Scotland Bill — House of Lords, 2015-11-24
Topic: Government Operations
Jeremy Purvis (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Sanderson of Bowden, not only due to his very strong Borders links, to which I have great affinity, but since he raised some of the aspects that I will try to pick up in my own contribution in the wee small hours of this long debate Before I start, I, too, wish to add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, on her maiden speech, and to my noble friend Lord Campbell of Pittenweem. So successful was his maiden speech that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, even named me after my noble friend’s adopted area of Pittenweem when he referred to me. My noble friend Lord Campbell’s work as chairman of my own party’s commission, following in the footsteps of the Steel commission, is relevant to this debate. There is obviously something about the Lib Dems that we have the great benefit of our former leaders to chair constitutional committees—noble Lords may draw their own conclusions about that for their own parties—and his work established the fundamentals of our approach to this Bill In the last two decades, in the two referendums there have been in Scotland, the people have spoken very clearly. They want a Scottish Parliament and they want it to operate within the United Kingdom. That beguilingly simple opinion is complicated by the fact that, since the Act of Union, we have lived in a unitary state. Furthermore, the Treasury has developed really quite enormous centralised power over the decades. Also, when we developed the welfare state in the 20th century, it was by and large geographically blind for understandable reasons Creating a system of governance that changes the core elements of this unitary state has not been easy, and I for one never thought it would be. The consequences of trying to balance choice and affordability in Scotland with a different profile of economy in other areas, as well as changing the British state, has not been straightforward. It proved to be complex both politically and practically. In many respects, it will continue to be so, but that should not necessarily cause any great surprise to us. Securing consensus has sometimes been very difficult and often led to a lowest common denominator for constitutional reform. However, gladly, it has not presented a block to change We have debated many aspects of reform but all without the wider narrative as to the future of the union overall. Change has, therefore, proven to be what was expedient for political agreement rather than set within a wider settlement. The establishment of the legislature in 1999 without commensurate fiscal power or a fully formed Government was a clear example of that. We still see remnants of an outdated concept of Westminster parliamentary sovereignty, which we have heard referred to in this debate, rooted in an imperious parliamentarist view rather than the more compelling concept of citizenship sovereignty that we now have across our lands In this regard, the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Kelvin, deserves considerable commendation. He is remarkably modest, given his achievement in finally bringing about what can be the fundamentals of a home rule settlement, where we bring fiscal power commensurate with legislative power, and start to establish that we will need much greater transparency in intergovernmental relations and also that Governments must work together across both devolved and reserved interests. That is finally establishing some of the principles on which the future generations of our governance must be based I was grateful to the Minister for referencing in his opening remarks the devo-plus reports that I authored after I served in the Scottish Parliament, for five years of which I was a member of the Finance Committee there. I think that we will finally see the functions of a tax and welfare system in Scotland, but this will also bring about difficulties because it will not be easy. It will also add pressure on my former institution in Holyrood. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, and others said, the current way that the Scottish Parliament operates will need to change. Again, that should cause no surprise. I believe it is positive There has been much concern about the lack of publication of the fiscal framework. By and large, I share that concern. At the very least, it would have been helpful for the Government to have published the statement of principles, especially on this now famous or notorious concept of no detriment. That would have been helpful and would have framed the debate much better. My noble and learned friend Lord Wallace of Tankerness outlined very clearly the principles underpinning why such a concept exists, but greater clarity would have been more helpful. Again, it would be helpful to know whether the fiscal framework is simply another iteration of the Statement of Funding Policy. There have been six versions of that since 1999 —that is how the devolved areas are funded—and it would be helpful to know whether the framework is based on that Finally, there has also been comment on the need for a wider consideration of a narrative of the union going forward. I passionately believe that that is necessary, and I brought forward a Bill to your Lordships’ House to try to help to bring about space in which we can debate that, in a Constitutional Convention Bill. That would be citizen led and try to establish some of the fundamental principles, as well as establishing a narrative. I have talked about the need for a statement of the new union, and others have called for a new Act of Union, but the common thread is that this Scotland Bill deserves to be passed—we need it on the statute book; it corrects many of the areas where we have been piecemeal in the past. However, without such a binding statement, a core element, on why this union of these nations exist, I think that we will still struggle. Once this Bill passes, as I hope that it will, we should give our absolute focus to bring about either a new Act or new statement for the generations to come.