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Mr. Eric Clarke : The argument advanced by many of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members is that we need more representatives in the EC and in the European Parliament if we are to democratise that institution. That is the desire of many people throughout Britain and the other countries represented. The role of the Commissioners and appointees must be diminished, and Scotland's voice should be heard. What do we do when the new member nations join? Will more time be taken to debate and discuss specific items on the agenda because there will be more representatives from those new member countries? I see them being slower and more deliberate--rightly so, if they are to have a say in laying down laws.
The United Kingdom representatives should not just be members of the august body : representations should be heard from all parts of the United Kingdom, as they are from the la"nder in Germany, which lobby for their own interests. I am all for that representation, because I think that we are losing.
As an hon. Member who represents an area that qualifies for RECHAR money, I lay the blame at the feet of the Government. That money is not being taken up--not because of any lack of effort on the part of the European Parliament and, in particular, our own representative from Lothian, who has cross-party support in this, but because of the lack of additionality money from the Government, who have not honoured their so-called promises.
As we heard in a debate earlier in the week, there are many areas throughout the United Kingdom that will now qualify for the RECHAR fund because of mine closures. There have been many promises and hints that the mining communities will be helped, but if they get as much help as we and many of the other older mining areas have had, they will be toiling in many ways.
There is a need to speak up in the House, in the European Parliament and, yes, in the media, because there is a practical proposition to be made. Many other countries, such as Eire, seem to benefit from being EC
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members in a more practical way than Scotland. I hope that, when some of the legislation is passed--I am harking back to the mining industry--we shall not have closures alone in the steel and coal industries. I hope that the coal industry in Scotland will be an industry if privatisation comes off, and that there will be EC help to retain it for ever more. As we all know, we have great assets in that part of the world.There has been talk of boundary changes. Some of the things that have emerged--especially pertaining to the leak from The Scotsman --are reminiscent of the Vance-Owen agreement. We seem to have corridors not of Muslims but of Tories--being kept in an enclave to ensure that no one encroaches on their positions.
There are some boundary changes that we should like to be made : we should like to have Berwick-upon-Tweed back, for example. Berwick belongs to the Scottish nation and was stolen from us many years ago-- [Interruption.] Yes, and perhaps some other places that I do not know. I would happily put in a claim right now if that would give the Scottish nation another representative or two.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) : The hon. Gentleman has referred to my constituency. I hope that he will recall that Berwick-upon- Tweed has changed hands between England and Scotland 15 times over several centuries, and that it would be somewhat disruptive if that were to continue.
I put it to him that the Boundary Commission's activities on both sides of the border at Berwick-upon-Tweed could give us considerable cause for anxiety, given that the same people who will be implementing the Bill appear--if the rumours are true--to be making the most extraordinary proposals about the very piece of Berwickshire with which Berwick has traditionally been associated over those centuries.
Mr. Clarke : I do not intend to declare war on the people of that area, for whom I have great affection--as I do for my Geordie friends in the coalfields further south.
This is a serious matter, which should not be left to the Government. It should not be left to any Ministry, and especially not to Dover house or St. Andrew's house. If the people of Scotland were asked, they will give the answer that they gave at the election ; they need full representation, and they need it in Europe. I shall leave it at that, as I think that the geographical case has been made by my hon. Friends.
Mr. Allen : This has been a very good debate. Although the Opposition wholeheartedly welcome--
Mr. Wallace : On a point of order, Dame Janet. Can you confirm that we are in Committee, and that it is open to any hon. Member to speak twice if called by you?
The Second Deputy Chairman : I can confirm that that is so.
Mr. Allen : Although the Opposition wholeheartedly welcome the Minister's decision to grant one of the extra seats to Wales, the decision to exclude Scotland from the distribution is unacceptable to us. It shows the contempt in which the Conservative party holds those parts of the country in which they lack support.
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The Government are effectively saying to 5.1 million people, "You don't vote for us, so we'll deny you adequate representation." The Home Secretary said on Second Reading just the other day that he is fighting for England. It is a shame that he cannot bring himself to fight for the other countries in the Union with as much force as he says he fights for England.Like other hon. Members who have spoken in the debate, I readily accept that the average size of a Scottish Euro-constituency is marginally smaller than that of an English one. It is nevertheless greater than the average constituency in Wales will be if the proposals are implemented.
The Home Secretary has given no indication that he took the geographical size of the constituencies into account in his calculation, as he is entitled to do by law, under the European Parliamentary Elections Act 1978. If constituency size were taken into consideration, it would be obvious that Scotland requires greater representation than it is currently given. The Conservatives are willing to push through a measure amounting to a relative lessening of Scotland's representation in Strasbourg, without even an independent look into the matter.
The Labour party firmly believes that the Scottish people should have one of the extra seats. In the Europe of the regions and nations, the very least that this Parliament should do is allocate to Scotland a fair share of the new seats to be distributed. An extra seat for Scotland, like the extra seat given to Wales, would mean far more in terms of increased representation than one more or less seat for England. With that in mind, the Opposition propose to divide the House in favour of the amendment.
Mr. Peter Lloyd : I congratulate the hon. Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) on assuming so effectively for the time being the leadership of the Opposition--even if she let it slip that she was only a front for her dynamic research assistant.
The hon. Lady sharpened up the attack from the Opposition Benches, but I do not think that her essential argument that, to be an equal partner, Scotland needs more seats is very convincing. Partnership cannot, thank goodness, be defined by numbers in that way. If it was, it would presumably mean that a partnership could be equal only with equal representation--as the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) cogently observed, although I thought that after that remark his speech went sadly astray.
Partnership between the countries of the United Kingdom is real and of enormous value to each of them. However, it does not finally depend on giving any part artificially high representation in the European Parliament or, indeed, at Westminster where Scotland has long had enhanced representation.
In many ways, this debate is a reprise of the one on Second Reading. I make no complaint about that. I realise that Scottish Members would like an extra seat in Scotland and I understand why they and other hon. Members argue persistently that they should have one. However, I am as sure now as I was on Second Reading that an extra seat would not be justified and that the Government are right to give five of the extra seats to England and one to Wales. That is what a distribution based on electorate sizes--the fairest way of deciding the matter--produces.
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7 pmIt is impossible to get average Euro-constituency sizes exactly the same in the different countries of the United Kingdom--there must be a rounding up or down. In each case, that has always been done in favour of the smaller country and never in favour of England. As a result of this Bill, the average English Euro-constituency will still be 4 per cent. larger than the average Scottish one.
Mr. Wallace : The Minister made a fair point, that it is difficult to average the whole thing out. Does he accept that, by allocating four seats to England, one to Wales and one to Scotland--that would be the consequence of this amendment--the averages for Scotland and Wales would be within 8,000 of each other? That is a remarkably close proximity, given the large size of the constituencies. It would approximate much more closely to the Minister's objective than to what is being proposed by the Government.
Mr. Lloyd : No. It would mean that two constituent countries of the United Kingdom would be further from the average than they would otherwise have been. The next best thing to 5 : 1 would be to give the six seats to England. However, that would mean that the average Welsh seat would have a larger electorate than the average English seat. We did not want to allow that, so we gave Wales the benefit of the statistics and it has the extra seat. That is justified for Wales, but not justified for Scotland on the same grounds.
I understand the argument for distributing the seats in a different way. This distribution keeps to the advice given by the Select Committee in 1978, adopted by the then Labour Government in the 1978 Act and expanded from the Dispatch Box by Brynmor John, who represented a Welsh seat, and others in the Labour Government. The Labour Government were right at that time. This is the fairest way of distributing the seats. I am sorry to see Labour Members and the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen), resiling from the arrangements that not he but his colleagues supported when in office.
The hon. Member for Moray quoted Garrett Fitzgerald suggesting that, in the negotiations that took place in the Community before it was decided how many seats each EC country would have, the then Prime Minister, Lord Callaghan, secured 81 seats for the United Kingdom on the understanding that Scotland and Wales would have enhanced representation.
Obviously, I do not know what Lord Callaghan said in private discussions, but the outcome was that the largest countries in the EC--West Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom--all got 81 seats, providing overwhelming circumstantial evidence that the needs of Scotland did not secure United Kingdom-enhanced representation. I cannot tell whether Lord Callaghan tried and failed or did not try at all, but, clearly, no special significance was granted by our fellow members with regard to Scotland, Wales or any national entity, two of which have been referred to this afternoon by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace)--the Walloons and the Catalonians. Clearly, seats are distributed between the sovereign countries of the Community in Europe with regard to their being separate single sovereign entities. The hon. Member for Moray and several other hon. Members argued that
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Scotland should have at least the same number of seats as Denmark, which has a similar population size. Undoubtedly, if Scotland were a member of the Community separate from England, Wales and Northern Ireland--as the hon. Lady would wish--it would have a similar number of seats.I am sure--I refer to points made and queries launched in my direction by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan)--that Scotland would overall have less leverage in the EC than it does as part of the United Kingdom, which has two commissioners to Denmark's one and, effectively, much greater representation in the European Community. Above all, the United Kingdom has a much more powerful voice in the Council of Ministers than England, Wales or Scotland could ever have on their own. When the interests of Scotland especially demand it, Scottish Ministers can and do go to the Council of Ministers with the weight of the entire United Kingdom behind them. I do not want to dwell on this point. It is part of the wider argument about the nature and benefit of the Union, which puts Scotland in a more powerful position in the Community. It would be alone, as is Denmark with its number of seats in the European Parliament.
Before I sit down, I shall revert to the speech of the hon. Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke). He referred to the St. Andrew's speech in which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland is alleged to have promised to fight for more representation for Scotland in the European Parliament. On Second Reading, I said that I had not read that speech, but I have now. I realise that the hon. Gentleman could not have read it at that time and probably still has not done so, judging by his interventions today.
It is clear that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was talking not about the European Parliament but about the Committee of the Regions on which he is determined to make Scotland's voice heard, together with organisations such as Scottish Europa and the Scottish Trade International. I have a copy of the speech here. I will throw it across to the hon. Gentleman. He should sideline those areas in which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State promised or undertook to produce an extra seat in the European Parliament because I would be interested to read it. If he wants me to give way to him, I will do so.
Mr. Tom Clarke : I have had the misfortune to re-read the speech several times. The Secretary of State did not, in that speech or his introduction to the stocktaking exercise, say that he would commit himself to reduced representation for Scotland. Does the Minister accept that that is what this Bill means?
Mr. Lloyd : My right hon. Friend clearly said that he intended to work with the eight members of the European Parliament representing Scottish constituencies, whether or not he agreed with them politically. That was the undertaking he gave, and the number was eight.
Mr. Clarke : Does the Minister take on board that the Secretary of increased representation in Europe? Where is that increased representation? If the Minister cannot assure us--as we are still in Committee and as the
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Secretary of State can still catch Dame Janet's eye--why does not the Secretary of State have the guts to get up and assure us, instead of hiding behind the junior Minister?Mr. Lloyd : As the hon. Gentleman will know if he re-reads the speech, my right hon. Friend was referring to the Committee of the Regions. The hon. Gentleman owes my right hon. Friend an apology, and I hope that he will give it before the end of this evening.
Mrs. Ewing : There is a rumour sweeping the House that the closure will be moved on this debate, and many hon. Members still wish to speak. I draw the attention of the Minister to the development of the idea of direct elections, especially the debates that took place in 1977 and 1978 when the current Foreign Secretary said that the allocation of seats would be on a purely mathematical basis. Is the Minister saying that the Government have not moved from that approach, and take no account of geography or the needs of smaller nations in the European Community?
Mr. Lloyd : Smaller nations have an enhanced representation in the European Parliament when they are sovereign, independent entities. Seats are divided between sovereign countries. The United Kingdom has been allocated 81 seats and they are divided, on the advice given in 1978 by the Select Committee, between the countries of the United Kingdom on the basis of arithmetic and the size of the respective electorates.
Mrs. Ewing : The Minister has clearly stated that, if Scotland were an independent, sovereign nation she would receive a different allocation of seats. Does he not accept the basic constitutional principle, however, that the people in Scotland are sovereign, not Parliament? The people of Scotland have clearly shown that they want additional representation within the European Parliament.
Mr. Lloyd : Every part of the United Kingdom would like extra representation in the European Parliament. I am sure that the hon. Lady heard me say that if Scotland were a separate member of the European Community it may well have enhanced representation. I doubted, however, whether it would have as much influence and leverage as it does now ; indeed, I was quite sure that it would not. I then explained why.
Mr. Gallie : Does my hon. Friend agree that the place in which we need strength is the Council of Ministers? Does he also agree that that showed through when we won objective 1 status for the whole of the highlands?
Mr. Lloyd : That is a good example. We want to be strongly represented in all parts of the Community. Scotland is part of the United Kingdom and benefits from that.
Mr. Wallace : Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Lloyd : I should make some progress, because I sense that the Committee would like me to conclude. [Interruption.]
The Second Deputy Chairman : Order. There is far too much noise in the Chamber. Hon. Members who want to engage in conversation should leave the Chamber.
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Mr. Lloyd : Hon. Members have also put the practical argument that an extra seat could help the highlands and islands problem. Mr. Wallace rose --
Mr. Lloyd : I will not give way, because the Committee wants the debate to come to a conclusion. [H on. Members :-- "No, it does not."] The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland had plenty of opportunity to speak. In fact, he spoke for longer than I will have done. If he will excuse me, I will conclude my remarks.
Mr. Wallace : Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Wallace : The Minister is frit.
The current Boundary Commission rules require that constituencies should be produced with electorates of, as near as possible, the same size. Departures can be made from the electoral quota, however, to take into account special factors such as geography. The Boundary Commission for Scotland did just that when it created the seat of Highlands and Islands, which has a much smaller electorate than the Scottish average.
I doubt whether any Boundary Commission would feel justified in going much further from the average than that. The odds must be that any new seat for Scotland would, therefore, reduce the average electorate size of the remaining more populous constituencies rather than radically reduce the geographical spread of the highlands and islands. I believe that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland, at least, is convinced of that.
As I said on Second Reading, the arrangements for the distribution of seats between the particular countries of the United Kingdom is fair to all of them--to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. Anything else, however, would be unfair to England.
Mr. Malcolm Bruce : The Bill is an extremely unsatisfactory way in which to address such a serious issue. I wonder how many other member states of the Community will decide the allocation of parliamentary constituencies on the basis of a vote in one Chamber of their Parliament. How many of them have some independent means of determining how that allocation should take place?
Mr. McAllion : If the hon. Gentleman thinks that this is such a serious issue, why was he not present in the Chamber for the first three hours of the debate? Why has he just turned up?
Mr. Bruce : I must say-- [Hon. Members :-- "Answer".] Some Opposition Members now present were not here for the entire debate, either. 7.15 pm
The Second Deputy Chairman : Order. I would prefer the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) to continue his speech. If we are to have such harsh rules, I shall bear them in mind in the future.
Mr. Bruce : I should remind the Committee that I spoke on the Bill's money resolution, which was debated last week.
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I am surprised that the Government decided not to accept the amendment. If they had, the debate need not have continued. I find it deeply offensive, as I said when I spoke on the money resolution, that the first line on the first page of the Bill mentions the city of Edinburgh.The Prime Minister claimed that he was bringing the European process to Scotland and ensuring that Scotland is fully involved in that process. The fact that he has now introduced a Bill in which Scotland alone is denied a share of the increased representation at the European Parliament is deeply offensive. The Prime Minister's decision is extremely damaging to him and it is extremely harsh to Scotland. The Bill is not the way in which such matters should be decided.
Hon. Members have also referred to the current representation for Scotland, with which I should have thought the Government were deeply unhappy. There are eight MEPs from Scottish constituencies ; seven of them are Labour Members, the other is an SNP Member. I am not criticising those MEPs individually--they were elected, and that is fine--but they do not give a true representation of the cross-section of political opinion in Scotland. It is a profound irony that the Government cannot even get one Conservative MEP elected. I should have thought that the Government would welcome the opportunity for a ninth MEP from Scotland, because that might give them an itsy-bitsy chance of returning a Conservative representative from Scotland to the European Parliament.
Mr. Archy Kirkwood (Roxburgh and Berwickshire) : That depends on how the Government gerrymander the boundaries.
It is a real disgrace--that is too mild a word--that we are about to have European parliamentary seat boundary reviews, in the middle of parliamentary boundary reviews, while the Government are making up their own local boundaries as they go along. There is no correlation between the three.
The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) asked my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) whether it was possible to have a seat that straddled the border. Presumably he believes that that would achieve a greater parity of numbers. Many of us would have considerable difficulties with the practical consequences of such a decision and would not wish to be the Member for that constituency and balance its conflicting interests. I suppose that it would, however, reunite the county of Berwickshire, although I know that two of my colleagues have differing views on the merits of that argument. If there was a will and pure numbers was the problem, the matter could be resolved. The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley has a fair point.
Mr. Beith : If the commissioners appointed are not given an additional seat in Scotland to play with, does that mean that they will be unable to do what they are now doing in my hon. Friend's part of Scotland? In that region they are crossing all kinds of community and traditional boundaries to produce the most extraordinary configuration of seats. That option will not be open to the commissioners in Scotland under the Bill.
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Mr. Bruce : My hon. Friend is right. His intervention and that of the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley show that the Government's claim that this is simply a matter of numbers and an attempt to achieve a degree of parity is not the substantive argument.
Mr. Wallace : My hon. Friend has referred to cross-border seats for the eastern side of the border. Does he accept that there might be a case for having what could be described as a Solway seat, comprising Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, Dumfries, Carlisle, Penrith and The Border, Copeland and Workington? That area is a communal one, it is home to Border Television and it has a sense of community. It also includes the seat of the Secretary of State for Scotland, so he could kill two birds with one stone. The right hon. Gentleman might end up with a more compact seat for his MEP to represent and at least give Scotland half of what is required, if not the whole.
Mr. Bruce : My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. It raises questions about the Solway firth and the fact that there would be two different local authorities and two different methods of discharging sewage by two different forms of ownership within the same constituency.
The Government's argument that it was impossible to provide justice for Scotland does not stand up. A numbers argument is not valid because, as the Government have acknowledged, that is not the paramount objective. On local government boundaries, the Government propose that the whole of the Highland region should be a unitary local government authority.
That is an absurd proposition. It may be all right in terms of numbers, but it makes no sense in terms of geographical community links and denies a proper community identity. It boils down to the fact that the only way in which a community can be represented as a single, all-purpose authority is for it to be Conservative-controlled or, better still, a dead heat with the Labour party, so that the gerrymandering will tilt the balance and secure control. That is not how to determine fair and democratic representation.
If the Government regard such comments purely as party political objection, they should think seriously about the implications of their actions. They have already abolished a tier of local government in London and the metropolitan counties and are fixing local government boundaries in Scotland to meet their own needs. They are determining the allocation of parliamentary seats for the European Parliament on the basis that it is controlled by a political chamber--Westminster--rather than an independent constitutional process.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness and Sutherland said, it is high time that we fundamentally reviewed our constitutional procedures and processes and how we do things in this country. Our constitution is such that a law passed by this Parliament can supersede a previous law. There is no external reference and no opportunity for second judgment or for effective judicial review of primary legislation.
Members such as the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow), who spoke earlier and opposes the whole idea of the European Community, want to fight for the sovereignty of Parliament. Many of us regard the sovereignty of Parliament not as a democratic advantage but rather as a democratic abuse. A party that can take
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control of this Chamber on a minority vote can not only impose its policies for the duration of a Parliament but can fix the mechanism of the constitution to preserve its power base against external challenges.That serious weakness of our political system is, ultimately, turning it into a decadent, corrupt and disintegrating system, which is becoming increasingly out of touch with the people, who cannot understand why they have a Government whom most of them did not vote for and decisions--
The Second Deputy Chairman : Order. The hon. Gentleman is placing a number of constitutional issues on this group of amendments. I do not think that it will bear the weight.
Mr. Bruce : I willingly accept your guidance, Dame Janet. The simple point is that we should have an independent mechanism for determining how people are elected to any institutions, not only the United Kingdom Parliament but the European Parliament. I object to the lack of independence of that procedure, which is why we have been forced to table an amendment.
I should have preferred it if we had not had this debate and this amendment. The only reason why we have them is that there is no other theatre in which we can make that argument, achieve justice or get an independent assessment. There is no other theatre in which the decisions are not determined by the political bias of the controlling group. In a true democratic constitution, the rights of minorities are safeguarded and the Administration's right to ride roughshod over minorities is limited. In the United Kingdom, that is not the case, and it is a damaging and weak feature of our system of Government. The amendment simply seeks to ensure that the Government recognise that the Prime Minister took the European presidency to Edinburgh as a post-election symbol of the enhanced role that Scotland would play as part of the United Kingdom within the European Community. Nobody could have believed that the upshot of that would be the obscenity--from a Scottish point of view--of a Bill enshrined on the basis of an agreement signed in Edinburgh, which denies the citizens of the country of which Edinburgh is the capital a share in an increased allocation of representation.
The Secretary of State for Scotland should feel utterly ashamed that he has been unable to secure the follow-through which the Prime Minister promised in Edinburgh. The Scottish people have reason to question the Prime Minister because, a year after the general election, he came to Scotland and said that he stood by the United Kingdom. He said that Scotland had voted for the Union and that it was his mission as Prime Minister to ensure that Scotland played its full part within the Union. How can the Bill be encapsulated as Scotland playing its full part in the United Kingdom?
Scotland is finding that its influence within Europe is being deliberately diluted as a direct consequence of that action of the Prime Minister. His promises are worthless, as are those of the Secretary of State. Scotland will continue to be sold short. The Government talk about the Union, but use it as a bullying tactic to ensure that the
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aspirations of the Scottish people are frustrated. We insist that the Government think again and recognise that the Scottish people deserve better.Mrs. Ewing : I welcome the opportunity to respond to the debate-- [Interruption.] Although it may be disappointing to those standing beyond the Bar of the House to realise that the debate will continue for some time, this is an important issue and I suggest that they remain silent to hear the necessary arguments.
The Minister of State was rather ungracious to suggest that having a dynamic research officer should not be correctly recognised. All hon. Members are greatly indebted to their staff at constituency and parliamentary level for the work that they undertake on our behalf. If they correctly carry through our advice and instructions, that should be recognised. We could all do with a bit of humility in recognising our staff's work.
This fairly wide-ranging debate has lasted much longer than many people anticipated. It has been interesting to note the consensus that has emerged, not only among the Opposition but among Conservative Members, who have shown their belief that Scotland should have additional representation within the European Parliament. Members may disagree on points of detail, but, on the basic principle that Scotland should have an additional seat in the European parliament, the consensus is of fundamental importance.
The Minister of State failed to answer a question raised in the context of "Scotland in the Union". On page 22, section 5(9), the Secretary of State for Scotland said :
"the Government have taken steps to complement and add to that strong representation"--
he was talking about the European dimension--
"to ensure that this is a multi-pronged approach to promoting Scotland's interest in Europe".
The European Parliament must form a fundamental part of that approach, because it is an institution which will develop and accrue unto itself additional powers that affect all our lives.
The Secretary of State added :
"As Europe continues to develop, the Government will keep under review Scotland's profile in Europe to ensure it matches Scotland's needs".
Nevertheless, in one of the pieces of legislation that have emerged from the Edinburgh summit we find that Scotland's position is not enhanced ; nor are her needs being matched.
Not only should the Minister read the book by Garret Fitzgerald, which makes interesting reading about the development of direct elections in the European Community, but he should look back to the 1970s, when the principle of direct elections was first mooted in this House. The record of the Select Committee at that time shows that the Scottish National party, which had substantial representation in the House,. gave clear evidence to that Committee. A great deal of interest was generated in the House on the issue of direct elections. Members continue to suggest that some people still fear the idea of European development, whereas I suggest that the development of the Community is crucial to what we are discussing. Our discussion of the amendment has dealt with the relationship of Scotland to this Parliament and to the Community. It is clear that the Community is changing. That development will have an impact on the lives of us all.
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