| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Salmond: The hon. Gentleman, in his experience, must be aware that, until the 1950s, Northern Ireland was certainly a net contributor to the United Kingdom Exchequer. He will know that, in January, a Treasury parliamentary answer stated that, in Scotland, since1979 there was a revenue-over-expenditure surplus of £27,000 million.
Mr. Trimble: That point is highly debatable, and I will not deal with it now. There are different ways of calculating those figures, but the fact is that, on identifiable public expenditure, the regions are net beneficiaries.
The questions in the proposed referendums are not as well focused as they could be. The point made by the hon. Member for Linlithgow on the desirability of allowing bodies to raise finance is important, but it would be better to raise such finance by means other than varying national taxation rates. That is why in most countries in which there is extensive devolution or federalism, local finance is provided through, for example, a local sales tax or property taxes. That is a better basis and, of course, avoids some of the problems that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. However, I agree that if one is designing some form of devolution, one must ensure that it is built on something that will last and that it will work. That is extremely important.
I approve of the comments that the Prime Minister made on Wednesday about participation in the present Northern Ireland talks process. It is not possible to include parties that have hitherto been involved in terrorism unless they decisively commit themselves "once and for all" to the democratic process. I welcome the use of the phrase "once and for all", which goes further than some of the unsatisfactory formulae that we heard from the previous Government.
While it may be necessary to give people a further opportunity to join the process, it is important that that is the last chance and that the talks proceed. We cannot wait for ever to see whether people who have no real commitment to peaceful means and the democratic process are going to change when there is no reason to believe that such a change is possible. By holding the process back, we are preventing what might be possible.
I believe that it is possible to find agreement in Northern Ireland. Surprisingly, it is not difficult to predict the basic outlines of that agreement. We see commitment among the major parties in Northern Ireland to some form of regional administration. We propose that it operate on the basis of proportionality. That is not a general endorsement of proportional representation, because the arguments at local level are different from those here where the crucial issue is that of forming a Government rather than a limited regional administration.
We support the concept of a Bill of Rights and will examine the procedures spelt out by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. We recognise that what happens in Northern Ireland happens not in isolation
but in a British context and that there are different identities within Northern Ireland which have to be taken into account. The right balance has to be struck and it could be struck if the principal parties to the process were able to get down to the details. That should not be too difficult.
During the election campaign, and since, I said that I regarded this Parliament as an opportunity. I think that the Government's commitment to decentralisation and openness creates opportunities for us. The Ulster Unionist party is ready to grasp any and every opportunity that will bring real peace and democracy to our part of the United Kingdom.
Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Kelvin):
Listening to the interesting but in some places rather sour speech of the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) and his litany of complaints about the previous Government, I wondered why he and his parliamentary colleagues spent so much time and energy propping up the late Government, keeping them in power long after it was even in their own interests to remain so. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues earned the resentment not only of the Opposition--now the Government--but of vast swathes of British people who wanted an election and who wanted rid of the previous Government who were sustained time and again by the hon. Gentleman and his party.
Mr. Trimble:
The hon. Gentleman's point might have some weight if there were a scrap of truth in it, but there is not. If he looks back over the proceedings of the House of Commons in the past 18 months he will find that there were only two occasions on which the Government might have been defeated. On the first occasion, they were sustained by the abstention of the Democratic Unionist party and on the second occasion they were sustained by the abstention of the Social Democratic and Labour party. In no vote in the past 18 months were the previous Government sustained by the Ulster Unionist party.
Mr. Galloway:
There could have been votes if the Ulster Unionists had not signalled in advance that they were determined to prop up that Government. That was the feeling that we had in the last Parliament and it colours the glass through which we look at the hon. Gentleman and his new-found unhappiness about the conduct of affairs under the Conservative Government.
Notwithstanding some of the sourness of the hon. Gentleman's contribution, this has been a remarkably interesting parliamentary occasion. We have witnessed the moving parliamentary debut of my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer), whom we all welcome warmly to the House for her qualities and because of the fond memories that hon. Members on both
sides have of her late husband, Bob Cryer. We have also heard the remarkable maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Twigg), delivered with such polish, verve and youthfulness. I agree with the hon. Member for Upper Bann that my hon. Friend will make a major contribution to life in the House. The graciousness of his commiserations with his predecessor and his tribute to his predecessor's work in the House were to his credit.
We have also heard the remarkable erudition and wit of the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke). He characteristically appeared in the tradition of the upper class, civilised English officer played by Michael Caine in the film to which he alluded. Michael Caine was so civilised that he voted Labour two weeks ago for the first time in several elections. Alas for the right hon. Gentleman's party and for all of us, the five bald men fighting over a comb, fighting for the leadership of the Conservative party, do not come from that tradition. We are likely to face a new leader of Her Majesty's Opposition in the tradition of Private Hook of Rorke's Drift rather than the elegance of the right hon. Gentleman.
This has been an important debate. I wanted to welcome my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, who is not in his place. He and I go back a long way. Almost 20 years ago, he picked me up from Queen Street station. I put my luggage in the back of his car and we drove to Langholm street in the Garscadden constituency, where he was fighting the historic by-election. We went in a door and when we came out five minutes later his car had been broken into and all my luggage had been stolen. That was where the fast track for young offenders was born--an idea that was emblazoned on our parliamentary pledges card during the election campaign. I have metaphorically broken my right hon. Friend's windows on some occasions since then, but I hope that he does not harbour a grudge against me for that because I genuinely welcome him to his position--a position for which he was born and for which he is better suited than any other parliamentarian.
I was sorry that my right hon. Friend's opponent at the start of the debate unsheathed the sword of no-change Unionism in reply. That was churlish from a party that had been so comprehensively routed under the current electoral system--I want to say something about that in a minute--in the countries of Scotland and Wales. I should have thought that a little more humility might have been in order. It is not as though the peoples of Scotland and Wales were not treated to all the arguments of the former Secretary of State for Wales and of the former Secretary of State for Scotland, who was then the right hon. Member for Stirling. The Scottish and Welsh people were not ignorant of their point of view.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |