PM urged to rethink ‘half-baked’ plans for extra Scottish devolution
A FORMER Conservative Scottish Secretary has savaged David Cameron’s “One Nation” slogan as he called on the Prime Minister to rethink “half-baked” plans for extra devolution to Scotland.
The Prime Minister has used the “One Nation” phrase continuously since his election victory last month and it was a key theme of last week’s Queen’s Speech.
Lord Forsyth told peers in the House of Lords: “We are not one nation, we are a United Kingdom.”
He also accused the Tory government of making a mistake with its plans to push ahead with the Smith Commission proposals on extra powers for Scotland and so-called ‘English votes for English laws’ in the House of Commons.
The government says the current situation, which allows Scottish MPs to vote on issues that do not affect their constituents is unfair. But opponents argue that most laws have significant knock-on effects north of the border.
Lord Forsyth told fellow peers: “I’m not very keen on Evel.”
After the issue had been debated in the light of Irish nationalism, the Commons “concluded that (it was right to) reduce the number of MPs from Ireland, so there was not two classes of MP, and I have to say I think that was the correct response”.
Lord Forsyth said that pushing ahead with Evel would allow people in Scotland to claim that they had been “disenfranchised”.
The move “would give the SNP a stick with which to beat the Union and this parliament”, he added.
He called on David Cameron to “rethink” the government’s position and accept constitutional reform cannot go ahead “unilaterally” as he backed a call by Labour and the Liberal Democrats for a constitutional convention.
He said that voters had spoken on the proposals in the Smith Commission at the election.
“All the unionist parties stood on a platform of bringing in the proposals of the Smith Commission,” he said. “And the SNP took 56 seats out of 59. “This is not a credible solution.” Lord Forsyth warned that the SNP’s call for fiscal autonomy would be an “absolute disaster” for Scotland.
He predicted it “would be a very sad day indeed” if the Union was broken up by the SNP, who, he said “want to mislead the voters and try to substitute for the politics of class those of identity.”
Liberal Democrat peer Jeremy Purvis also called for an end to what he described as a piecemeal approach to devolution that pits one part of the UK against another.