Scotland Bill

The noble Lord, as always, makes an interesting and important point. At this stage, I am not prepared to follow him completely, but it is something upon which we may wish to reflect as the debate progresses in our House. Part of the confusion that we face on the whole business of a referendum, because the debate in Scotland for a long time assumed that it was within the powers of the Scottish Parliament to call a referendum on independence, is because—and we have seen this sort of tactic in a number of areas—the present First Minister has a very good knack of being able to make quite outlandish assertions, and make them so strongly and repeat them so many times that people come to accept their validity without any attempt to find out what the actual position is in reality and in law. I hope that we progress with this Bill, but we must do so with a great deal of care.