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Mr. Dafydd Wigley (Caernarfon): Is Scotland a part of England?

Mr. Duncan Smith: No, I did not refer to that. I said that my parents moved to another part of England, having previously at one stage also been there. The hon. Gentleman must be careful about how he interprets words.

Mr. Wigley: So must the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Duncan Smith: The reality is that those who have their hearts in a particular country, and have a view and

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a reason to vote, will have no say. We can argue not one jot on that, or on the levels that will be taken during the course of the devolution debate.

We are seeing an arrogance, not because what is being done has not been done before, but because of the way in which the Government are driving the legislation through Parliament. I say to the Back Benchers who sit on the Government side, silent as the grave, nodding quietly in acquiescence with their Government, that in due course they will find that their Government will act against their interests.

Every day that those Back Benchers watch their Government wind this place up, they watch them wind away their chance to debate or to change things on behalf of their constituents. I say good luck to them, but I add, "Don't come back to us and apologise in a year's time."

5.23 pm

Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan): With all due respect to the hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith), I think that most hon. Members know that the reason why there was no guillotine on the Maastricht legislation was simply that the Government could not carry a guillotine motion on the Floor of the House. It was not because of any principle on their part.

The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield(Sir N. Fowler) said that, when he was in a position to manage such matters, he would never have countenanced such an action. However, when the right hon. Gentleman was chairman of the Conservative party and the Maastricht legislation was running into trouble in the House, there was no guillotine simply because such a motion would not have been carried.

Once we remove the whiff of humbug that the Secretary of State for Scotland described earlier--large lumps of House of Commons humbug would be a better description--the truth is that if Members of Parliament are in favour of particular legislation they support guillotines, but if they are against the legislation, they are fiercely against the guillotine.

I make an honourable exception for the Liberal party, because I understand that although, it is against the legislation--if I interpret Liberal Members' statements correctly they intend to vote against the referendum legislation--they are still sympathetic to the guillotine.

In 10 years in the House, I have voted for only one guillotine motion, so I suspect that I have voted for fewer guillotines than almost any other Member now in opposition. My experience is that people's support or otherwise for guillotines is basically determined by their support or otherwise for the legislation concerned.

The humbug arises because of the identity of the Members making the charges of arrogance and insensitivity. The Government have been guilty of arrogance in their short period in office; there is no doubt about that. However, the charge comes from the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who, during his time as Home Secretary, was not noted for his humility in his approach to a whole variety of public business.

There are some colourful characters in my constituency who occupy the sheriff courts day in and day out, but I do not know any one of them who has had as many court

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judgments against him as the right hon. and learned Gentleman did during his term of office as Home Secretary. For such a charge to come from the Conservative Front Bench takes some stomaching for the rest of us, who over the past few years have been subjected to guillotine after guillotine by those self same people.

I think that the Government should have waited until the debate had started. They should have let the filibuster become clear before they introduced the guillotine. The guillotine motion should have been looser, too. They have over-restricted debate, especially at the end of the debates on some of the amendments.

However, in response to the sort of amendments that have been tabled over the past 10 days, let me say that, basically, I support the timetabling of the Bill. Some of the amendments have been called frivolous. They are more than frivolous, they are insulting. Do Conservative Members not realise that it is insulting to the people of Scotland and Wales to table St. Andrew's day amendments and daylight hours amendments?

Sir Patrick Cormack: Those were not selected.

Mr. Salmond: No, but they were tabled by the hon. Gentleman's colleagues. Surely the nature of those amendments tells us something about the nature of many Conservative Back Benchers' approach to the legislation.

Serious issues arise on the Bill, such as whether it is needed at all. In my view, it is at best an unnecessary delay, and at worst a dangerous gamble. Another serious issue is the number of questions that should be asked. The Liberal Democrats' amendment, which we may debate later, is perfectly valid.

In Scotland and in Wales, the idea of a multi-option referendum is a big issue, and there is massive support for one, with a majority in every party supporting the concept. I noted that one of the contenders for the Conservative leadership is also on the record as supporting a multi-option referendum. He is in opposition now, of course. The present Secretary of State for Scotland, too, supported such a referendum when he was in opposition, but the concept seems to grow somewhat distant when people are in government.

Those issues will be debated and voted on. I do not think that sufficient time has been allowed, but none the less, they will be debated and voted upon.

The shadow Home Secretary chose to highlight as one of his major objections the issue of thresholds. He told the House that that was a key issue, and therefore the guillotine motion was not appropriate. Rightly, in view of the likely timetable, he said that that issue would not force a debate or a vote.

At an earlier stage in our proceedings, I challenged the right hon. and learned Gentleman on that precise question, and asked him whether the Conservative Front-Bench spokesmen would table blocking devices, involving 40 per cent. rules--or even 50 per cent. rules, which another of the contenders for the Tory crown has been talking about recently.

The shadow Home Secretary replied:


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As the Liberal Democrats have pointed out, as of yesterday, Opposition Front-Bench, as opposed to the Back-Bench, Members had tabled no amendments whatsoever on the matter. From Tory Back Benchers we have had 33, 40 and even 50 per cent. rules, but, until the amendments tabled yesterday and the starred amendments that appear on the Order Paper today, we had had nothing from Opposition Front Benchers. Even when new clauses 23, 24 and 25 were tabled yesterday, they were not about 40 or 50 per cent. rules but referred to the percentage of people voting--the turn-out in the referendum. I am glad that those amendments are not going to be treated seriously by the House. The reintroduction of that concept into politics disfigures democratic debate.

The Minister for Education and Industry, Scottish Office is sitting on the Government Front Bench. He will remember from the previous referendum that the 40 per cent. rule was eventually attacked by both sides in the debate because it disfigured the way in which the debate was conducted. The idea that people could stay at home and influence the result of a democratic ballot was deeply disabling to democracy.

Mr. Wigley: People could even die.

Mr. Salmond: As the hon. Gentleman says, people who died at an inconvenient time would have been counted as against in the 1979 referendum in Scotland. In 1979, I was registered twice, once as a student and once at my home address. Because the registers of postal ballots were not published, I was not able to vote by post in St. Andrews. One of my potential votes was therefore counted against in the 1979 referendum. I legitimately appeared twice on the electoral roll but was entitled to vote only once. All those complexities were introduced by manipulation of the ballot and the 40 per cent. rule.

Internationally, if there had been a 40 per cent. rule in the Maastricht referendum in France, it would never have passed. Greenland would still be in the European Union. Perhaps we can understand now the objectives behind the Tory Back-Bench attempts to secure 33, 40 and 50 per cent. rules. More appropriately for the Conservative party, if we convert the Tory vote in Scotland to a percentage of the total electorate, the figure does not even reach the dizzy heights of 17 per cent.; it is 12.5 per cent.

Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills): The same applies to the hon. Gentleman's party.

Mr. Salmond: It does not. Firstly, we got more votes, but, more importantly, I am not arguing from the dizzy heights of a mandate of 12.5 per cent. of the total electorate that there should be a 33, 40 or 50 per cent. stipulation in a referendum Bill. If there had been a 40 per cent. rule in general elections, no UK Government would have been elected since the second world war--and a good thing too, many of my constituents might say.


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