thank the noble Lord and take his point that this is as much about tone as it is about content. My observation is that the Scots have been happiest in this union when we demonstrably punch above our weight: we have 8% of the population and 33% of the geography of the UK, but as Scots we have a duty to ensure that whatever we do is more than 8% and heading towards 33%. In recent times, the...
Lord Offord of Garvel: Yes, I do, and I agree with the noble Earl. This might be recognised in the 2021 election for Holyrood: the First Minister was trying to persuade Scots to vote for her on her Covid record, but the minute she got into power, her campaign went back to being a mandate for a referendum. I agree that we have a lot of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth the whole time, but we must look at what...
Lord Offord of Garvel: I think we should always turn the argument back on them. They claim that they want to make Scotland wealthier, happier and fairer, but they have not given us any arguments as to how they can do that. We believe that we can do that much better within the union and with a positive narrative for Scotland inside the union: we have a strong currency and 300 years of family binds that bring us...
Lord Offord of Garvel: In the last Holyrood election, the SNP failed to get a majority. If we add in the 28,000 Green votes, it got to 50% of the popular vote, but it was still only 1.4 million out of 4.3 million voters. It is stuck at that 1.3 million to 1.4 million. You can decide what a mandate is, but it seems to me that common sense would say that it would need to get to 2 million, because the unionists took 2...