To deal with the point about politicians, after I left the House of Commons in 1997—or was asked to leave by the electorate—I went to work for Flemings as a banker, and was very proud to call myself a banker. Then, when the financial crisis came along, things got so bad that I started
calling myself a politician again. Then we had the expenses scandal so I decided to call myself a company director. Perhaps the noble Lord does not realise that there is a problem, not just in Scotland or in Britain but in France, America and elsewhere—you can see that in some of the eccentric choices that are being made now by the electorate—which comes from a complete contempt for the political class. At this time of all times, when money is short—and by the way, we have not seen the fiscal framework, but when the Bill goes through, money will be very short indeed in the Scottish Parliament, when it substitutes a Barnett grant for a tax base—the notion that they could find money to have an extra 40-plus politicians plus all the attendant special advisers, the machinery and the rest, is utterly ridiculous. Therefore I hope that we will not spend very much time discussing this amendment, which is a complete distraction and totally wrong.
However, the noble Lord is perfectly correct to say that there is a problem with the governance of the Scottish Parliament. Can I just gently point out who was responsible for this? When the noble Lord cited all these examples of failures of policy—I could add considerably more—where was the Labour Party? Where was the opposition in the Scottish Parliament standing up to all of this? Therefore the fault did not lie in the lack of a second Chamber but in the opposition to the SNP and in the case of my own party, which gave it the ability to be in government by supporting it in government, some criticism could be made. However, this is not an argument for a second Chamber but for having vigorous Members of the Scottish Parliament, who I hope will be elected in May, doing the job they are required to do.
As regards numbers in the proposals there is already great confusion—we will come on to this later in the Bill—about the boundaries of constituencies and responsibilities. I was very struck by a poll by ITN, when it discovered that some huge number of the Scottish electorate—90%, I think—had absolutely no idea what powers were going to be conveyed by the Scotland Bill on the Scottish Parliament. When asked, a similarly higher percentage—well over 50%—were of the opinion that whatever the powers were, they did not go far enough. Therefore there is a job to do for the Scottish Parliament in engaging with the electorate and a job for the Opposition. It is true that they are failing in a wide range of policy matters, but a House of lairds—a bunch of people calling themselves senators—will resolve this problem. Fortunately, however, it is not a problem for this House but for the Scottish Parliament.