Scotland Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
John Alston Maxton (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Dundee. Before he became an earl, he was actually the Tory candidate in the famous Hamilton by-election in 1978. Of course, he bears a very famous name in that, in 1924 or 1925 I believe, one of his distant ancestors—standing as a prohibitionist —defeated Winston Churchill in Dundee I too congratulate the two maiden speakers, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, and the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem—or Ming; I have known him for a very long time. He has had three distinguished careers: first, as an athlete; secondly, at the Bar, where he was a very distinguished lawyer; and thirdly, in politics—and I hope that career will continue. He also had a fourth one; I think I am the only person in this House who can claim to have played rugby against the noble Lord, Lord Campbell. He always accused me of being a dirty player, and he was not as distinguished on the rugby field as he was elsewhere—I am sorry he is not here to hear that Almost everything I wanted to say has been said. I will concentrate on two aspects. First, we must stop bringing together devolution and nationalism; they are not the same thing. We must emphasise and keep emphasising that point. At the end of the day, devolution is a democratic process—and I am not saying that the SNP is not a democratic party. That is why some of us campaigned for devolution. I know that some people opposite opposed it, but the fact is that we were in favour of devolution because Scotland had become out of sync. Therefore, it was right that we devolved power to a Scottish Parliament. The alternative was to get rid of Scotland, to be honest. When my late friend Donald Dewar said that devolution was a process—although I gather it has been denied that he ever said it—what he meant was that democracy should go below the level of the Scottish Parliament to local authorities and local communities, and that is what democracy means. It means people taking decisions at the point at which they want and need to take them. Devolution has to be a two-way process. Some powers should perhaps be taken back from the Scottish Parliament and given back to this Parliament, or even given to the European Parliament; I do not know. The fact is that devolution is a two-way process and it has to be Secondly, we have had a long argument and, quite rightly, a discussion about fiscal autonomy and the fiscal arrangements being made by the two parties, and a large part of me agrees with everything that has been said about that. But a part of me also says that it does not really matter, because whatever the fiscal arrangements this Government come to with the Scottish Government, at some point or other the Scottish Government are going to say no. What the SNP wants is a fight. It does not really care what the arrangements will be. It just wants a grievance. What it wants is an independent Scotland. We have to stop appeasing it, and to some extent this Bill is an appeasement for the SNP. That is what the vow was; it is what the Smith commission was, to some extent. It was an attempt to appease the Scottish nationalists in their demand for the nationalist case. We have to stop that. We have to start fighting them We might start fighting them by asking a very simple question: why do you want to separate from the rest of the United Kingdom? What is it that divides us? I speak with an English accent because I was brought up in Oxford. My mother and father both spoke with Glasgow accents, Scottish accents, because they were brought up in Scotland. My brothers and my sister live in England. My nieces, nephews, grand-nieces and grand-nephews live in England. They do not consider themselves Scottish. My brother may consider himself Scottish, but he does not really consider himself a Scot. At the end of the day, I am typical of many people. What is it that divides us from the rest of the United Kingdom? The answer is: nothing. Religion and language do not divide us. There is not even a natural frontier between England and Scotland any more. Until we start asking those basic questions of, "Why do you want to go? What is it that divides us?", and start fighting nationalism, I fear that Scotland may very well slip uncontrollably down the route towards becoming an independent country, which I personally would regret and I will fight all my political life—what is left of it—against.