Scottish Parliament (Elections etc.) Order 2010

I do not think that I walked into any trap; I acknowledged that Mr Gould had said that he would prefer a separate date. I ask the noble Lord to reflect that the first election to the Scottish Parliament in 1999 was held just a matter of weeks after the NATO engagement in Kosovo. That issue dominated much of the election period. Indeed, he will no doubt recall the leader of the Scottish National Party starting the election campaign by saying that it was error of some proportion—I think he said that it was an unpardonable folly. That was a huge issue that dominated the news, but no one suggested at the time that it detracted from the proper discussion and debate about the issues that the new Scottish Parliament was going to debate. The noble Lord will also recall that in 2003, some six weeks before the election, under the leadership of his right honourable friend Mr Tony Blair, this country invaded Iraq. The noble Lord supported it; I did not. Nevertheless, it was an issue of considerable importance—neither of us would disagree with that. The whole invasion campaign dominated the period of the Scottish election campaign. I do not think that anyone suggested that debates on the issues that the Scottish Parliament was responsible for, be that health, education, transport or local government, were in any way impeded and that politicians did not engage in those debates as they went to the hustings in the May 2003 election. I suspect that, by comparison, however important we may think a referendum on the alternative vote system for the House of Commons is, in my view that does not compare in gravity with the invasion of Iraq. I have no doubt that when it comes to the lead-up to the election, the people of Scotland will be able to distinguish clearly between the issues involved in the election of Members to the Scottish Parliament and the issue that they will be asked to address of how the other place should be elected in future. The noble Lord seemed to suggest in his remarks that it was a constitutional outrage to link two polling opportunities together. He will no doubt recall, or maybe he does not, that in May 1998 the Government, of which I suspect he was not a member then but was subsequently a member, actually combined the referendum on the London mayor with the London local elections. I look back and consider that the general election of 2001 was linked to the local elections; indeed, they were both moved—at least, the local elections were moved and the general election piggybacked them—to June 2001 because of foot and mouth disease. I think that I am right in saying that in 2009 the Government of which the noble Lord had recently ceased to be a member moved the local elections to coincide with the European election, and that the right honourable gentleman Gordon Brown was quite happy this year to combine the general election with the English elections that were already taking place. The combination of elections is not exactly unprecedented; there has been quite a lot of it in recent times.