Scotland Bill

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Foulkes for recanting, as he should on a number of issues. This is the third time that the accusation that somehow devolution would not deter or kill nationalism, which in its ultimate expression is separation, has been mentioned. Will the noble Marquess reflect on what might have happened in the recent referendum had we not had devolution? We would now be a broken union because I have no doubt at all that if the aspirations of the Scottish nation to have more control over its own affairs had been denied for generations over this century and the previous century, we would not have had the result we had, which was to retain the United Kingdom but with devolution inside it. I ask him to reflect on that before he repeats what is becoming a cliché throughout the House.