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8.3 pm
Mr. Andrew Hargreaves (Birmingham, Hall Green): I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the debate. I suggest that the hon. Member for Tyne Bridge (Mr. Clelland) looks up Viscount Goschen's noble antecedent, who was the First Lord of the Admiralty, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Lord Chancellor. He had an interesting political career, sitting on the Liberal as well as the Tory Benches; he was quite a statesman in his day.
In a debate on devolution, there are certain inescapable consequences of politicians stirring up issues that might not necessarily be to the ultimate advantage of the people they represent. This could be such a debate. I believe that the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish people working together make a very good team. I hope that nothing we do in the House will affect that. In every company, north or south of the border into Scotland or Wales or in Northern Ireland, one finds people of all the nationalities that make up the United Kingdom working happily and harmoniously together.
I spent the best and probably the happiest part of my childhood in the most northern part of Scotland, in Caithness in the constituency of the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), the one-time leader of the Social Democratic party.
Mr. McAllion:
Were you fabricated at Dounreay?
Mr. Hargreaves:
Very close to Dounreay.
I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will excuse me for saying that I believe that, viewed from Caithness, Westminster is a long way away. Anyone watching television and seeing things happening at Westminster rather than in Edinburgh or elsewhere in Scotland will find it difficult not to get the idea that government is becoming remote from the people of Scotland.
I therefore congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and his predecessors on their efforts to ensure that the Scottish Office has been devolved to Scotland, and that there is greater accountability to the Scottish people through the Scottish Grand Committee and examination of what the Government and the Scottish Office do. I want that process to continue, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend will in due course be developing plans to make sure that it does.
If we believe strongly in the Union--as I said, I have seen it from the northernmost part--we must not regard the House as mere bricks and mortar. If we want people in Dunnet Head in Caithness, in Wales, or in Ulster to feel part of the Union, we should not hesitate to move various aspects of these bricks and mortar to make the Union come alive. I should like to see Parliament being opened up in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the years ahead. I see no practical obstacle to that. I think it is a policy that this party could happily adopt in due course.
If we want the Union to work, we must make it work. We must make everyone feel part of it. I feel strongly that the formal Scottish Parliament advocated by the Labour party will lead to separatism, bitterness and reprisals. Labour's proposals are ill thought out and wrong.
Worse than that, in a Europe of regions, Scotland would become just another region, not a nation within a Union which has clout because it contributes to the European Union budget. It would be caught on the hook of handout grants, on which it would depend. It would give Brussels the opportunity to bypass the UK Parliament, just at a time when Scotland should be using UK weight and influence to take a lead in reforming or abolishing the common fisheries policy, in defending and promoting its heritage in, for example, the whisky industry and salmon culture.
Scotland would inevitably be treated as a region and rolled over by Brussels, its interest sacrificed, through lack of clout, for a paltry regional grant. Scotland would lose the last genuinely democratic means of voicing opposition to a federalist bureaucracy, and any opportunity to change that bureaucracy.
Mrs. Fyfe:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Hargreaves:
No. I have 10 minutes, and I shall therefore not give way.
If the Labour party does not address the West Lothian question, and does not clarify its taxation policy for a Scottish Parliament or a Scottish Assembly, we shall accuse it of depending for its majority, undemocratically, on a surfeit of Scottish Members spending predominantly English taxpayers' money, while English Members have no say in the expenditure of money in Scotland. That would be a mockery, and a travesty of democracy.
Every time a patient dies unexpectedly or while awaiting treatment in an English hospital--every day, every week; drip, drip, drip--we shall remind the public in England that the Labour party is holding power because of a surfeit of Scottish Members of Parliament who are spending two and a half times as much English taxpayers' money on someone in Scotland as on a patient in Birmingham. If there was a rail accident or a road accident, the case would be more dramatic: we would be able to say, with justification, that, if the money had been spent fairly and proportionately in England, that accident might not have happened.
That form of representation could not survive. I ask Labour Members to think for a moment--would English Members not come under pressure to revisit the subject of defence and the Scottish bases that many Labour Members have fought so hard for? What future could they see for Faslane, Rosyth and Lossiemouth? I think that there would be very little future for them.
Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan):
We have just heard the personification of the English backlash. I can tell the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Hargreaves) that there is a considerable body of opinion in Scotland that would be happy for Trident to be taken from the River Clyde and located in his constituency.
As he was talking about Parliament being reassembled throughout the country, I had an image of the American gentleman who dismantled London bridge some years ago and reassembled it somewhere in the middle of Texas. If the hon. Gentleman was in earlier, he will have heard me quote to the Prime Minister the statistics showing that the overwhelming majority of the people of Scotland regard the Tory party as an anti-Scottish party. He has given a perfect example why.
I am tempted to ask: is this it? This is a debate on the issue that will transcend the general election campaign. For the past two and a half hours, there have not even been enough hon. Members on the Conservative Benches to make a football team. If that is the gang who will defend the United Kingdom against all the dangers that beset it, the game is probably up already.
I do not know whether he is familiar with the phrase, but I would describe the Prime Minister's speech as cauld kale het up. He was trying to return to the glories of the
last election campaign. We have heard that once too often now. All that was missing was the declaration of "a thousand years of British history".
When the Prime Minister talks about a thousand years of British history, I remember the British history that I used to be asked to study at St. Andrew's university, which was English history--they just called it British history. When the Prime Minister talks about the thousand years of British history, he is, for the most part, talking about English history. A former Speaker once gave a ruling that this House was a continuance of the English Parliament, and should not be considered a separate entity after the Act of Union.
The leader of the Labour Party criticised the Prime Minister, wittily describing him as Ethelred the Unready. He then listed, quite properly, some of the changes that have been made to constitutional arrangements in recent times. It was significant, however, that he did not include the independence of Ireland in the 1920s or the 50 countries that have become independent of this place since the second world war.
The revealing aspect of the exchanges between the leader of the Labour party and the Prime Minister was how much they were playing to an English gallery. There was no doubt that the Prime Minister's audience was not in central Scotland or mid Wales, but in middle England. He wants to wrap himself in the Union Jack and seize the patriotic card.
When they have an exchange, they fling at each other the final argument about which of them has policies that are more dangerous to the integrity of the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister says to the Leader of the Opposition, "You're going to break up the United Kingdom." The Leader of the Opposition says to the Prime Minister, "No, no. It's your policy that will break up the United Kingdom."
Is it not possible that both are right, and that the centre of gravity has moved so far in Scotland that resistance to change will break up the United Kingdom, and the concession of devolution will also lead to independence for Scotland? We can conclude that those on both Front Benches think that independence is very likely--they are merely bickering about how we shall get there.
The Prime Minister's attitude will alienate people in Scotland, but they will also be entitled to question the trustworthiness of the Labour party on this issue. After 20 years of arguing for a policy, I should that thought that Labour would have come up with a convincing answer to the so-called West Lothian question. The leader of the Labour party said today that the question had never been raised about Northern Ireland. That is not so. I ask the House to consider this quotation:
The point is not that we cannot have a state with constitutional anomalies, but that the anomalies depend on the good will of all. We have heard enough from the
Tory benches to know that they would wish to exact revenge if the problem of the West Lothian question became a reality.
The fact that the Labour party has not prepared for that and come up with convincing answers--or even some answer, as the Liberal Democrats have--is a sign of its lack of preparation on the subject, and perhaps a lack of conviction. If Labour Members wanted to argue for the policy, surely an arrangement such as the sacrifice of a few Members of Parliament, as the Liberal Democrats suggest, or some other would have been worth devising.
The leader of the Labour party had great fun with the Prime Minister--quite successfully, I thought--quoting back old comments, and asking why those opinions were no longer valid. I should like bring back an old quotation from the late John Smith, former leader of the Labour party, who said in the Daily Record of 9 July 1992:
The key issue in this debate is sovereignty. One of the few issues on which the leader of the Labour party and the Prime Minister agreed was the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament. In contrast, I agree with the right hon. Members for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) and for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) that sovereignty lies with the Scottish people. Why is that important? Unless we accept that that is where sovereignty lies, any assembly or devolved parliament will be subject to pressure, or even abolition, from the Conservatives.
There has been a debate between the Secretary of State for Health and the Secretary of State for Scotland about who would abolish a Scottish Assembly at some time in the future, and under what circumstances. The Secretary of State for Scotland said that that would not happen; then he modified that comment, to say that it might happen after a referendum.
That tells us that a hostile incoming Tory Government would squeeze dry a Scottish Assembly--either through outright abolition or through gradual abolition. They would certainly do to a Scottish Assembly what they are now doing to Scottish councils throughout the land: they would squeeze the Assembly's expenditure and put it into an impossible situation.
There is an arrogance about the Tory case. The Secretary of State for Scotland made a speech a few weeks ago in Scotland that is known in common parlance as the "Defamation of Arbroath". He said that we do not need changes in Scotland, because Scotland was the fastest growing economy in Europe. Scotland is not even close to being the fastest growing economy in Europe--Ireland is. Ireland has been so over the past few years, and is forecast to remain so over the next three. That is why the House of Commons Library says that, by 2000, Ireland will overtake the United Kingdom in gross domestic product per capita. What a shock that will be for the Tory party.
I have heard the fiscal threats from the Tory Benches. They should consider the parliamentary answer from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on 13 January. It shows a surplus in Scottish accounts of £27,000 million since 1979. If the Labour party can be accused of wanting to hang on to Scotland for parliamentary seats, surely we can say that the Tory party wants to hang on to Scotland for our resources, including our oil, gas, land, fish, water--the vested interest that the Tory party always represents.
"I am sure the House will agree that there is an apparent lack of logic, for example, about steel, when Northern Ireland can, and presumably will, swell the Tory ranks tonight, when we have no power to vote on questions about steel in Northern Ireland"--[Official Report, 6 May 1965; Vol. 711, c. 1560.]
That was not a Labour Back Bencher or a Tory Back Bencher, but the then leader of the Labour party, the late Harold Wilson, at Prime Minister's questions.
"The Labour party must keep the Scottish issue at the centre of the political stage. That's why we are campaigning for a multi-option referendum."
When the Leader of the Opposition told my hon. Friend tha Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing) that a multi-option referendum, giving people a valid choice between independence, devolution and the status quo, was SNP policy, he seemed to forget that it was also the policy of his predecessor--a policy that the present leader, with some help from his Scottish Front Benchers, has managed to tear up.
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