My Lords, I start with an apology to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, for my irritation earlier. As my noble friend Lord Kirkhill pointed out to me, the Minister has not been a Member of this House for very long and we should be more tolerant, which is something that perhaps some on his own side ought to reflect on as well. I hope he will accept my sincere apologies.
However, I think he is wrong: just because this proposal was not in Smith, that does not mean it cannot be in the Bill. The Bill states:
“To amend the Scotland Act 1998 and make provision about the functions of the Scottish Ministers; and for connected purposes”.
It does not say that it is simply to implement the Smith commission work. So my amendment is entirely in order. Indeed, the Public Bill Office would not have allowed me to get away with tabling it if it was not.
Perhaps I may say how much I welcome the fairly widespread support for the amendment. As the noble Lord, Lord Norton, said, I think everyone recognises that there is a problem. I thought the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, had a better description of it when he quoted Lord Hailsham talking about an elected dictatorship rather than the effective one-party state that I have described. There are different ways of dealing with it and I have put forward one suggestion. It has been suggested by some in certain quarters, astonishingly, that this is not our responsibility. Notwithstanding that, the same people are trying to impose all sorts of things on the Scottish Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Norton, is right to say that the Presiding Officer, along with her colleagues, has the principal responsibility for this, but there is nothing to stop us, as we saw earlier, making recommendations and indeed legislating.
The only two people who have been Members of the Scottish Parliament who have spoken are the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and me, and we both have respect. I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Stephen, spoke in this debate although he did in previous ones and, of course—he keeps changing his name so I can never remember James’s latest title—