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6.52 pm
Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan): The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) mentioned Keir Hardie. It was Keir Hardie who said in 1885 that a Scottish Parliament was "just round the corner". It has been some time coming, but we hope that progress is on its way.
We have heard some good and interesting maiden speeches this evening, to which I shall briefly refer. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) made a most effective maiden speech. Although he is new to the House, he is clearly not new to the political process. Indeed, he said that he had written some White Papers. I had an overwhelming temptation to ask him which ones. That would have been totally out of order, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, but I am sure that we can look forward to hearing many more speeches from him in the course of our proceedings.
I do not know South Cambridgeshire nearly as well as the hon. Gentleman does, but he will forgive me if I am tempted to say that I am not absolutely certain that the pikes will come out of the thatch in Cambridgeshire to resist these constitutional proposals. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will prove me wrong.
The hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Ms McKenna) made an equally effective speech. She comes to the House with a formidable reputation in Scottish local government, but nowhere in her curriculum vitae did she say that she did impressions of London taxi drivers. She revealed an entirely new facet of her character this evening.
The hon. Lady made a most gracious maiden speech. I am sure that she will argue with as much determination for increased funding for Scottish local government inside the House as she did outside it. She paid a well-meant tribute to her immediate predecessor, Norman Hogg, a man with whom I disagreed on just about everything except that we should conduct our differences with good humour. She also referred to my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Mrs. Ewing). If the hon. Lady conducts herself in the House in the same way as the two hon. Members to whom she referred, she will add a great deal to our proceedings.
We also heard a remarkable maiden speech from the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg). Maiden speeches that combine humour, constituency knowledge and a touch of controversy are by far the best, and the hon. Lady's speech did just that. She said that Aberdeen, her native city, had won Britain in Bloom as many times as Ireland had won the Eurovision song contest. She also displayed a great knowledge of her constituency.
The hon. Lady referred to her very many predecessors in controversial and humorous terms. She said that the Secretary of State for Scotland was responsible for
starting the instability in Aberdeen, South, and perhaps more, who knows? She mentioned Iain Sproat. During the previous Parliament, Iain and I were told by a genealogist in the south-west of Scotland that we were remote relatives. I do not know which of us was more alarmed--however, he was one of the more effective Ministers in the previous Government.
The hon. Lady also mentioned Gerry Malone. The hon. Member for Inverness, East, Nairn and Lochaber (Mr. Stewart) will be interested to know that a couple of days ago, a senior Conservative told me that a friend of his and his wife had been anxiously pondering over whether to vote for Gerry Malone in his constituency or against the Scottish National party in Inverness. They finally decided to cast their votes against the Scottish National party and not to vote for Gerry Malone, who lost by two votes.
The hon. Lady also said that Raymond Robertson was extremely polite to her in defeat. The fact that she mentioned politeness and Raymond Robertson together is a great testimony to her diplomacy, and I am sure that she will bring that characteristic to our debates. She made a splendid and remarkable maiden speech and we all look forward to hearing many more such contributions.
The Secretary of State for Scotland made a graceful opening speech. I was particularly impressed by the way in which he repelled the last-ditchers in the Conservative party one by one and helped them dig themselves in deeper as they intervened.
I should mention that after a forceful start, there are now only four Members on the Conservative Benches defending the essential unity of the United Kingdom. I understand that considerably more of them are voting for the new 1922 Committee. That demonstrates that internal warfare is now more important to the Conservative party than the future of the United Kingdom.
None the less, the Secretary of State for Scotland was extremely deft in the way in which he repelled Conservative Members' attacks. He made the point that he had a record on devolution stretching back to the 1950s. Some of his ministerial team have track records stretching back to the 1970s--on the other side. We shall see how that is played out during the passage of the Bill.
I was rather alarmed by the Secretary of State's revelation that the Bill gives 123 Scottish peers the right to vote in a referendum. I had not noticed that aspect. It could be interpreted as a rather underhand attempt to get the support of the former leader of the Liberal Democrat party, who is soon to be ennobled and no doubt is anxious to have his say in the referendum vote.
The Conservatives' response to the legislation showed that they had learnt very little from the election campaign. Indeed, the speeches seemed to pick up very little--even from the recent Scottish debate. They were very much a statement of the positions that we have heard for far too long in the House and elsewhere.
I was somewhat relieved that at least the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), did not go down the road of the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who I see is back on the Front Bench. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that the argument for a special
blocking mechanism, a threshold, a 40 per cent. rule, or a 50 per cent. rule, as the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) has suggested, is one of the most offensive arguments and anti-democratic notions that could disgrace the House. To argue that for Scotland and Wales while simultaneously not being prepared to say that it would apply to a referendum on Europe is most insulting behaviour to the people of Scotland and Wales, and in large measure explains the Conservative party's reduced position in both those nations.
Mr. Rhodri Morgan:
It has not reduced, it has disappeared.
Mr. Salmond:
I was being polite. This is my latest phase, as hon. Members will recognise. I shall move out of that phase to turn to what I think about the Bill.
There is an inconsistency at the very heart of the Referendums (Scotland and Wales) Bill. Two legitimate positions can be adopted in looking for consent from the people. The first is to say that the general election provides the mandate and thereby the authority for the Government to proceed with their programme--or, indeed, for a political party to proceed with its ideas.
If the new Labour party had taken such a course and said that it had won a considerable victory and therefore had the majority to go forward with its legislative programme, I do not think that anyone could reasonably have gainsaid that as a substantial mandate for applying its ideas on the constitution. At a later stage, depending on the judgment, degree of controversy and the number of changes made to the proposed legislation, it might be appropriate to subject that mandate to a post-legislative referendum, as in the 1970s. That is one way of addressing legitimacy, mandates and consent, and it is consistent.
The second position is to say that the general election did not produce a mandate on the proposals, there is some uncertainty, many other issues clouded the general election environment and the issue was not finally settled. That is the course to be taken by the Government, as explained by the Secretary of State. There is therefore no substantial or democratic argument for excluding the option of independence from the ballot paper. The option of independence is supported by many people in Scotland. We have been through the argument in democratic terms many times, when Governments have either refused to consult the people of Scotland or said that the people of Scotland did not have a decisive view one way or the other.
The Secretary of State was kind enough to say in his opening remarks that my cuttings file was more extensive than his. I suspect that it is not that my file is more extensive, but that we keep different quotations. I have kept a number of quotations about the Secretary of State and his previous support for a multi-option referendum.
On 13 April 1992, The Daily Telegraph reported that the Secretary of State, then the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden, said:
The argument for a multi-option referendum was widely supported because it was felt to be fair that a proper test of opinion, if a test of opinion were required, should reflect the three major constitutional options that were on offer to the Scottish people.
Hon. Members may not be aware that there are a number of constitutional precedents on the question of a multi-option referendum, including those set by the House of Commons. In Newfoundland in the late 1940s, for example, a constitutional convention met. It decided that only two options for its constitutional future should be presented to the people of Newfoundland. However, the Attlee Privy Council--the Privy Council of a Labour Government with a landslide majority--decided that that would not be fair. In their response to the Newfoundland constitutional convention, the Government stated:
Both in terms of previous support for the democratic option of allowing people in Scotland the free choice between independence, devolution and the status quo,
and in terms of precedents and proceedings in the House, there is substantial support for the idea that a multi-option referendum is not just feasible but desirable when there are distinct blocs of support for constitutional options.
"the party's 49 Scottish MPs would campaign"--
I assume that he was committing the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) to such a campaign at that stage--
"for a multi-option referendum on the country's political future, something which had been endorsed at the meeting of all Scottish Labour MPs."
21 May 1997 : Column 769
In a speech to the Scottish Trades Union Congress in Dundee, the Secretary of State repeated that call. The Scotsman reported:
"Calling for the democratic case for a referendum to be shouted from the rooftops, Mr. Dewar said that the Government should not take refuge in a rigged referendum on proposals which did no more than tinker with the present problem."
After the 1992 election, in which, incidentally, the Scottish National party got fewer votes and won fewer seats than it has now, such a view was widely shared across the parliamentary Labour party. The late John Smith said in the Daily Record in July 1992:
"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."
The Scottish TUC supported the argument for a multi-option referendum. A new political grouping, Scotland United, was formed, which argued forcefully for and mobilised opinion on the case for a multi-option referendum. Indeed, Scotland United's campaigning document, "What Price Democracy?", noted:
"one of the big problems with the 1979 referendum was the absence from the ballot paper of the independence option, which meant that a significant section of the Scottish population was denied the opportunity to vote for their preferred option."
Such a democratic viewpoint was well reflected in early-day motions such as one tabled by William McKelvey, the then hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun, on 8 December 1992. The option to hold a multi-option referendum on the governance of Scotland was supported by 26 hon. Members across the parliamentary Labour party--many of whom have been present in this debate. One amendment to the early-day motion was tabled by David Shaw, the then hon. Member for Dover, who managed to introduce the subject of Monklands district council into the issue of a multi-option referendum, but managed to acquire only one signature, his own.
"The Government have come to a conclusion that it would not be right that the people of Newfoundland should be deprived of an opportunity of considering the issue, and they have, therefore, decided that confederation with Canada should be included as a third choice on the referendum paper".
The option of confederation with Canada eventually came top of the referendum, even if the majority in favour was less than the majority in favour of devolution in the 1979 referendum in Scotland.
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