Scotland Bill: Former Scottish Secretary claims House of Lords treated with ‘contempt’ by Westminster

LORD Forsyth, the former Scottish Secretary, has accused the coalition government of treating the House of Lords with “contempt” over the Scotland Bill.

The Conservative grandee hit out at the lack of information about a consultation on an independence referendum, and claimed that further concessions had been made to the SNP over the Scotland Bill.

Ministers from Holyrood and Westminster agreed to push ahead with the Scotland Bill after striking a deal yesterday. But Lord Forsyth complained about the handling of the bill.

Speaking in the Lords, he said: “I would like to complain in the strongest possible terms about the way this legislation is being handled.”

He said the House had agreed to defer consideration of the parts of the bill that could relate to a referendum on Scottish independence until after the end of a consultation on 9 March. He said: “We are now faced with a situation this afternoon where we have a two-page letter from the Secretary of State which tells us very little about the consultation paper.

“There is absolutely no time for us to take account of this consultation. It is really unacceptable that we should go into the report stage on Monday without a full analysis and full information relating to the consultation process, and also an indication of where the government stands on this.”

Lord Forsyth added that “very extensive concessions” had been made to reach agreement with Holyrood and there would be little chance to discuss them, which was “quite unacceptable”.

He said: “This is a major constitutional bill which has huge implications for people in Scotland and huge implications for people in the rest of the United Kingdom.

“The way in which the parliamentary process has been handled has limited our opportunity.”

He suggested current Scottish Secretary Michael Moore had treated the House of Lords with “a degree of contempt”.

Lord Forsyth said: “He knew that we were delaying these proceedings to deal with the consultation process and at the very last minute, at 11am on the day, to give us such a cursory analysis of the consultation makes it absolutely impossible to have a fully informed debate.”

But Lord Wallace, advocate-general for Scotland and a former deputy first minister, said the bill had been improved as a result of debate in the Lords.

He said there was an “encouragingly wide” response to the consultation, with just under 3,000 replies, including from the public, business, academics and trade unions.

The initial analysis indicated support for the government’s plan to devolve to the Scottish Parliament the legal right to hold a referendum.