Scotland Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Michael Bruce Forsyth (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, and I am sure we can all agree that we are against detriment I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, who chairs the Economic Affairs Committee, of which I am a member, for the brilliant way in which he introduced the substance of our report. It is a high-powered committee, very diverse in its nature, but we had no disagreements or arguments: the report is absolutely unanimous. It was described by one journalist in Scotland as delivering the political equivalent of a Glasgow kiss to the Government; he clearly does not understand that we are much more civilised in this House, but I am sure that my noble friend can feel the pain from some of the report’s recommendations. It is a double whammy, because the other great committee of this House, the Constitution Committee, has independently come out with exactly the same conclusion: that we should not proceed with the Bill without the fiscal framework This has been a very interesting debate. It is a great pleasure to have heard the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Campbell. I have a lot of sympathy with his view that what we need is a new Act of Union which is well thought through and not based on a ragbag of conclusions. There was no greater joy in heaven than to hear the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, confess that perhaps devolution on a piecemeal basis had not quite worked out as he expected. I must say that I thought it would be a disaster, but I never expected that it would reduce the Labour Party to only one MP in Scotland. We were told that no party would have a majority. We were told that they had devised a scheme which would save the union and kill nationalism stone dead. I will not venture down an analysis of how well that has worked out I was disappointed to hear that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, managed to steal the mother of the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, from the Conservative Party, but I take comfort in the fact that his mother-in-law and his father-in-law, the very distinguished General Urquhart, were both stalwarts of my local branch when I was the Member of Parliament for Stirling I know that it is difficult to keep up with all the reports produced in this House, or sometimes even just to read the summary, but if your Lordships cannot bring yourselves to read the report of the Economic Affairs Committee, all you need to do is look at the title: A Fracturing Union? The Implications of Financial Devolution to Scotland. If you can get to the last paragraph of the first section, entitled "Executive summary", it says all you need to know. You can forget what the members of the committee had to say. Under the heading "Huge risks to the union?", it says: "A number of witnesses expressed concern that overlooking the problems identified above is storing up trouble for the future, even threatening the existence of the Union. Professor David Heald, Professor of Accountancy, University of Aberdeen Business School, described the political climate around these issues as ‘toxic … the future of the United Kingdom remains at risk’" Professor John Kay, whom we all know as having three brains—it does not say that in the report, by the way— and who is the visiting professor of economics at the London School of Economics, thought that Scotland would drift towards independence, "because it is the only way to resolve these problems" So there is a special responsibility on this House, on this Parliament, to seek to resolve those problems Here we have the Scotland Bill, all gleaming and new. The noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, the former Secretary of State for Scotland, knows of the complexities of the Barnett formula, and all the rest. In a fantastic speech, she said that she was the daughter of a bus driver and talked about the failure of education in Scotland—not least, actually, caused by the Labour Party’s refusal to embrace our education reforms in Scotland. I have to balance my remarks because I would not want to damage the noble Baroness by praising her too highly. During her excellent speech, I was reflecting that my father sold second-hand cars.