I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who has been a good personal friend of mine over many years, for summing up the situation. I am not trying to play party political games; I really want to be helpful. I want to create the durable settlement for which Scottish people voted: they want to stay part of the United Kingdom. They want to have that buttress if there is a catastrophic shock, as happened in 1929 and 2008, but they also want to run their own affairs.
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I believe that, if we maintain the current Smith formula, combined with English votes for English laws, we will create a toxic mixture that will propel the Union towards collapse. As I said on Second Reading, we are making the same mistakes that were made on the Irish question in the 19th century: we are giving too little, too late. One thing our parliamentary forefathers did get right, however, was to not create two classes of MPs. They simply intended to reduce the number of Irish MPs with full home rule, but, sadly, the great war intervened and the rest is history.
Under the Smith commission, I think we are where we were with the Irish question in the early 20th century. I do not believe it is possible to dribble out complex tax powers such as thresholds, VAT and airport tax while also maintaining support for the Union. The Smith commission was a rapid scissors-and-tape job in response to a vow that was hastily put together by panicked Unionist politicians in the last days of the referendum campaign. Perhaps it was adequate for its time, but I have read it very carefully—it is not that long—and it has now been overtaken by events.
As my close personal friend and one of the most articulate Unionists, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, said recently in the other place—[Interruption.] I thought I might lose a bit of support with that, but he is a personal friend of mine; I stayed with him over the weekend. He said:
“All the unionist parties stood on a platform of bringing in the proposals of the Smith commission and we ended up with three seats out of 59. This is not a credible position; it has been rejected.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 June 2015; Vol. 762, c. 194.]
I say to the Government that there is such a thing as democracy. The Smith commission has been rejected. We cannot just plough on regardless. We have to listen to what the people have said.