Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough): What happens if the referendum vote is yes and, as a result of our debates, major changes are made to the legislation, so we end up with something very different from the White Paper that the Scottish people will consider this summer? Is not that possibility one reason for having a post-legislative referendum?
Mr. Salmond: If the House were to decide that independence for Scotland was a much better way forward, as I have always argued, that would be a substantive change and I would argue for an independence referendum. The hon. Gentleman does not seriously believe that there will be such a radical change, but if he has hopes that I can nourish I would be pleased to hear them. We cannot anticipate both a pre-legislative and a post-legislative referendum, because that would try the patience of this Scottish electorate beyond reasonable endurance.
I make a diametrically opposed interpretation of the Bill to the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram). He argued that the Government's intention in suggesting
a two-question referendum was to buttress the referendum and devolution proposals. I reached the opposite conclusion. I think that the reason for the referendum, without going through the full route march of the explanation, was to buttress the Government's prospects in the general election. The intention was to remove aspects of the constitutional proposals from the general election campaign.
The former right hon. Member for Stirling is but a distant memory, and has been replaced by the much more amenable hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs. McGuire), who is in her place as I would expect. Some people in Scottish politics felt a year or so ago that the tartan tax campaign being waged by the then Secretary of State for Scotland was successful. I never shared that opinion: the previous Secretary of State for Scotland, who was replaced by my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Morgan), had a much better tactical campaign in the 1992 election. He kept his major arguments until the immediate onset of the campaign. It struck many of us that the former right hon. Member for Stirling fired too many of his bullets on the tartan tax far too early.
I have no doubt that the decision to go for a two-question referendum was a direct result of fears about what the tartan tax campaign was doing to Labour's prospects not on the devolution proposals but in the general election. Those fears were misplaced, as we all probably agree in the comfortable aftermath of the general election. Unfortunately, they have left the House and the Scottish people with a proposal that does not make serious sense when it is analysed.
Such analysis has been extremely well conducted by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, who pointed out that, in effect, one referendum, two questions produces a multi-option referendum. It gives us not the multi-option referendum that has been generally supported at one time or another across Scotland by many Labour Members, but one that offers a choice between the status quo, which was soundly rejected--it came third in most of the constitutional polls over the past few years--and a Parliament without tax-raising powers, which is not supported by any serious body of opinion in Scotland or, indeed, through the proposals of the Government or the Liberal Democrats. How can it be right to offer people a multi-option referendum through the device of two questions but not offer a proper, serious multi-option referendum of a choice between independence, devolution and the status quo?
Isolating the tax-varying power as part of a referendum is the worst possible thing to do if one is serious about a devolution proposal going through. In the 1992 general election, the campaign for which the Secretary of State for Scotland and I remember extremely well, the issue of a tartan tax was not raised to nearly the same extent--because it was then part of the convention proposal for what was called assigned revenues. The tax-varying power was part of a wider taxation remit. There was not the same isolation of part of the proposal, which is extremely weak and vulnerable to attack and criticism.
I cannot conceive of how anyone who is serious, optimistic and genuine about a devolution commitment thinks that extracting the weakest part of the devolution scheme and subjecting it to a second question, as opposed to doing so with, for example, a more popular aspect of it such as proportional representation, is in the interests
of constitutional change. That is an extremely dangerous, gambler's move on devolution. I nourish the deep suspicion that some of those who thought that that was a good idea--I excuse the Ministers sitting on the Treasury Bench of this entirely--did not sincerely wish the second question to be endorsed.
As the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland said, what would happen if we got a yes, no result? The Liberal Democrats have been long-standing supporters of Scottish self government, yet in such circumstances, as they signalled in interviews, they would find themselves perhaps voting against a self-government proposal. What logic is there to a proposal that probably or possibly risks losing the votes of part of the coalition in favour of devolution as a result of a two-question referendum?
My party's main interest in the proceedings is to secure a genuine multi-option referendum to allow real free choice between the concepts of independence, devolution and the status quo--the referendum which is overwhelmingly supported in Scotland and which has been supported on both sides of the House. It was, incidentally, first a Liberal idea in the 1960s, proposed by the soon-to-be Lord Steel, so it has been supported by all parties and is still the right referendum to have, if we are to go through a referendum process.
Mr. Dennis Canavan (Falkirk, West):
I listened with interest to the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), because I recall that, more than 20 years ago, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer was a rector of Edinburgh university and invited the right hon. Gentleman and me to become members of a commission to consider the workings of the university and, among other things, the repercussions on the university and on higher education in Scotland in general of the then Labour Government's proposal to set up a Scottish Parliament. My recollection is that the right hon. Gentleman was a keen supporter of the principle of a Scottish Assembly at that time and that he wanted to extend the powers proposed by the then Government to include the power to legislate on Scottish higher education.
Mr. Ancram:
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is not setting out intentionally to mislead. I was a supporter of devolution in 1968 and until about 1972, when I suddenly realised the cost of it to the Scottish people. Certainly, by the time I served on that commission with him, I had seen the light.
Mr. Canavan:
The right hon. Gentleman is trying to rewrite history. He should read the manifesto on which he stood in Berwick and East Lothian at the general election in 1974, when the Scottish Tory party had a clear commitment to set up a Scottish Parliament, or Assembly, as it was called at the time. No wonder the voters of Berwick and East Lothian turfed him out; he then sought refuge in Edinburgh, South, and the people there turfed
I listened with more respect to what the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) said on behalf of the Scottish Liberal Democrats, who were, and still are, our partners in the Scottish Constitutional Convention. I am not an enthusiastic supporter of the Bill, because I would far rather we spent our time on legislation to set up a Scottish Parliament instead of pussyfooting around and wasting time with this legislation.
The Government are clearly determined to hold a referendum, but I fail to understand the need for two propositions to be put to the people of Scotland--one on the principle of a Scottish Parliament and another on whether that Parliament should have revenue-raising powers.
There is no meaningful Parliament in the world that does not have revenue-raising powers. Even the smallest authority in Britain--if we do not want to talk about English parish councils we could mention the smallest local authority in Scotland, Clackmannanshire council--has revenue-raising powers, of which the last Tory Government approved. Of course, the Scottish Parliament will be far more powerful than any local authority.
Mr. Salmond:
But not in terms of control overits own revenue. Clackmannanshire council controls approximately 10 per cent. of its revenue. With the tax-varying powers, the maximum that a Scottish Parliament can control will be 3 per cent.
Mr. Canavan:
I take that point. Some of us argued within the convention that there should be more revenue-raising powers, including a case, perhaps, for all the revenue-raising within Scotland to be the responsibility of the Scottish Parliament. It is a pity that the hon. Gentleman and his party boycotted the Scottish Constitutional Convention. Had he not done so, he might have been there to lend his support to that argument, which was advanced by others as well as by me.
Next Section
| Index | Home Page |