Once bitten...

Three days before the Scottish Parliamentary election in which the parties supporting independence are expected to do well, the peer, Lord Lisvane, pops up with a suggestion that proposals from his Scottish Reform Group would give Scotland many more powers while enabling it to stay within the United Kingdom (Perspective, 3 May).

The subtext is asking voters to support unionist parties as better days are ahead. Those of us with long memories will recall a similar intervention by another peer, Lord Home, in the 1979 Devolution Referendum debate.

When it looked as if Scots might vote for devolution, Lord Home stepped forward and said that the Conservative Party supported devolution but that the scheme put forward to the electorate was seriously flawed.

Vote “no”, he declared, and a Conservative government will come up with a better plan. A majority of voters still supported devolution but not enough to meet the criterion for success and the plan was dropped.

Lord Home's better scheme never materialised and the years from 1979 until the formation of a Scottish Parliament at the end of the century, and even beyond, were marked by the total hostility of the Conservative Party to any form of devolution.

It was only as recently as 2014 that the Scottish Conservatives accepted devolution was here to stay. Scots voters trusting in the promises of Unionists shortly before an important election would do well to study their history books.

IAN MCKEE The Cedars, Edinburgh