Scotland Bill

My Lords, we return to the issue of the referendum. In the group of amendments to which the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, has spoken, there is an amendment that would require a referendum to be held before further taxation powers can be devolved and a referendum that would be required before Part 3 of the Bill would come into force. Somewhat curiously, Amendment 75 would ensure that the finance provisions in Part 3 of the Bill—other than the consequential amendments related to the Scottish rate of income tax and the powers in Clause 37—and the clause related to Antarctica in Clause 14 would come into force only two months after a referendum in which the majority of participants had voted in favour of Parts 1, 2 and 3 of the Act. We have an opportunity for many referenda—or referendums. I am a supporter of referendums in the grammatical sense—not in the sense of holding them—but we are not going to down that route at the moment. As the noble Lord, Lord Browne indicated, the debate quickly moved on to devo-max and other variations on that. I do not intend to follow that, as I think that the amendments are about whether we should hold a series of referendums. On that issue, I remind the Committee what the Calman commission said in paragraph 3.91 of its report: "““Tax devolution can provide accountability. We concluded in our First Report that the devolution of all taxes to the Scottish Parliament would not be consistent with the maintenance of the Union, and this remains our view””." That was a view that the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, was expressing. I am biased, because I was a member of the commission, but in much of the analysis that it did in trying to devise the balance of taxation between the United Kingdom Parliament and the Scottish Parliament the commission looked at the implications of any proposal for social and economic union. That echoes the speech of my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart. I refer to a social union not only of constituent countries of the United Kingdom but of the many regions within Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, asked about the 1997 referendum and the noble Lord, Lord Browne, has indicated his interpretation. It is difficult, 14 and a half years after the event, to be too prescriptive about what interpretation you may make of it, but it is clear in 1997 that the Scottish electorate gave a clear mandate for a Scottish Parliament with tax-varying powers. Some 63.5 per cent declared in favour in terms of tax-varying powers and 10 per cent more than that on the idea of having a Scottish Parliament. We have to recognise that the debate leading up to the referendum was around a specific proposal for tax-varying powers, plus or minus 3 pence. Equally, many argued that it was an argument on the ability of the Parliament to assume a degree of financial accountability for taxation and spending decisions. It was an important principle, and a mandate flows from the 1997 referendum that the Parliament should have a degree of financial accountability for taxation and spending decisions.