Let me pour a bit of oil on this heated debate and remind us of its title, “Devolution and the Union”. All of us bring to these debates some personal experience. For the first 18 years of my life, I lived in a federal state, not in a union. Those who talk about federalism need to be reminded of just what it means. I also spent 18 months on a constitutional convention, so I know what that means, too.
Let us consider three terms. First, what does devolution mean? No one could argue that Labour has not been the architect of genuine devolution within these British Isles. In many ways, the one piece of unfinished business has been devolution in England outside London. We must reflect on that, because we cannot have devolution in the constituent parts of the United Kingdom unless there has been proper devolution in the largest part of that United Kingdom.
The second issue, a puzzling one, arises when we talk about money. I think we have completely forgotten the purpose of transfer payments. The centre collects money in order to redistribute it to the regions according to need. That is the nature of our Union. It is not a vehicle for increasing separatism and it is not a vehicle for increasing special pleading: it is a vehicle of unity, a vehicle of bringing disparate parts together in a fair and proper manner.
The third issue is how our electorates in a United Kingdom and a Union relate to that. What I find really troubling about this whole debate is that those who are strong advocates for devolution sometimes use it as a means of breaking up the Union. If people do not want a Union and they want federalism, they should be clear about what that would mean. As a structure in which one part is disproportionately larger than the others, federalism does not work. People say, “Isn’t it great how Germany works as a federal state?”, but speaking as a German who grew up in Germany, let me remind the House that the only time federalism worked in Germany was after Prussia had been broken up. I would not recommend the Prussian model as one to follow. If people want to follow it, okay, but they should be very cautious.
Federalism in the UK would be deeply divisive. The rest of Europe looks at the model of the Union in the UK as something that this country got to a couple of hundred years before everybody else did, and they admire and envy us for having done so. I find it quite extraordinary that some are trying to go back on that. Let us remind ourselves that the transfer of money is in order to represent the United Kingdom as a Union—