Scotland Bill

Perhaps I can say a few words on this amendment, as one of the people whom the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, describes as being ““up there””. I am living in Edinburgh, I am a resident, and I will be voting in whatever referendum we have. I am looking forward to it. I do not think of it as ““up there””; it is where I live and what I am part of. This is the amendment on which the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and I are going to disagree—at last—because I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Steel. We need full fiscal responsibility in Scotland, and we need to move towards that. Some people call it full fiscal autonomy; I call it full fiscal responsibility. Is it devo-max? As other people have said, I do not know what Salmond means by devo-max. If he means other functions such as welfare or pensions being transferred to Scotland, I am totally against that. It would be catastrophic and cause tremendous problems in breaking up the system that has existed for so long in the United Kingdom. However, full fiscal responsibility is different. Having been in the Scottish Parliament, I know that at the moment it has responsibility for spending the money but not for raising the money. That means that you are irresponsible, and that at any time when you do not have any money you blame Westminster and say that the Barnett formula is not giving you enough. This is the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, referred to: how do you get to full fiscal responsibility? I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Steel, and we might both get vilified for this, that David Cameron was right. He was right to say that once Scotland rejects separation, and we must reject it, the door will be open for discussions. There will be a dialogue between Westminster and Holyrood about the new form of devolution. The Secretary of State for Scotland is right that we need that yes/no vote as quickly as possible so we can reject separation and move on to discussing what kind of devolution we want. We could have a referendum with devolution options, but it would be far better if the federalist, unionist and devolutionary parties were to work out an agreed formula for the new enhanced devolution and full fiscal responsibility through a convention—