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Lord Elder: My Lords, I find myself following the distinguished Liberal Democrat, who seemed to me, in a very interesting variation on various trends, to have come dangerously close to coming out as a nationalist this morning. I found much about the debate perplexing, not least that the Bill before us had been moved by a Member of the party which claims to be in favour of the union. I think that this debate really revolves around the question of how to deal with an unwritten constitution that has been around for hundreds of years which has a number of anomalies, and how one deals with these anomalies. It is perfectly appropriate to cope with anomalies; the question is whether this Bill, instead of dealing with anomalies, in fact creates a constitutional crisis. I take the view that it creates a constitutional crisis and should therefore be avoided.
It is surprising that the Bill challenges the right of this Parliament to sit as a UK legislature with powers over all matters, and, if enacted, would undoubtedly signal at last the start of the end of that union. It expresses a view which is wholly destructive and determinedly opportunistic and which should certainly not be given support in this House.
There have always been anomalies in our unwritten constitution. I find it ironic that the noble Lord, when in government, never showed any inclination to accommodate these anomalies, and, as a Secretary of State, was satisfied to govern Wales and Scotland without any sort of electoral consent from the Scottish and Welsh people. Has he forgotten that he was a member of the government that used their English majority to force the poll tax on the people of Scotland before the rest of the United Kingdom? One of the more interesting phenomena of that time is that is it is always said that the government tried it out in Scotland first and—this is really fascinating—having found that it was unsuccessful and politically
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disastrous, went on to use it for the rest of the United Kingdom, with, as my noble friend Lord Sewel said, disastrous consequences for both their then leader and subsequently their government.
It appears that this Bill wishes to create two classes of MPs. Under the noble Lord's proposals, we would cease to have a UK Parliament. Instead we would have a London Parliament where Scottish and Welsh MPs were visitors with limited rights, powers and influence. I can think of nothing more likely to lead to a break-up of the union than an adoption of such measures.
Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, does the noble Lord recognise that English MPs have limited powers now on Welsh and Scottish matters? Why does he not say that that is unacceptable? English MPs have no influence on Welsh and Scottish matters. How does that reconcile with what he has said?
Lord Elder: My Lords, it is, as my colleague was saying, not true. I shall come to that if the noble Lord will allow. He says repeatedly that in reality the Westminster Parliament does not have the power or right to govern. Whether or not he likes it, that is not in statute the case. I will come back to that again, but he really must not keep repeating a point which is simply an assertion and not substantiated by what is in statute.
I did not like what happened under the most recent Conservative government and the democratic deficit that was created then. That is one reason I argued so strongly for devolution within the United Kingdom. I have never wavered in my belief that we were stronger as part of the UK, and I do not do so now. We went ahead with devolution in the knowledge that we were likely to be switching one set of anomalies under the constitution for another, but some of us—those who were not nationalists—have been prepared to live with the consequences of old anomalies because the price to be gained from the strength of the UK meant that it was worth while.
Confronted by another aspect of the same constitutional anomaly, some noble Lords seem to want to cut and run. They dismiss the idea of finding a way of dealing with the anomaly but are intent instead to create a major constitutional crisis. It shows what superficial supporters of the union they have become. They claim that the majority feel threatened by a minority and need special protection. I can understand the old position where a minority felt oppressed by a majority, but the idea that a special dispensation should be used to protect the majority, which is what England is, seems rather odd.
Noble Lords also make the assumption that future governments will be as indifferent to the feelings of the majority as the sponsors of the Bill were in the past to the feelings of the minority. I do not believe that that would be the case, not least because, having been in the position we were in between 1979 and 1997, the Scots
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and the Welsh are a good deal more sensitive to the issues surrounding democratic accountability than the members of the Official Opposition ever were.
Scots and the Welsh remember how it felt to be ruled by a government who had little sympathy or concern for their issues. It was not democracy; it was grossly unfair. Those of us who believe in a United Kingdom believe that we are all, as constituent parts of the United Kingdom and as part of the European Union, stronger than we would be on our own. We had accepted the constitutional anomalies involved when Westminster government seemed indifferent to us. That is what devolution is within the United Kingdom—it leaves Westminster intact. In a famous phrase, "power devolved is power retained". In Westminster, the Parliament of the United Kingdom remains sovereign.
A past leader of the Conservative Party, William Hague, argued that devolution for Scotland and Wales was unfair to England and would lead to the break-up of Britain. He argued briefly for an English Parliament, but soon backed off. But neither he nor the noble Lord ever, as far as I can remember, went on record to say that the pre-devolution settlement was unfair to Scotland or Wales.
Now a new leader of the Conservative Party claims to believe in devolution. The Dunfermline by-election, I am happy to concede to the Liberal Democrats, was a remarkable victory yesterday. But the interesting thing to draw out of it is that their party and my party, whatever that result had been, would have continued to fight in every seat in every bit of Scotland, Wales and England, whereas the implication of the Bill is, frankly, that the Conservatives are withdrawing into their laager and are not prepared to do so. I return to what the leader of the Conservative Party said. There was much quoting of what he said about his being a liberal Conservative and agreeing with Liberal Democrats on Iraq. The same leaflet also said that he agreed with the Liberal Democrats on devolution. Since the Liberal Democrats' attitude to devolution has always been well known—they see it as a staging post towards a federal solution, which they have valued for a long time—the interesting question for the Conservatives seems to me whether in supporting the Liberal Democrats in devolution, Mr Cameron is now becoming a federalist, or whether he is just a bit reckless with the constitution, as I would say this Bill is.
Supporters of this Bill also have some strange bedfellows. The Scottish National Party gives it its backing, not through any political principle, but precisely because it sees the Bill as a means to an end; namely, to set in train the break-up of the United Kingdom. It believes that the UK Parliament should not have a role in legislating north of the border and that the Scottish Parliament should be the only legislative body as far as Scotland is concerned. How do the noble Lord and his supporters on the Benches opposite feel, as unionists, to have such allies?
The noble Lord referred to the second Home Bill of 1893 when Irish MPs were reduced in number. He did not go on to say that this House rejected that Bill in
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Committee because it was impossible to define what was and what was not national legislation. Over 100 years later that issue still exists. A great deal of legislation can too easily be described as English but in fact has a huge direct and indirect impact on the devolved governments, not least in the finances available to them, as has been mentioned. The House of Lords was right to reject that Bill then and it will be right when it fails to support this one.
Finally, I say of this Bill that it represents a terrible failure of nerve and of ambition for the Tories. They clearly feel that they have no chance of gaining seats in Scotland and in Wales. For a party that had more than half the votes in Scotland 50 years ago, that is a reflection of how far it has retreated over the years into some parts of one of the countries of the UK. It can hardly now claim to be a party of the whole nation or, indeed, one that supports the union. This is a bad Bill, and it should be treated accordingly.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Elder, promised that he would answer the question of my noble friend Lord Baker when he said that English MPs had no say over Scottish matters. I was looking forward to hearing what the noble Lord said. Does he not have an answer, or did he forget to give it, and if so, could he please give us the answer?
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