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Mr. Peter Luff (Mid-Worcestershire): Does the Secretary of State accept that the enduring success or otherwise of the proposals that he has put before the House will depend as much on the active support and enthusiasm of the English, Welsh and Northern Irish people as the Scottish people? What, therefore, can I say to my constituents, given that, although a Scottish Member of Parliament--Scotland will remain grossly over-represented in this place for many years to come--will have direct influence over the affairs of Worcestershire and England, that self-same Scottish Member of Parliament and I will have no influence whatever over exactly the same issues north of the border?
Mr. Dewar: The Scottish Parliament will not be here until 2000, so we will not have an immediate change in that respect. When the Scottish Parliament is up, there will be a balanced and fairer package that will involve the other changes that I have mentioned. I may have got the hon. Gentleman wrong, but I suspect that he is one of the Members who on occasion, as the hours have ticked into the morning, have suggested to me that it is unfortunate that they are stuck in the House voting on Scottish legislation. We will at least be saving him from that.
Mr. Eric Clarke (Midlothian): As a former miners' leader and a trade union member for many years, may I thank my right hon. Friend for the White Paper on behalf of the trade union movement? We have fought long and hard for many years to get devolution on the statute book to ensure that the people of Scotland have a proper say. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the White Paper
will lead to the strengthening, not the weakening, of the Union? I remember that, historically, those people over there on the Conservative Benches fought against the emancipation of women for many years. I wonder how many times they have to be wrong before they are ever right.
Mr. Dewar: I welcome what my hon. Friend has said, and I am grateful to him. I am conscious of the contribution that many of my colleagues in the trade union movement have made to this debate over the years. Indeed, some of his colleagues in the National Union of Mineworkers--Mick McGahey, George Bolton and many others--have argued the case long and hard. Fortunately, they were not alone, and we now have a real prospect of progress.
Mrs. Eleanor Laing (Epping Forest): Is the Secretary of State aware that British people who have lived outside Britain for less than 20 years had the right to vote in the recent general election? Given that that was the basis on which his party won a number of seats, why will the Secretary of State not give a right to vote in the referendum to Scottish people who happen to have lived outside Scotland for less than 20 years? Why is he afraid to consult all Scottish people about his proposals for a Scottish Parliament?
Mr. Dewar: The number excluded would be very small. We went for a residency test, which will be familiar to the hon. Lady, and that was right. We have taken the register that will give the biggest, all-encompassing electorate. I do not know whether she is a Scot--
Mr. Dewar: I do not know anything about her, but I have so many old friends missing these days from the Conservative Benches that I wander lonely in the corridors. The residency test is sensible and straightforward, and will provide the largest electorate available in Scotland. It will include some peers whom she may know, and that will be nice. Before the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) gets too excited, I am told that only 123 peers are entitled to vote, and I will stand the risk.
Mrs. Rosemary McKenna (Cumbernauld and Kilsyth): May I join in the congratulations to my right hon. Friend on the publication of a document that has been long awaited? We are on the threshold of the most exciting change in the constitution of this country for at least 300 years. I also thank him for the hour and a quarter's entertainment that we have had this afternoon, because I think that everyone has enjoyed it. Does he agree that thanks are due to the Constitutional Convention, of which I have been a member since the beginning, as have many other hon. Members?
Conservative Members perhaps do not understand that what is on offer is a modern Parliament appropriate to the next century, and that the nature of politics in this country will be changed completely. They will have much to learn from the new Parliament.
Mr. Dewar:
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has worked hard on the project for a long time. I recognise
Mr. Donald Gorrie (Edinburgh, West):
I congratulate the Secretary of State on producing a White Paper that will produce a Parliament for which we can campaign whole-heartedly and together, as the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) said. I also congratulate the Conservatives on their consistency. They continue to show exactly the same attitude that caused them to lose every seat in Scotland.
Mr. Luff:
We got more votes than you did.
Mr. Gorrie:
The Conservatives contested those seats under an electoral system that they supported. It killed them off and they are now complaining. They have showed the flattest learning curve in history.
May I ask the Secretary of State for some clarification on local government? Will the Scottish Parliament be able to alter the voting system for Scottish local government to make it more sensible? Will it be able to alter the financial arrangements so that, for example, local authority self- financed expenditure may be treated as outside the control total, which is the more sensible system that obtains in continental Europe?
Mr. Dewar:
The hon. Gentleman must recognise that local government is a devolved responsibility and, therefore, the Parliament will be able to consider the organisation of local government finance in Scotland. I do not, however, hold out the hope that it will be able unilaterally to change its relationship with the United Kingdom Treasury. That would be a startling innovation, and one which I could not endorse.
Dr. Liam Fox (Woodspring):
It cannot be long before the Liberal Democrats are sued under the Trade Descriptions Act for calling themselves an Opposition party. The Labour party has had 18 years to get the details of the arrangement right and the Secretary of State must not dismiss the hon. Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan). The right hon. Gentleman says that the relationship between Parliament and this place will be dynamic: we say that it will be unstable.
The Secretary of State for Scotland will be the messenger boy for the Parliament in Edinburgh. He will pick up the shopping list of the Scottish Parliament and bring it down to his Cabinet colleagues in London to ask for the money to take back, although he will have no say over how it is spent. When the money runs out, the Secretary of State and the Westminster Parliament will be blamed, not the Scottish Parliament. That is a recipe for instability.
We have heard nothing from Labour and Liberal Democrat Members who were elected on 1 May on the issues of health, education and housing. They said that
those were the most important issues because they had been done to death by 20 years of wicked Tory government. [Interruption.] They cheer now, but those are the very powers that they propose to give to a separate Scottish Parliament. What will they do here? Will they follow the powers back to a Scottish Parliament? Or will they remain here, debating issues that, before 1 May, they said were of secondary importance? If that happens, there will be an air of hypocrisy hanging around the Chamber.
Not much has been said about the costs detailed in the White Paper, in that the Scottish Parliament will have the right to raise not only council tax but business rates. When it raises income tax, or its "guaranteed amount", as the White Paper calls it, Ministers may smile, because there is only one group that is guaranteed on a residency basis not to pay that tax--Ministers legally deemed to live in London. It is fine for everyone else in Scotland to pay the tax, but not for Ministers.
The Scottish people will get a bill for a Parliament not yet designed, on a site not yet designated, to deal with issues that their Members of Parliament already deal with; and it is all to provide them with the one thing that I would have thought no one in this day and age wanted: more politicians and bureaucrats.
As the Secretary of State confirmed, members of the Scottish Executive will be able to speak for the United Kingdom, although they are not answerable to the House.
Dr. Fox:
The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but his exact words were:
"Ministers in the Scottish Executive will have an opportunity to participate in relevant meetings of the Council of Ministers and in appropriate cases could speak for the United Kingdom."
That is profoundly undemocratic. Moreover, does it not fulfil Labour's other agenda--a Europe of the regions by stealth, and the destruction of the nation state?
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