Top Tory says 'too soon' to more powers for Holyrood

Published on Saturday 26 April 2008 11:48

A SENIOR Tory MP has said it is too soon to think about increasing the Scottish Parliament's powers – even though his party has signed up to a review of devolution.

Scots-born shadow defence secretary Liam Fox, on a visit to Edinburgh, said he would prefer to wait and see how Holyrood settled down.

He told the Evening News: "It's not that long since it was set up. It has not yet been tested in economic adversity. We need to see how our constitutional arrangements work when under strain rather than in what has been a very benign period."

The Scottish Conservatives are taking part in the cross-party Scottish Constitutional Commission with Labour and the Liberal Democrats to consider more powers – including tax powers – for the parliament.

But Dr Fox said: "We have had enough constitutional upheaval in recent years. Anyone with any sense would let it bed down and see how well it's working before any further change.

"People are looking for answers to real problems – on the economy, on their mortgages, housing, crime, drugs. They do not want politicians to become endlessly involved in abstract arguments about constitutional niceties."

Dr Fox, who used to work as a GP in Pathhead, Midlothian, is now MP for Woodspring, Somerset, where he flies a Union flag in his garden.

He said he would like other people to follow his example.

"If you are in the United States people are very proud of their identity and they see it as an expression of national pride," he said. "It's very odd in the United Kingdom we don't want to take a similar pride in who we are. We have achieved wonderful things as a country, the values we represent are vibrant and strong and our history and conventions anchor us well in a difficult world.

"We have had a problem in Britain in that we have been unable to differentiate between pride and patriotism on one side and nationalism and xenophobia on the other."

But Dr Fox distanced himself from Prime Minister Gordon Brown's frequent appeals to Britishness.

He said: "Gordon Brown talks about Britishness all the time because he's paranoid about what he may have unleashed in terms of devolution and its effect on the union. But Britishness is not some abstract construct. There is no problem being Scottish and British, English and British, Welsh and British – they are part of the same thing."

And he played down the potential tensions between a Tory government at Westminster and the SNP government at Holyrood.

He said: "When we come to government we will have enough to worry dealing with the economic mess left behind by Labour without having to worry about constitutional issues."

A Scottish Tory spokesman said the point for the Conservatives of setting up the constitutional commission, led by independent chairman Sir Kenneth Calman, was to allow a calm appraisal of the constitutional issues while the politicians got on with the priorities.