I apologise to the House for not having been here at the start of proceedings. I hope Members will understand that I was having lunch with our former colleague, my great friend Mr Geoff Hoon, a former Defence Secretary who now does sterling work promoting British defence exports around the world on behalf of Westland Helicopters and who is currently based in my constituency.
I salute my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and the others responsible for bringing this debate before the House. It is of enormous importance because, first and foremost, we tamper with constitutional matters at our peril. We should be very, very nervous about upsetting constitutional arrangements. There is no doubt that the devolution process, which was started in 1997 by the previous Labour Government, was designed to be a sop to nationalist sentiment, but far from being a sop it actually fuelled it. I took part in the Scotland referendum, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore). I went up to Scotland and as an Anglo-Scot—my Douglas family are on the borders of Scotland—I found it a very depressing experience. I believe it has opened Pandora’s box.
Reference has been made to the vow. [Interruption.] I will make some progress before I let the Scottish nationalists intervene. The so-called vow issued by the leaders of the three main political parties was, I recall, dismissed at the time by the Scottish nationalists as just a gimmick. Now they have grasped it as though it were the holy grail. It is as though the vow, which was made out of
nowhere, is now the very thing on which they hang. I made it clear at the time, as, indeed, did many people I spoke to on the doorsteps in Scotland, that the leaders could only make those promises subject to the will of Parliament. They cannot just make policies—certainly not policies of such constitutional importance—on the hoof. It had to be a decision of this House and the other place. It should, therefore, come as no surprise that it is not being taken for granted by anybody other than the Scottish nationalists.