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Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, Tony Blair cannot vote on any matters devolved to the Scottish Parliament. He cannot even ask or answer Questions on such matters.
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The Earl of Glasgow: My Lords, I am talking about a Prime Minister. I shall carry on.
It might make sense to deny Scottish MPs the right to speak on English Bills on those occasions when there is a free vote, but only if it were a free vote. If that had been the law the Hunting Act, for instance, would not have had 50 or so Scottish MPs voting against a sport that affected only the English countryside. As we know, Scotland had already ruled on the subject. But I cannot see how Scottish MPs, who like all other MPs in the United Kingdom are subject to their parties' Whips, could be disallowed from voting on a government Bill, even it were one that affected only England. Short of abolishing the Scottish Parliament, or perhaps just drastically clipping its wings, I do not see the solution to the problem.
I was interested to hear that the earlier speakers felt as strongly as I do that the Bill, if passed, would help to loosen the bonds that bind England and Scotland together. My SNP friends see this Bill, as they do all other attempts to resolve the West Lothian question, as a win-win situation for their cause. Although such a Bill might help to stem the tide of anti-Scottish feeling in England, it would also result in a weakening of the Union. That is what those of us who believe passionately in the Union most fear. Like other speakers, I believe that Scotland needs England and that England needs Scotland and that any greatness or influence that we may still have in the world depends on us remaining a united United Kingdom.
Unless the voting rights of Scottish MPs can be limited only to free votes on English matters, I cannot support the Bill. But I much welcome the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Adams, and look forward to hearing her views on this matter.
12.19 pm
Lord Laird: My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, on his excellent, amusing and interesting speech presenting the Second Reading of his Bill. It is not one that I would agree with at all. I have tremendous sympathy with the predicament that the noble Lord and others find themselves in, described as the West Lothian affair. But the solution that he has come up with is, in my opinion, totally unworkable.
The Bill would mean that the other place would have to have a system of majorities: a majority for the government of English affairs, a majority for the government for overall UK affairs and a majority for the government of affairs which may need to be dealt with in Northern Ireland. It is a bit like a kaleidoscope—every now and again, you would have to shake the bits and look to see what the pattern was. It could well be that the only reason why the Labour Party, for example, was in power was that it was relying on 39 Scottish votes. You would therefore have a situation where the Tories might hold the majority of English seats, but the Labour Party was in power because of its Scottish seats. That does not seem terribly sensible.
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What about budgets? We are, in a sense, one unit. When you start cutting up moneys, you take moneys away from one district and give them to another. I am not well versed in the intricacies of the Barnett formula, but it seems that when you vote on one bit, you vote on the lot because it all has a knock-on effect.
What about the Lords? Would the same thing not apply to us? How do you set about who we are in the Lords?
Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, the noble Lord has no constituency representation at all. He is here because of his personal excellence, not because he represents anybody but himself.
Lord Laird: My Lords, I am not disputing the personal excellence bit. The question is, when we come to vote on legislation, are we then deemed to be from a particular area? That is the logic of this.
Lord Baker of Dorking: But the noble Lord is not representing a particular area.
Lord Laird: My Lords, the point is that we still have a say in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. If you are going to limit the lower House, is it not then logical to limit the Members of the upper House? That is the next step.
Take, for example, my very good friend the noble Lord, Lord Steinberg, of Belfast, whom I have known most of my life. He does not live in Northern Ireland—he is an excellent Tory Member of this House—but he is the noble Lord, Lord Steinberg, of Belfast. Is he to be classified as a Northern Ireland Peer and excluded from talking on English issues? The whole thing does not fit into the House of Lords well.
What about the Northern Ireland Members? If, under the solution of the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, you still have no devolution in Northern Ireland, would it be only the Northern Ireland Members who could vote on activities in Northern Ireland? You could do that, but the government party does not even organise in Northern Ireland. There is a sub-government for Northern Ireland run by the DUP. It mightn't be a bad thing, but that is what the solution would be, because it is the largest party in Northern Ireland. If they are the people who can vote on Northern Ireland activities, how could they be members of the Government? The Government would then be multiparty.
How can you be a Cabinet Minister from, say, Scotland if you are not allowed to vote on issues in another area? That is not logical. The noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, asked a good question, and the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, managed to answer the wrong one. If the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom happened to be a Scot—although it seems slightly less likely after last night's result, but not to worry—could he then not vote on English affairs?
I am very conscious of the problem of the West Lothian question. Coming from Northern Ireland and being an Ulster Unionist, and having been the last
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person ever elected to the Stormont Parliament, I am in a good position to say that the Stormont Parliament worked and provided good legislation. As a unionist, however, it was a compromise too far for us. We should never have accepted that system of slight home rule—devolution—in 1921. That made us different from the rest of the Kingdom and we have suffered for it ever since.
The problem is that you do not have different solutions for different areas: you have one solution. If we are going to go down the devolution route, this Parliament must become a federal Parliament, with a lot of similar Parliaments or Assemblies around the place. You cannot have different powers in different sections; first and second-class Members of Parliament; Members of the House of Lords who do not know where they are; or Cabinet members, including the Prime Minister, who are not even allowed to vote on issues affecting the largest part of the United Kingdom.
The lesson of Northern Ireland must be learned. We were made different in 1921. As a unionist, I regret that we accepted that solution. Please do not get caught up in this type of devolution, which will cause intense problems in future. The West Lothian question will not go away. In 20 or 30 years' time, however, somebody might come up with the solution that this will become a federal Parliament and there must be regional Parliaments. That is the only viable solution: that we are all equal.
12.26 pm
Baroness Adams of Craigielea: My Lords, in rising to make my Maiden Speech, I had hoped to be making a positive and supportive one. Unfortunately, with this Bill, I will not be able to do that. While I recognise that the West Lothian question is a serious one, which will eventually have to have an answer, my contention is that this Bill is, in fact, very far from the answer.
We have an anomalous situation with the West Lothian question, but the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, has just pointed out the greatest anomaly of all in this Parliament, whereby the lower House is directly elected on a territorial basis, and this House is appointed and full of individuals. That itself is a great anomaly. How, therefore, can we in this House represent these areas when we are not appointed by area?
I was greatly surprised to listen to a former Cabinet Minister from the Conservative Party making such a nationalist speech. I really did not think that I would ever hear that. This question will not be resolved in a few hours, or a few days, in a short Bill in this House. If we are looking at history, as the noble Lord did, then perhaps we should remember why we came to this position in the first place. A devolved Scottish Parliament was not plucked from the air. There was huge demand in Scotland for these questions to be answered. The debate was raging from the late 1960s into the early 1970s. In fact, when I joined the Labour Party at 16, constitutional affairs, I can assure the
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noble Lord, were the furthest thing from my mind, but I seem to have spent my entire life talking about little else.
The buzz phrase from the 1970s in Scotland, every time you turned on a television programme, was "And now a word about devolution"—until we were all thoroughly sick of listening to devolution. However, this resulted, in 1973, in the Kilbrandon report being published and, in 1978, the first Scotland Act. It was not the loss of the Labour government in 1979 that defeated that, but the 1979 referendum in which a false rule was introduced whereby 40 per cent of the entire electorate had to vote in favour of that Act, no matter what the turnout was. The turnout was 63 per cent, and 52 per cent said yes, which did not meet the 40 per cent rule, and the proposition fell.
Listening to the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, we would have thought that, between 1979 and 1989, nothing happened. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. In March 1989, the Scottish Constitutional Convention was set up. Again, this was brought about by pressure from within Scotland. In that convention, 80 per cent of MPs and MEPs contributed, but this was a very wide body of Scottish civic society. The Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the trade unions, the Churches, voluntary organisations, most public bodies and Scottish local authorities participated. In fact, the only people not to participate were the Tories and the Scottish National Party. This morning, I can understand why—they seem to have the same agenda.
This was undoubtedly the most representative body ever to meet in Scotland. After eight years of debate, discussion, reports and fine tuning, it came up with the solution for Scotland. In 1997, the Scotland Bill was presented to Parliament. Later that year, a referendum was held and 73 per cent of the people voted "Yes". This has been a long time in the making. Thirty years on, we found a solution to the questions that were being asked and of course we knew that we would create an anomaly whereby Scottish Members of Parliament would vote on English legislation.
The particular question was always asked in Scotland, but it was never one for the people of Scotland. It was for the people of England to decide at some later date how they dealt with their domestic, home affairs. I must say to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, that if their decision is to deal with them in a United Kingdom Parliament, all Members equally elected to that Parliament must vote on these issues.
Nor is it true that the Prime Minister does not vote on anything pertaining to the Scottish Parliament. He has the greatest say of all, with other Members of the UK Parliament; that is, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Every Member of the UK Parliament votes on the block grant to Scotland. The Scottish Parliament has no fiscal powers, nor would I want it to have. I believe in devolution because I am a democrat; not because I am a nationalist. Every Member of the UK Parliament votes on the block grant. The Scottish Parliament then decides how that grant is spent, but it has no say in how much it is.
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My great fear is that if we take the noble Lord's advice today, we will go down a nationalist agenda road and we will see the entire break-up of the United Kingdom. We may have some small body left which occasionally meets—perhaps a Council of the Isles—because we will have a Parliament in Northern Ireland, a Parliament in England, a Parliament in Scotland and a Parliament in Wales. I have another concern if we go down this road. Is this solution to be purely territorial, or will we later have Members of Parliament who represent constituencies with airports, for example, saying, "Only Members of Parliament with airports in their constituencies should vote on these issues"?
I am sorry, but I find this a ludicrous proposal that would lead us on to a road that we should not take. I must therefore oppose the noble Lord's Bill.
12.33 pm
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