This is not about what Gordon Brown says now. I cannot deal with a matter that Gordon Brown has no influence on other than within the referendum campaign. What was said in the Smith commission is agreed. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, will send me these alleged quotes from Gordon Brown and let us move on. I remind the House that it was the disparaging remarks about Gordon Brown from the Benches opposite that inspired my defence of him. I will always come to his defence.
My noble friend Lord Reid is right: there may have been panic in London—I am not party to the higher echelons of power in London—but in the political parties in Scotland there was no panic. There were the strident calls of the SNP and its negative reaction to the referendum result, but that was it.
It is quite clear that the changes proposed in this order are welcome in Scotland. I am Scottish and involved in Scotland and I know that the order is welcome, and it is right that the Secretary of State has brought it forward. As I have said, the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, has done the House a service by raising these issues and allowing the Minister to respond to them. I make it absolutely clear—even if it invites further interventions—that we are fully behind this order. It reflects the Smith commission recommendations and the requests in Scotland that we should do this, and it is right that the Scottish Parliament should have the power to do so. It is also right and logical that the Scottish Parliament should be given the power to alter the franchise for local government elections.
I hope that we can move forward with consensus and use the consensus that exists in Scotland. Everyone knows that relations between the Labour Party and the Liberals has not always consensual; the Conservative Party has certainly never been too consensual—especially when the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, was Scottish Secretary, but I will not dwell on his guilty past—but the consensus is there. Without any doubt we fully support the order and wish to place that on record.