Scotland Bill

My Lords, I am opposed to the amendment on the basis of the rather feeble argument of the doctrine of unripe time, which is always a favourite for people to hide behind. I say so because, as I said in my intervention on the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, I do not think that the Scottish economy is sufficiently robust at the moment to have a dramatic ground shift in financing. We have to be far sharper and more accurate in our criticisms and attacks on the Salmond Administration and the consequences of their failure to protect Scotland from the worst aspects of the economic crisis that we are going through. Secondly, on the suggestion in the amendment that we set up a commission, a considerable part of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, if not half, was certainly taken up by a paean of praise not only for the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, but for the Select Committee which the noble Lord set up here. I am not sure whether the commission will come up with anything very much different by way of information regarding the Barnett issue. In the first instance, to start talking about ending the Barnett formula is a bit premature; in the second instance, I do not really see that a commission is going to do much more than the Select Committee of which the noble Lord was a distinguished member. The Barnett formula is not set in stone. Some of us are old enough to remember the Goschen formula, which was the predecessor of Barnett and which was a lot simpler to understand. As I recall, 11-80ths was the ratio and there was a needs resources element. The formula of the noble Lord, Lord Barnett, was probably too clever by half at the time and it certainly requires review 30-odd years on from its conception. Even allowing for that, I think it is foolhardy at this stage to lay out a stall for devo-max. Discussion of devo-max is something that happens after a referendum on the question of separatism. Once the separatist cause has been defeated in a referendum, we can look the options and what Scotland actually wants. At the moment, there is an assumption that if we do not move quickly we will get hammered in a referendum and that the result could be anything up to 65:35. Personally, I think that if we had a referendum, we would have a very close run thing one way or the other. I would desperately hope that the unity of the kingdom was sustained, and would hope to play a small part in achieving that result. Let us not forget that less than half of the Scottish electorate voted in the elections last year, and 45 per cent of them voted nationalist. So we are talking about a separatist party enjoying 23 to 24 per cent of the votes of the Scottish electorate as a whole. I know that Governments get elected on low turnouts and less than 50 per cent shares, but for us to start developing a complete political construct to accommodate what might be a negotiating position once the fundamental question has been resolved one way or the other is a bit of a waste of time. In a number of respects, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and I are not that far away, but the implication of his remarks is that the commission would transform Barnett fairly quickly. I think that we must focus our attention on the inadequacies of the Salmond Administration and make sure that the money currently available to the Scottish Government is used more effectively for the Scottish people. Therefore, I do not think that we need to look at the formula in the way that he is suggesting, and we certainly do not need another talking shop. We have had one already and, no matter how distinguished the personnel involved in it were and no matter how good the information and evidence they produced, it did not have a great deal of effect. At present, it would be far more sensible for us to carry on with this muddled legislation—which nobody really likes but not many folk want to get rid of—and try to get it finished, not necessarily this evening but in the fullness of time.