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10.3 am
Mr. William Hague (Richmond, Yorks): May I begin by congratulating not only you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on your election to the Chair, but, on behalf of the Opposition, the Secretary of State for Scotland and, indeed, the Secretary of State for Wales on their appointments.
The Secretary of State for Scotland and I have debated a wide variety of subjects on many occasions on the Floor of the House and in Committee. After our service together on the Committee that considered the Pensions Bill in the previous Parliament, I think that I can say that, in my eight years so far as a Member of Parliament, I have spent more time listening to him than to any other Member.
The Secretary of State will understand, therefore, that I approached with mixed feelings the discovery that his voice has been returned to him. I do not want to alarm new Members, but the speech that he has just delivered is the shortest that I have ever known him deliver in the many years that I have spent listening to him. I do not know whether it is because he has turned over a new leaf, because he has yet to find his feet or because the message that he received was from the Minister without Portfolio telling him to stop at once. Whichever it was, we look forward to the Secretary of State's speeches.
The Secretary of State has set out a programme for this Session of far-reaching constitutional change. The Government wish, by establishing a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly in particular, to bring about fundamental change in the way in which the United Kingdom is governed. Our contention is that those proposals would amount to a fundamental and far-reaching error, damage the interests of Scotland and Wales, lead to widespread disillusionment and bitterness, create an unstable and unsustainable constitutional situation, and severely weaken and undermine the unity of the United Kingdom.
Before I turn to those proposals in more detail, it would be wrong to let this debate on the constitution pass without noting that the Government have already created
three separate controversies over parliamentary and constitutional matters in their first two weeks in office. The first was the decision by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give independence to the Bank of England without waiting to inform the House of their decision or even holding a meeting of the Cabinet.
What would the Secretary of State have said, as the Opposition Chief Whip in the previous Parliament, if the previous Government had made a decision of such fundamental importance without making a statement on the Floor of the House of Commons to announce it? Was the decision rushed out for reasons of pressing national interest or was the Cabinet not consulted because it did not suit the media-management timetable of the Minister without Portfolio? The whole episode was an early indication that we will have not so much Government by Cabinet as Government by cabal.
If the decision gave off a whiff of arrogance, that was nothing to the odour that emerged when the Prime Minister announced a change in the procedures for his own Question Time without so much as a nod, request or acknowledgment in the direction of the rest of the House. Such changes should be considered by Committees and by all parties in the House. The spectacle of a Prime Minister seeking in his first days to ensure that the questions put to him in the House are more easily predictable is not an attractive one.
Legalistically and according to the rules, the Prime Minister is entitled to do it, but Labour Members may learn to their cost that, although it is technically permissible to exploit and to misuse a huge parliamentary majority, they would be well advised not to do it. They should bear that in mind, too, before they break the long-accepted convention that Bills of the nature that they propose for constitutional change should be considered on the Floor of the House. It is ever clearer that the Government plan to break that convention. It is clear from their waffle, although they have not yet had the courage to say it outright. On Wednesday, the Prime Minister said:
The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) was present earlier, but he has popped out for a moment. He and the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Smith) have always made it clear that they are opposed to devolution, and they have been elected as Members of
Parliament on that basis. Will the Secretary of State confirm that if they want to speak against the proposals, they will be free to do so? If not, by what right, in a parliamentary democracy and a free Parliament, can they be told that they are not free to do so? I am not talking about members of the Government, who are bound by collective responsibility, but about Back Benchers with a clear record of speaking out on this matter, and with long-held and clearly expressed views. It now seems that they will be prevented from speaking their minds, because that may bring the Labour party into disrepute. The Secretary of State should now make it clear that they are free to speak their minds in the House and in the forthcoming referendum campaigns.
Mr. Dewar:
May I make it clear to the right hon. Gentleman that any Member of Parliament has a right to speak his or her mind as he or she sees fit. It is true that we offer advice [Interruption.] Conservative Members laugh. I will allow and listen to their laughter if the right hon. Gentleman says that, from now on, there will be no whipping in the Conservative party. Whipping is advice, and I do not imagine for a moment that he will tell us that there will be no Conservative party position on matters of importance and no whipping system.
Mr. Hague:
Of course, all parties give advice to their members. All Governments and Oppositions take positions and have policies. But to say that Members of Parliament would be forbidden to campaign for a no vote in a devolution campaign is a different matter. I presume, from the Secretary of State's reaction, that that will not be the position, and that Labour Back Benchers who want to campaign against devolution will be free to do so.
The Prime Minister said last Wednesday that
First, let me turn to the core of the Government's constitutional plans to establish a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly.
Mr. Salmond:
I am trying to follow the argument. Surely the shadow spokesman is not saying that no sanctions can be taken by a political party against its members if they do not follow policy. I recall that the previous Prime Minister tried to do that somewhat unsuccessfully with some Conservative Back Benchers on Europe.
On constitutional probity, I offer the right hon. Gentleman an opportunity to distance himself from the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who said that the 50 per cent. rule should be applied to a referendum in Scotland. That would mean that the vote of the dead, the infirm and the don't cares would have to be garnered. Under the 50 per cent. rule, the Conservative party would have only 12 per cent. of the vote in Scotland.
If the right hon. Gentleman is not prepared to distance himself from that view, will he tell us whether he believes that such a rule should be applied to a European or Northern Irish referendum, both of which are supported by the Conservative party?
Mr. Hague:
No, I think that there is a powerful case for a threshold in a referendum. I shall deal with that issue later.
The Government's plans are based on long-established Labour party policy. It is something of an irony that, after everything we have heard about new Labour, its flagship Bills on devolution in 1997 will be almost exactly the same as its ill-fated proposals in which it became mired and tangled in 1979. Labour is committed now, as it was then, to creating an additional, expensive tier of government, which will do no favours for Scotland and Wales, and which will make nonsense of some of the operations of the House.
Now that the Labour party is in office and is preparing to implement its plans, we expect the Government to answer clearly the questions that Labour has been unwilling to answer for so long. During the election campaign, the right hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies), now the Secretary of State for Wales, described Plaid Cymru's proposals for a tax-raising Parliament in Wales as a blueprint for a fool's paradise and economic illiteracy. He said that it was economic illiteracy to think that we could have one tax rate on one side of the Welsh border and another tax rate on the other side. We look forward to the Secretaries of State for Scotland and for Wales together explaining why what is economic illiteracy in Wales is essential to the future of Scotland.
We look forward to the right hon. Gentlemen reconciling, by their policy, the statement of the Secretary of State for Defence, the right hon. Member for Hamilton, South (Mr. Robertson), when he was shadow Scottish Secretary, who said:
The Secretary of State for Wales said in June last year that a Welsh Assembly would not have tax-raising powers initially. Is that still his view? If so, is it his view that there should be another referendum later on tax-raising powers? Will he give an undertaking that any proposals to extend tax-raising powers to a Welsh Assembly would be subject to another referendum? Why does he not want to ask the people of Wales now, at the same time as people in Scotland, whether they want tax-raising powers for an Assembly?
Why would the Scottish Parliament have powers to legislate in every major area of Scottish domestic policy, including local government, the national health service, education, housing and transport, but the Welsh Assembly would not have the power to legislate on any of those matters? Why would the Welsh Assembly have fewer powers than the Scottish Parliament, which the Prime Minister likened to a parish council?
What is the logic, the principle or the deep constitutional thinking that leads the Government to treat Scotland and Wales in such radically different ways? If the Government believe that their model for devolution in Scotland will work, why do they not propose the same for Wales? If they do not believe that their proposals will work, why do they not abandon them altogether?
The truth is that the proposals are not based on any logic or principle. They are based on ill-thought-out proposals that the Labour party were left with in the 1970s, and which it has not had the wisdom to change. They are not based on a clear assessment of how the redrawn constitution would work in practice, but on the internal politics of the Labour party and the varying degree to which it believes nationalism needs to be appeased.
The people of Wales would be asked to pay for the non-legislating, non-tax-raising Assembly that is proposed for Wales. The Referendums (Scotland and Wales) Bill was published yesterday and sets out, for the first time, some of the costs involved. It will cost £5 million to hold a referendum in Scotland, and £3 million in Wales. Preliminary work to set up the bodies would cost £18 million to £25 million in Scotland and £5 million to £15 million in Wales.
Will the Secries of State make it clear today--people in Wales will certainly want to know--whether that money will come out of the Scottish and Welsh blocks or whether it will be an addition to public expenditure as a whole? Are the Government already breaching the public spending targets to which they are committed, or will the money come from cuts in public services in Scotland and Wales? It must be one or the other. They can answer now if they wish. It is a simple question and there must be an answer. The Secretaries of State must have thought about where the money was coming from before they put their names to the Bill, but they evidently do not want to tell the House of Commons now.
Let me try the right hon. Gentlemen with another question, seeing as the Secretary of State for Wales did not know the answer to that one. How much of the money for the preliminary work on a Welsh Assembly will be spent in advance of the referendum? If the result were no, who would recompense the taxpayer for the money that would have been wasted? What are the Government's estimates of the full cost of establishing a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly?
A far more fundamental question is what would be the relationship of the Parliament and the Assembly with the House of Commons. If a different party to the party in power at Westminster had a majority in Cardiff or Edinburgh, how could deadlock between them be avoided? What would happen if a Welsh Assembly refused to implement legislation passed by the House of Commons?
The Prime Minister said in the general election campaign that sovereignty rested with him as an English Member of Parliament. Is that the position? If so, what is
the ultimate power and purpose of a Scottish Parliament? What would be the role of Scottish Members of Parliament after the power to legislate on all matters of Scottish domestic policy had been devolved?
Does the Secretary of State for Scotland believe that it is right that he should be able to vote on legislation affecting my constituents in Yorkshire, whereas neither he nor I would be able to vote in legislation affecting his constituents in Glasgow? Does he believe that it is right that the number of Scottish and Welsh Members should remain the same? Does he believe that it is right that a Scottish Member could sit in the House as a Minister for Agriculture, Health or Education and make decisions affecting the daily lives of everyone's constituents but his own?
Those are the fundamental questions, which the hon. Member for Linlithgow--it is such a pity that he is no longer the hon. Member for West Lothian--raised 20 years ago; and still there are no answers to those questions. What will be the position on dual membership of a Scottish Parliament and the House? Does the Secretary of State for Scotland intend to stand for election to the Scottish Parliament? If not, what do the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Secretary of State for Wales intend to do with their jobs after they have devolved all their powers to someone else?
The Secretary of State for Wales has been fond of saying that a Welsh assembly would take over the functions of the Secretary of State for Wales and exercise them in a more democratic manner. After such an assembly is established, therefore, presumably there will be no justification for the continued existence of his position as Secretary of State for Wales. That is another question which the Labour party has refused to answer.
The Secretary of State for Wales has said that he would negotiate with the Treasury every year, but that would take only a few weeks. Deprived of other powers and responsibilities, the Secretary of State for Wales would be a message-boy, scurrying between the assembly and Westminster. He would be a political eunuch--an ornament of doubtful constitutional value, rather than a functioning part of the body politic.
There is a great deal more that we will need to know. Labour Members do not like to be asked questions, but now that they are on the Government Benches, they will have to become accustomed to being asked questions. Moreover, before very long, they will have to start answering some questions. I repeat that there is a great deal more that we will need to know. The Government now have the power to introduce their proposals, but they also have the responsibility to start answering the questions on those proposals.
What would be the role of Members of Parliament in the Public Accounts Committee in relation to money raised by the House but spent by a Welsh Assembly? How would public appointments be made and political bias in appointments to public bodies be avoided? I have already asked about the Government's position on the future of financial arrangements. What will that position mean for local government? We must have the answers to all those questions.
If those questions cannot be answered, and answered well, the Government will be taking the United Kingdom towards constitutional instability, and towards the division of the United Kingdom itself. The Government risk
creating, at great expense, new parliamentary bodies that could not possibly fulfil the expectations that their creation would raise. After several disappointing and fractious years, their creation would produce a sense of disillusionment and a culture of buck passing in which Cardiff would blame Westminster, Edinburgh would blame Westminster, Westminster would blame the others, and the common basis of our Union would be fractured.
The Government do not yet have a mandate for those proposals, they have only a mandate to hold referendums on them. The manner in which they decided to propose referendums was in itself revealing, because the decision seems to have been made without reference to the leaders of the Scottish and the Welsh Labour parties--so much for believing that Scotland and Wales should have their own say. On 24 June 1996, the Secretary of State for Wales ruled out a referendum. I remember it well, because I was sitting next to him. He went even further and said:
Opposition Members think that it is right to hold referendums on those proposals. We also think that, after rejection of devolution in the 1979 referendums, it is right that the people should again be asked again when the same proposals are reintroduced. However, although the concept of holding the referendums is a good one, and the mandate for holding them is clear, the time and manner of the proposed referendums represent yet another constitutional innovation by the Government, and again it is a deeply disturbing one.
Last year, the right hon. Member for Caerphilly warned us about the dangers of a pre-legislative referendum--only three days before he adopted it as his policy. Previous referendums have been held in ways which allowed the electorate to endorse or reject detailed proposals which have already passed by Parliament. The voters could consider all the detail; they could balance the pros and cons; and they could know exactly what was on offer. Used in that manner, referendums have certainly gained a place in our constitutional arrangements. They are not, however, a substitute for the parliamentary process. Use of referendums does not mean, and must never mean, that detailed parliamentary debate can be short-circuited. If misused, a referendum can become an anti-parliamentary device and a tool of an over-mighty Government. I believe that pre-legislation referendums are such a misuse.
"There will be ample time for debate"--[Official Report, 14 May 1997; Vol. 294, c. 67.]
and that the new Committee on procedures would think about all this. Why did he not have the courage to say that the Government are paving the way for the most far-reaching constitutional changes proposed for years to be largely considered in a Committee upstairs, staffed with selected Government Back Benchers who would barely say a word? Where would we have been in the 1970s if Mr. Neil Kinnock, then a Member, had not been able to speak on devolution matters? He said in 1977:
"As we work our way through this Bill in Committee, we shall more and more adequately demonstrate that many claims made for devolution are false".--[Official Report, 18 January 1977; Vol. 924, c. 150.]
He would not have been able to demonstrate that if the Bill had been dealt with in a Committee upstairs. Can the Secretary of State and his colleagues make it clear, in the light of reports in this morning's press, that Members of Parliament in the Labour party who wish to campaign against devolution proposals will be free to do so?
"the people will not expect us to be game-playing here--they will expect us to legislate."--[Official Report, 14 May 1997;Vol. 294, c. 68.]
His words convey an approach to parliamentary debate that has a certain chilling arrogance. The proposals for pre-legislative referendums may be part of that pattern.
"The parliament has to have the power"--
to raise tax--
"even if it is never used, because no level of government has been denied some control of revenue raising or cutting. Indeed, the lack of such a power and the conflict this might provoke is a more significant danger than having it."
Why is it that the Government propose no such power for the Welsh Assembly? What is the logic of their wanting the Scottish Parliament to have tax-raising powers--or tax-varying powers, as they put it--while maintaining the ludicrous fiction that the Scottish Parliament might not want to spend the money allocated to it, and saying that the Welsh Assembly should have no such powers? Have they got something against the Scots, or do they not trust the Welsh?
"The trouble with a pre-legislative referendum is that there are so many questions you cannot answer."
We were all astonished--although probably no one was more astonished about it than himself--that, three days later, he was advocating not only a referendum but, specifically, a pre-legislative referendum. Perhaps the only people more astonished were those in the Scottish Labour party, who--in the space of six weeks--had a policy of no referendum, a policy of one referendum with one question, a policy of two referendums with three questions and a policy of one referendum with two questions, which is where they have finally come to rest.
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