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7.30 pm
Mr. John Home Robertson (East Lothian): It is a pleasure to welcome back the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Mr. Livsey). I remember spending a happy week in beautiful weather in Brecon and Radnor at a by-election. I was sorry he won that time, but I was one of those who rejoiced when his result was announced on 2 May to complete the establishment of Scotland and Wales as Tory-free zones.
This has been a remarkable debate, and I join others in paying tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen, South (Miss Begg), for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Ms McKenna) and for Inverness, East, Nairn and Lochaber (Mr. Stewart) for their excellent maiden speeches. They have made their mark already, and I look forward to working with them in the future, particularly as we work towards the establishment of a Parliament for Scotland.
When a constitution appears to have fallen into decay and when people begin to hold the democratic system to be a matter for despair--if not contempt--there are serious problems in the fabric of our state. Until 1 May, too many young people in particular felt that the democratic system was not working--that it did not matter what happened, we would always have a Tory Government who would be able to ride roughshod over everybody else. There is now an atmosphere of hope generated by the general election result and we have to take that forward.
We need a change in our constitutional arrangements to ensure that the democratic system works, and is seen to work, effectively and fairly, around the country. It is
not a time for separatism--that idea was defeated at the election. However, it is a time for radical constitutional change. I welcome the fact that this Bill is the first to be presented to Parliament by the Government, and that it is designed to start the process of establishing a Parliament for Scotland. The Parliament will take democratic control of the £15 billion budget of the Scottish Office, as well as a swathe of legislative and administrative responsibilities. Furthermore, the Bill will give appropriate discretion on the Budget to that Parliament in the future.
Above all, I welcome the fact that the Bill provides a mechanism that will entrench the position of the Scottish Parliament for all time. I am worried that Conservative Members are already looking for alibis and ways to nitpick to allow them perhaps to sidestep the result of a referendum in the future. They will not be allowed to get away with that.
In making this plea to the House, I should perhaps ask for a number of other offences to be taken into account. I was the constituency delegate--rather a young one, I have to say--to the Labour party conference in Blackpool in 1976 who moved the motion that committed my party to the principle of home rule for Scotland. It has been a long time waiting, but I am delighted that we are now getting rather nearer to it. I certainly campaigned for a yes vote in the 1979 referendum, and it is worth remembering that we won that referendum with a majority of 77,435--good enough in any other circumstances, but the incoming Tory Government were not interested in such results. Furthermore, I have raised this issue again and again--along with a number of colleagues--and used all the devices available to a Back Bencher ever since the disastrous day when Margaret Thatcher came to power and introduced more and more centralised government in this country.
The commitment to Scottish home rule goes with the job of being the Member of Parliament for East Lothian--with one or two aberrations, such as the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), who passed through my constituency briefly in 1974.
Mr. Wallace:
Is it not possible that, in 1974, even the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) as in favour of home rule?
Mr. Home Robertson:
I should have checked the cuttings, but I have a suspicion that the right hon. Gentleman has shifted his ground on that issue, as he has on others. We should pursue him on that if he serves on the Committee--or if he ends up as the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, as some have threatened. We shall draw a veil over that visitor to Berwickshire and East Lothian.
My immediate predecessor, John Mackintosh, was one of the most powerful advocates of a Scottish Parliament in the 1960s and 1970s. I vividly remember sitting in the Public Gallery, watching him stand in this very place making the case for Scottish home rule all those years ago. We have been stuck for far too long and it is time to get on with the job.
The Member who represented East Lothian in the last Scottish Parliament in 1707 was the great Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, who gave eloquent and accurate warnings of the perils of the "incorporating union" which has left Scotland as a jurisdiction without a legislature
for the past 290 years. The experience of centralised and uncontrollable government at the Scottish Office in the past 18 years must make a conclusive and irrefutable case for home rule in Scotland now--the sooner, the better.
The quaint fiction that this Parliament can be an effective protector of the rights and interests of people in Scotland was finally exposed when this House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to impose the poll tax in Scotland in 1987. I have had private conversations with English Conservative Members of Parliament--some who are still in the House, and others who have departed--and I have asked them how they could possibly have voted to impose such an unfair and unworkable tax on my constituents in East Lothian which would not apply to their constituents south of the border. The reply was always the same--they did not know what they were voting for, but trusted the then Secretary of State for Scotland and voted in accordance with the Government Whip.
That was the worst measure, but there have been plenty more--the centralising of the NHS in Scotland, local government reform and the endless catalogue of quangos. It has always been absurd to put exclusively Scottish business through the House, but the experience of the Thatcher years has demonstrated that it is dangerous. A nominally democratic system allowed a minority to treat the nation of Scotland with absolute contempt and nothing like that must ever be possible again. That will change when we implement the package of reforms agreed by the Scottish Constitutional Convention.
I have some anxieties about the Bill. It may be difficult to persuade people to come out to vote when there is no noticeable opposition. At the general election in Scotland, 60 per cent. of the voters supported parties committed to Scottish home rule within the United Kingdom; 22 per cent. voted for total independence; and 17 per cent. voted for the status quo.
With great respect to Conservative Members and to the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Welsh), who is in his place representing the Scottish National party, the Conservative and Scottish National parties were the single-issue parties at the general election in Scotland. The Scottish National party's single issue was independence, while the Conservative party tried to make the present state of the United Kingdom the single issue that it hoped people would endorse. Both those extremes were rejected overwhelmingly, and there is a consensus for what John Smith referred to rightly as
As we proceed with this referendum--and since the Government have plans for other referendums on the European single currency and on electoral reform--perhaps the time has come for a new statute to establish the position of referendums in the British constitution. Should it be entirely up to the Government--of whatever
persuasion--to decide what use should be made of referendums, or should there be an overarching constitutional provision to deal with that matter? What guidelines should there be on the conduct of referendums and the drafting of the questions?
I have one detailed point for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I hope that the questions on the ballot paper will clearly require a yes or a no and are as clear as possible. Above all, what is the real significance of the result of a referendum? At present, as I understand it, a referendum result can only be advisory and for the consideration of this sovereign Parliament. Should we be making it binding on Parliament or on future Governments? There is a case for considering that option and finding a device for doing so, particularly as Conservatives are already considering ways in which they can shrug off the result of this referendum.
Mr. Donald Gorrie (Edinburgh, West):
Before I get into the argument, it gives me great pleasure to pay tribute to my predecessor, Lord James Douglas-Hamilton. He is widely liked as an individual and, although it is a trite remark, he is almost universally regarded as a very nice man. He was particularly noted for his politeness, whether it took the form, on occasions, of giving lifts to Opposition canvassers on rainy evenings, or of insisting on opening the door for his female departmental chauffeur. He did extremely well to hold his seat for so long against repeated and energetic campaigns by my party. At the count in Edinburgh, where six constituencies held their counts, he was largely regarded as having made the best speech of the evening, which is a great testament to his character on an evening when he lost.
Also, it gives me great pleasure to pay tribute to my constituency. I have wooed it long enough. This was my fifth attempt to win it and, counting local and national elections, I think that my score is won 14, lost eight, so I have shown my enthusiasm for west Edinburgh. It is an area that is steeped in history. We learned some of that again recently when a splendid Roman lion in stone was dug out of the River Almond, which reminds us of the time when the Romans tried unsuccessfully to keep the Picts at bay. We have fine mediaeval churches and tower houses. We have two schools that are more than 350 years old and many fine modern schools. We have stately homes and housing estates that are less stately. We have the Union canal, from the heyday of Scottish industrialisation, which is shortly to benefit from a great injection of money from the millennium fund. We have the Forth road bridge--I suppose that I claim half and Fife presumably claims the other half--which is a great icon of British Victorian development. There are many things in the past of which we can be proud.
Politically, in the days when Mr. Gladstone represented Midlothian, a good deal of what is now west Edinburgh came into his constituency. He campaigned for Irish home rule with great vigour until an advanced age. I hope that we can achieve Scottish home rule more rapidly.
My constituents would greatly benefit from a Scottish Parliament, because the present Government system has let them down. In many parts of my constituency, houses desperately need investment. We have schools that need investment and more teachers and equipment. We have colleges where young people do not have enough resources and have a bleak outlook for getting a career that they would like to pursue. We have a fine hospital, for which local people have fought several successful campaigns against the local health board, which tries to remove all the best facilities. The hospital needs greater investment and, like other hospitals, needs many more nurses and doctors who need to be better paid.
We have problems that other areas may also have. The successful edge-of-town shopping centre has caused the ruination of many of our suburban shopping centres. We have a desperate need for investment in public transport, both railway and busway. The council is trying to do something about that, but there is a need for Government assistance to oil the wheels, metaphorically speaking, making it easier for public and private money to come together, rather than operating in the convoluted way that was determined by the previous Government.
We have the greatest traffic problem in Scotland--not as great, perhaps, as some such problems in England, but the situation is bad and needs attention, again at central Government and local government levels.
Above all, we do not need a second Forth road bridge, which was threatened by the previous Government, or the so-called Barnton bypass, which was almost universally condemned. I hope that the Scottish Office will rapidly show that it is not pursuing those foolish ideas.
We need a system in which communities can be helped to revive themselves. A Scottish Parliament would give a great opportunity for doing things better and for helping people to help themselves, instead of having a begging-bowl mentality and blaming London all the time, which is what we tend to do.
On the Bill, there are two main issues: one is home rule; the other is whether we need a referendum. On home rule, I agree with those who think that sovereignty lies with the people and not with Parliament. Whether they are Scottish people, English, Welsh or Irish, they have the sovereignty and we are merely lent it to look after for a short while.
"the settled will of the Scottish people."
That is not controversial, and since there is no credible challenge to this proposition--not even from the ranks of what is left of the Conservative party in Scotland--it may be difficult to galvanise people to come out again to vote for the obvious, particularly when the concept of a referendum as a constitutional device is not a familiar one in any part of the United Kingdom. There have been only two referendums in Scotland hitherto, and the result of one was overturned at the whim of an incoming Conservative Government--which, perhaps, does not bode awfully well.
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