Scotland Bill

My Lords, the two noble Lords who have spoken on this section have made one point with which I very warmly agree—that we are now coming to the real meat in this Bill. This afternoon we were dealing with what I call ““tinkering devolution””. This is not tinkering—it is much more serious. I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that, since the last day we discussed this Bill, there has been a very important development with the Prime Minister's visit to Scotland and the announcement that he made. He said that if we turn down independence in a referendum, the door would be open to better and greater devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament. One of the problems with Mr Cameron—and, indeed, with Mr Miliband and Mr Clegg, too—is that they were all at primary school in 1979, when a similar promise was made by Sir Alec Douglas-Home. That was never fulfilled, as we oldies well recall. My submission to the House today is that the circumstances today are quite different from those in 1979. Alec Douglas-Home was an honourable man, but he was not in a position to influence Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's hostility to devolution. One reason why the Secretary of State, Michael Moore, is absolutely right to argue for a swift decision on independence is that we could then have two years left in this Parliament with David Cameron as Prime Minister to fulfil his promise, even though Alex Salmond does not like it. Talking of Alex Salmond, I want to pick up on what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes said earlier. Those who criticised Mr Salmond for his abusive rhetoric towards a BBC producer a couple of weeks back were, I submit, rather missing the point. I have to admit that I both admire and like Alex Salmond. You could put that down to prejudice stemming from our common youth in Linlithgow, where I first saw him as an angelic choir boy in my father's church. That is not an adjective that I have heard applied to him in recent times. But admiring or liking him does not mean agreeing with him. When I switched on my television on that Saturday afternoon to watch that dreadful Calcutta Cup match, the last thing that I wanted to see was the First Minister popping up to give us his inexpert views. He should be concentrating on governing the country and not looking for camera calls wherever he can. What I admire about him is his chutzpah—but it is also slightly worrying, because there is a touch of ““L'État, c'est moi””, as Louis XIV of France was reputed to have claimed. We are told by some people that to be anti-SNP is to be anti-Scottish. It is time that they understood that the rest of us actually resent being told that to be pro-Scotland you have to be pro-SNP. That is not the case. I have been told by other broadcasters that the Salmond rugby experience was not unique for them and that the SNP heavies have made more regular calls and complaint to newsrooms than all the other political parties put together. That runs at times close to intimidation.