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1 May 2007 : Column 415WH—continued
The figures are not small or incidental for a country such as ours. The £2 billion oil gap alone is the equivalent of the entire budget for universities and colleges. However, despite being billions of pounds out on oil and with less money to spend, the nationalists keep adding to their tax and spending commitments day by day, thereby creating a black hole for every year of a first-term Administration, and before we add the costs of independence. New SNP spending commitments would cost an average of at least £2 billion each year, equating to a massive £8 billion over the four years of a term of office. Those commitments include tax and spending promises on pre-school education, free school meals, micro renewable generators for homes, higher education, the first time buyers grant, housing debt, farming, international aid, the Edinburgh festival Expo fund, local income tax and freezing council tax.
Ann McKechin: As my hon. Friend will be aware, one of Scotland’s distinct features is our strong system of local government, which we have had for many years. As one of those of us who believe in local democracy, does she not consider the setting of a central rate for income tax strange, as it will make local authorities virtually powerless to provide the individual services that their local communities demand?
Anne Moffat: Absolutely. I could not have put that better myself. Not content with the unfunded commitments, the SNP has made unfunded tax and spending pledges in currently reserved areas.
Pete Wishart: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Anne Moffat: Absolutely not. [Interruption.] I do not care; I have no intention of giving way.
The SNP has made pledges in areas that are currently reserved. That is the key. I am referring to a citizen’s pension at a cost of £1.2 billion and a change to corporation tax costing £600 million—a total cost of £1.8 billion. On top of that, we estimate the cost of the trappings of an independent state—new Ministries, new embassies and new commitments—at £1.5 billion. The SNP published tax plan would mean an immediate rise in income tax, yet there are pledges to lower taxes. I am totally confused; I just hope that the shrewd and astute people in Scotland will see through that nonsense.
The nationalists, as we have heard, say that they could join the euro, but they do not meet the criteria on either the exchange rate rules of the euro or the fiscal rules—the confusion mounts. To avoid doubt, I should, however, make one thing clear. Although the SNP says that it will make a claim for oil revenues in the first 100 days of power if it is elected, it also intends to retain the benefits of Barnett money. That is an absolute joke.
In a global economy in which stability is at a premium and investment can so easily come and go, businesses and individuals need to be certain of the monetary and currency arrangements, or they will question the wisdom of investing when an Administration who want all the trappings of a separate state cannot begin to articulate what they would do with the currency inflation interest rates and the management of the economy.
Mr. Peter Atkinson (in the Chair): Order. May I remind the hon. Lady that we have to leave adequate time for the winding-up speeches?
Anne Moffat: Quite simply, the reality of life in Scotland today is not some continuing obsession with a border between Scotland and England, but ever closer connections between the nations.
12.2 pm
Mr. Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD): I welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Atkinson. I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan) on securing a debate that, if nothing else, has served to remind us all why we should be grateful that it is some years since the Scottish Grand Committee met.
I listened to the slightly misty-eyed and breathy rhetoric of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) about how it was time for us to be free and I thought I heard an echo of a distant campaign. I thought at first that perhaps it was that glorious campaign in 1992—no doubt hon. Members remember the slogan, “Scotland free in ’93”. But no, it was not that one. It was an echo of the glorious Scottish summer of 1978, when we were all on the march with Ally’s army—we were going to win the World cup. Of course, as the hon. Gentleman will know—he should remember this and be careful—in Scotland one can often go from spring to winter without enjoying a summer or an autumn. He should be a bit more cautious as he anticipates the wishes of the electorate as they will be expressed on Thursday.
Lord Robertson of Port Ellen said a number of years ago that devolution would be the death of the Scottish National party. I think that he was right, and the justification for that view has been seen in the election campaign in the past few weeks. One has to consider where independence is in the Scottish National party campaign—it is something that we might at some stage over the next four years get a say on in a referendum. We are not being told that it is something that is so good for us that we have to have it now. We are being told that we will have a go with devolution for three and a half years, or perhaps four, and then we will think about it.
One can see the change in the position of the Scottish National party. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) famously told us in a “Newsnight” debate that an independent Scotland would keep sterling as its currency and that we would continue to have our interest rates set by the Bank of England. I just do not understand the logic of the position that we will keep those things but we will, by virtue of some sentimental desire and a drive for independence, remove ourselves from all influence on them. As the hon. Member for Glasgow, North (Ann McKechin) said, we will remove Scotland from the consideration of those matters. It is bad enough sometimes that Scotland’s economy can be affected by a greater set-up in which our needs and wishes are not at the forefront, but at least they are there and being considered. The SNP will give us a situation in which we will be subject to the diktats and decisions of others, but we will have no say and they will not have to consider our position at all.
David Mundell: To take up the thread of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, and referring to the comments of the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton, East (Mr. Hood), may we take it that when it comes to discussions between the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, it will indeed be no deal?
Mr. Carmichael: We will all sleep much better in our beds knowing that that is not my decision. I say to the hon. Gentleman, as I have already said to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, that I will not prejudge the decision of the people on Thursday, and that is the point at which we start to speak about coalitions.
The real weakness of the independence position was best demonstrated this weekend, when again the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan told us that independence was not a one-way street. That is a very, very dangerous line to take. I cannot believe for one second that the hon. Gentleman said that without having first given it the most careful and closest consideration, but that statement is as close to being misleading as any hon. Member of this House could come because it fails to take account of the role of the rest of the United Kingdom in all this. We might well try independence for a few years with the Scottish National party, but if we then decide that things are not so nice on the outside and we want to come back in, other people—the people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland—will want to have a say. Looking at recent history, I have to say that I do not see why on earth they would want to have us back.
Constitutional settlements are dynamic. Over the past 300 years we have seen the balance change between monarch and Parliament. Within Parliament in the past 100 years we have seen the balance change between the Commons and the Lords. I do not believe—this has been a weakness of the Government’s position in recent months—that we should think that constitutional development in Scotland stopped on 1 May 1999, when the first Scottish Parliament was elected. That must be an organic and evolving process.
One area that requires consideration is the way in which the budget of the Scottish Parliament is raised. A weakness of that institution is that it is, in effect, a one-sided equation, if there can be such a thing. Politics is a two-sided equation: it is about how we raise the money and how we spend it. The absence of one of those sides—the raising of the money—has distorted political debate in Scotland for the past eight years. That will need to be addressed. I repeat the leader of my party’s call today for a new constitutional convention to establish a consensus across the political parties and civic society in Scotland on how best we can evolve the constitutional settlement.
I will not prejudge the verdict of the voters on Thursday, but I will say that if we do end up with an SNP Administration or an SNP-led Administration, that will not be a reflection on SNP policies; nor will it reflect a thirst for independence. The Government will have to share some part of the blame if that happens. In recent times, they have here resisted progress in the constitutional debate. They have refused to speak about reform and they have insisted on continuing with the institution of the Scotland Office and with the Office of the Advocate-General—offices that, frankly, in their current form have long outlived their usefulness.
The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire prayed in aid the Iraq war, but he did not take my intervention on the issue because he knew what I was going to say—that in fact the Scottish Parliament voted in favour of the Iraq war. With a few honourable
exceptions, Labour and Conservative MSPs voted for it, just as Labour and Conservative MPs did, and they did so days before it started. The nationalists also talk about Trident, but when the Scottish Parliament debated Trident, it made no decision at all—all the options were knocked down.
That takes us to the problem with the Scottish National party. I believe that Scotland and the United Kingdom can be improved through the application of my political principles as a Liberal, and no doubt the Conservative and Labour parties believe the same about their political principles. However, the Scottish National party seems to believe that it can improve Scotland simply by drawing lines on the map, and that is a dangerous attitude, because if we draw that line on the map and still have problems, who will we blame then?
2.11 pm
David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con): Thank you for calling me, Mr. Atkinson. As a Member whose constituency borders Scotland, you will be familiar with the world of Scottish politics.
I am pleased that the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan) secured the debate, although I would have been more pleased had any Scottish Labour MP signed the early-day motion that I tabled in the House to celebrate the Act of Union, as some of their English colleagues felt able to do. I would have been happier still had the Government backed my party’s calls to celebrate the Act of Union throughout the United Kingdom, rather than marginalising it by simply holding an event to introduce the new £2 coin to which the Chancellor did not even bother to turn up and which the Secretary of State graced for only five minutes.
Mr. Hood: Is it the hon. Gentleman’s case that we would not have had this problem had MPs signed an early-day motion? Is that what he has just told us?
David Mundell: We would not have had this problem had the Labour and Liberal Democrat Administration in Edinburgh not failed so miserably over the past eight years—that is the point that has been missing from the debate so far.
I agreed with virtually everything that the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North said in opening the debate. Indeed, it reflected half the State of the Union address that my colleague Annabel Goldie gave last week, which set out the argument for the Union.
Jim Sheridan: The hon. Gentleman seems to be criticising the Labour and Liberal Democrat partnership at Holyrood. Does he include the Conservatives numpties in that so-called failure?
David Mundell:
I have never described colleagues in that way, but there is no doubt that the public perception in Scotland is that the Scottish Executive have failed to deliver over the past eight years, and it is
interesting that none of the Labour Members who have spoken has acknowledged that failure.
Let us be quite clear that if the Scottish National party increases its numbers in Thursday’s elections, that will not be because there is a clarion call for independence—as others have said, the polls do not indicate support for independence—but because of dissatisfaction with the Labour Administration and, indeed, with the Liberal Democrats, who are now clearly willing to swap camps.
Pete Wishart: If there is dissatisfaction, why are people not clamouring to support the Conservative party in Scotland? The Conservative party in England is way ahead of the Labour party in opinion polls, so what is wrong with the Conservative party in Scotland?
David Mundell: As the Prime Minister once said, the Conservative party in Scotland offers people a third way in the election, and I shall make that case.
John Robertson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
David Mundell: I have only a short time in which to speak, given how long others have spoken.
The Conservatives offer a third way because they offer an opportunity for change but without all the risks that a Scottish National party Administration would bring to the Scottish Parliament, as many hon. Members have eloquently said. Let us be quite clear, however, that there will be no Scottish nationalist Administration in Holyrood without the Liberal Democrats—it is they who will deliver the Scottish National party to the people of Scotland. I am sure that other hon. Members present know the arithmetic and that the Scottish National party cannot get a majority in the Scottish Parliament on its own. It will therefore require Liberal Democrat support to pursue any of the hare-brained ideas that it has suggested, which the hon. Member for East Lothian (Anne Moffat) eloquently described.
Mr. Carmichael: The hon. Gentleman again demonstrates very well the problem that he succinctly highlighted in his memo: the Conservative party in Scotland has no thinkers. However, he speaks absolute nonsense when he says that the Liberal Democrats would be required to put the SNP in power. Surely, the SNP can form a minority Administration if it chooses to do so; indeed, if the Conservative party’s policy is to have nothing to do with any coalition with any party, that will be the inevitable consequence.
David Mundell: Previously, the hon. Gentleman did not wish to predict the outcome of the election. However, it is very unlikely that the Scottish National party could achieve the necessary numbers, and past form suggests that the Liberal Democrats might do a volte-face on virtually every issue on which they stand in the election, as they have on issues ranging from tuition fees to genetically modified crops. Despite what the hon. Gentleman said in the debate, the possibility of an SNP-Liberal Democrat coalition in Holyrood is very much open, and that will be bad for Scotland because a Scottish nationalist-led Administration will bring about the instability that we have discussed.
However, this week’s vote will not destroy the Union because the election is not about the Union per se. I am happy to join Labour Members and Unionists across Scotland to fight the Union’s cause, but like my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), I want to make a positive case for the Union. My right hon. Friend does not want to take the clunking-fist approach of the Chancellor, who is trying to scare everybody into thinking that Scotland would somehow be totally diminished and impoverished if it were not part of the Union; he wants to make a positive case for staying in the Union, as he did yesterday in Buchanan street in Glasgow, where he was so well received. The Labour party has made a serious mistake in fighting such a negative campaign in the election. I am relatively objective in the debate between the Labour party and the SNP, but I have not heard Labour policies being set out. Indeed, when Mr. McConnell was pushed this weekend, he could not answer questions about Labour’s policies on local income tax and council tax.
People in Scotland will have a choice on Thursday and will be able to choose the change that they desperately want. I include the Liberal Democrats in those changes, because they have gone along with every policy of the Labour Administration, and it is incredible to see their leader, Nicol Stephen, trying to distance himself from decisions to which he was party. However, there is a chance for change and there is a party that offers delivery without divorce, which is why I urge people to vote for the Scottish Conservative party on Thursday.
12.20 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Cairns): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Atkinson, in this debate on the Government’s policy towards the Union. It may have escaped your notice that there is an election going on in Scotland at the moment. It is not unnatural that in a debate on the Union at a time when a momentous decision on its future is to be taken in 48 hours we should focus on the choice faced by the people of Scotland. However, before I move on to that, I want to say one thing about Scotland’s position in the Union.
Scotland helped to make the United Kingdom what it is today. The United Kingdom has been and continues to be one of the most successful countries in the world—and in the history of the world. If it were not for the ingenuity, drive, inventiveness and scientific genius of Scots, the United Kingdom would not have become what it is today. Scotland has played an invaluable part in creating this country, and I look forward to the next 300 years of Scotland’s membership of the Union.
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