Parliament (Participation of Members of the House of Commons) Bill [HL]

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 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. 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.