The Acts of Union – the next Thirty Years

A lecture by Professor Robert Hazell at the Royal Society of Arts on 29 January 2008

Introduction

It is a great honour to be invited to give this prestigious lecture, following in the footsteps of such distinguished previous lecturers as Neil Kinnock, and my academic colleagues and friends the late Ben Pimlott and Prof Vernon Bogdanor. It is a particular honour to give the lecture under the chairmanship of Sir John Bourn, especially in his last week in office. This week Sir John will retire after 20 years’ service as Comptroller and Auditor General. In that time he has transformed the nature of public service audit, taking it from a narrow concern with legality and propriety to a much wider interest in value for money; and he has worked tirelessly to promote the audit function and provide support to public auditors around the world.

This has led Sir John to give frequent talks and lectures at home and abroad. Last year he drew his accumulated wisdom together into a book, Public Sector Auditing – Is It Value for Money? Its central argument is that traditional public sector audit has forced bureaucracies to be inward looking and defensive. Auditors concentrated on cataloguing failure. But if in addition auditors can analyse and encourage the successes of public administration, they can act as coach and mentor rather than critic and nark.

That approach is going to be my guide in this lecture. I have been sharply critical of the UK government in its approach to devolution. But because of my own civil service background, it is not in my nature just to be a critic and nark; I would much rather act as coach and mentor, and in all the work of the Constitution Unit being a constructive critic is the approach we try to take. I have been asked tonight to talk about the Act of Union: The Next 300 Years. The subject was chosen because last year was the 300th anniversary of the Acts of Union between Scotland and England and Wales. The year passed with no public ceremony to mark this historic anniversary, which says something about the British state [that I will come back to]. Although the anniversary has now passed I have decided to stick with the title, because it enables me to address some big themes about the future of the Union. The kinds of questions I want to cover include:

Scotland

So let us begin with a whistle stop tour round the nations of the UK, starting in Scotland. I am drawing on the latest devolution reports published on the CU website, and I should pay tribute to our research partners in Scotland, Wales, N Ireland and the English regions who produce them. I want to draw on those reports to give you a sense of the constitutional ferment going on in each part of the kingdom, before asking how things might develop in future. In the Scottish Parliament elections last May the SNP gained just one seat more than Labour, and after abortive coalition negotiations with the Liberal Democrats Alex Salmond decided to form a minority government. He made a flying start. In August he published the White Paper Choosing Scotland’s Future – A National Conversation, which set out three broad choices for Scotland: the status quo; an extension of the powers of the Scottish Parliament; or full independence.

For lack of separate funding the national conversation has sputtered since, with just a few ministerial speeches and a website. But two months ago the unionist parties started fighting back. Labour’s new leader in Scotland Wendy Alexander made a major speech in Edinburgh in which she set out a unionist perspective on constitutional change, proposing a second Constitutional Convention to consider how devolution might be extended in Scotland. A particular focus of the speech was finance, with the suggestion that a devolved Scotland should consider assigned and wholly devolved taxes in addition to the block grant, to promote fiscal accountability. A week later Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats joined forces in the Scottish Parliament to use their parliamentary majority to establish the Scottish Constitutional Commission recommended in Alexander’s speech.

So we may have not one but two national conversations about Scotland’s future. Although the proposed Constitutional Commission is cross-party, and was endorsed by David Cameron on a visit to Edinburgh a week later, it excludes the SNP. Its terms of reference are to review the present constitutional arrangements while also securing ‘the position of Scotland within the United Kingdom’. But it suffers the same difficulty as Alex Salmond’s national conversation, in that it has no budget. It hopes to include parties and parliamentarians from Westminster, and may be forced to look to Westminster or Whitehall for finance as well. Watch out for the fireworks when Alex Salmond learns about that. He might be wiser to let the commission run and see if the unionist consensus collapses when the three parties start to discuss the detail of what further powers might be transferred. It would be a minor miracle if Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems could all agree on the same package of further powers and greater fiscal autonomy for Scotland.

That is not to say that Alex Salmond’s alternative option of Scottish independence is any easier. In fact it is likely to be a great deal harder. The constitutional debate has generated a lot of loose talk about the possibility of independence, amongst politicians and journalists, much of it wildly exaggerated. We looked hard at this in a research project and subsequent book we wrote on the Scotland’s path to independence, and concluded that there are at least four major hurdles that the SNP have to clear before Scotland might become an independent country.

First, the SNP would need to have an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament to carry the necessary legislation to hold a referendum on independence. The SNP currently hold 47 out of the parliament’s 129 seats: 17 short of a majority. Unless the other parties go into meltdown, it is unlikely that the SNP will ever have an overall majority on their own, because of the Scottish Parliament’s proportional voting system.

Second, the referendum will not necessarily be carried. Opinion polls for the last 10 years have shown support for independence bumping along at around 25 per cent, and this has been unaffected by the formation of the new SNP government. Support for the SNP in Scottish elections simply means support for an alternative government to Labour, and may not translate into support for independence come referendum day.

Third, the referendum proposed by the SNP in their white paper would simply authorise the new Scottish government to start negotiations with the British government about independence. That is all they can do, to stay within the powers of the Scotland Act 1998. In our book we argued for precisely such a referendum, to trigger the negotiations; but we also argued for a second referendum, once the negotiations had been concluded.

The Scottish public would by then be much better informed about the implications and the terms of independence; and many of the terms might prove to be unwelcome. Most unwelcome of all, we concluded that Scotland would have to re-apply for membership of the EU. In international law the rest of the UK would be the successor state which would remain in membership, and Scotland would have to re-apply, possibly joining the queue behind Croatia, Macedonia and Turkey.

The SNP dispute this. Their white paper maintains that an independent Scotland would continue to be a member of the European Union, but they acknowledge that there would be ‘negotiations on the detailed terms of membership’ (para. 3.21). Recognising the need for negotiations must include recognising the possibility that those negotiations might fail, so even on their terms renewed membership is not guaranteed. Other EU member states like Spain might block the negotiations, for fear of encouraging the independence claims of their own national minorities, in the same way (and for the same reasons) that they have recently been signalling their unhappiness at the prospect of independence for Kosovo. There are half a dozen EU states in this position.

Also unwelcome will be the financial terms. Scotland would no longer receive subventions from the British taxpayer, which currently enable the Scots to enjoy per capita levels of public expenditure which are some 25 per cent higher than those in England. And in the run up to the referendum, there is likely to be a flight of capital and investment from Scotland of the kind which happened in Quebec before their last independence referendum in 1995. Faced with economic instability and a possible reduction in their standard of living, the people of Scotland might decide they prefer the status quo.

The fourth obstacle is that independence can only be granted by Westminster: it is not within the competence of the Scottish Parliament unilaterally to declare independence. Surprisingly, this obstacle is likely to be less challenging than the others. Successive British prime ministers, including staunch opponents of devolution like Margaret Thatcher and John Major, have nevertheless recognised the Scottish people’s right to self-determination. So did supporters of devolution like Donald Dewar. Unlike the situation in Northern Ireland, there is no formal statement by the British government recognising the Scottish nation’s right to become independent from the UK; but having long accorded that right to the people of Northern Ireland (and having recently re-affirmed it in section 1 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998), it would be difficult to deny the same right to the people of Scotland.

So the last hurdle is the lowest of all. But to reach the last hurdle there are some much bigger ones to clear first. For the SNP, winning the Scottish elections is only the first step, and they may not manage to progress further down the long road towards independence. They will have to settle instead for the prize of governing Scotland. That is not necessarily to be spurned. It is what the Catalan and Basque nationalist parties have been doing for the last twenty years; but Catalonia and the Basque region are still part of Spain.

Wales

I will touch more lightly on Wales and Northern Ireland, simply for lack of time. In Wales there is also a constitutional commission, to prepare the way for a constitutional convention and subsequent referendum on primary legislative powers; and Rhodri Morgan plans a separate commission to consider the Barnett formula and financial matters. The debate about legislative powers for the Assembly has been going on for years. The main obstacle to faster progress has been the diehards in the Wales Labour party, in particular the group of Welsh Labour MPs at Westminster. But things are now speeding up. Labour did badly in the Welsh elections last May, winning only 26 seats in the 60 member Assembly. For a time it looked as though there might be a rainbow coalition of the other three parties, Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives and Lib Dems. That was aborted by the Lib Dems, and we now have the unusual spectacle of a coalition between Labour and Plaid Cymru. As part of the coalition agreement Labour signed up to a joint commitment to move ‘as soon as practicable’ to a referendum on the transfer of full legislative powers to Wales.

Here too there are four hurdles before the Assembly might receive full legislative powers. Under the terms of the recent Government of Wales Act, a referendum can only take place if approved by two-thirds of Assembly Members, leaving the Labour group with an effective veto. Next the British government must agree to lay the necessary orders before the Westminster Parliament. Both Houses of Parliament must then give their approval. But if those three hurdles can be surmounted, it seems likely that by 2011 Welsh voters will have the chance of deciding whether they want their own law-making Parliament. Opinion polls have consistently shown that the people of Wales do want law making powers, so here too the last hurdle is probably the least significant. More problematic will be the size of the Welsh Assembly if and when it gets law making powers: with only 60 members it is too small to manage effective scrutiny of legislation as well as its other functions, and it risks becoming an executive dominated body.

Northern Ireland

Let me now turn to Northern Ireland. After four and a half years of suspension of devolution and direct rule by the UK government, devolution was finally restored to Northern Ireland in May last year. You will remember the photos of the two historic enemies, Rev Ian Paisley of the Democratic Unionist Party and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin, smiling for the cameras to celebrate the restoration of power-sharing government in which they are first and deputy first minister respectively.

Under the surface things are not quite so rosy. There has been a stand-off between the DUP and Sinn Fein over the commitments in the St Andrews agreement of October 2006 to the devolution of policing and criminal justice by May 2008, the introduction of an Irish Language Act, and arrangements to replace the ‘11+’ transfer test. With the parties tending to cancel each other out, the draft Programme for Government they published in October was flimsy, and the legislative programme even thinner. It brings home the difficulties in the power sharing arrangements in Northern Ireland, which require the creation of an involuntary coalition government representing all the main parties in the Assembly. There is no collective cabinet responsibility, so that each minister does his or her own thing, and also feels free to undermine their colleagues: as has happened particularly with the DUP finance minister, Peter Robinson, who has emerged as the dominant figure in the four party executive. The other corollary of the power sharing arrangements is that there is little effective opposition in the Assembly, because all the main parties are represented in the executive.

What will happen in the longer term? British government policy since the Northern Ireland Constitution Act of 1973 has provided for a ‘border poll’ in which the people of Northern Ireland can decide if they want to be re-united with the south. There was some excitement after the 2001 census, because with 44 per cent deemed to be Catholic, it was assumed the demographics would eventually ensure a nationalist majority. But look more closely and the truth is more complex. When asked the specific question as to whether they were unionist or nationalist in the 2006 NI Life and Times survey, 40% of respondents said 'neither', while 36% said unionist and 23% nationalist. And of Catholic respondents, 22% endorsed the union and 18% said they didn't know. The best judgement on all this is that of Garrett Fitzgerald, who wrote in 2002 that the prospect of a nationalist majority in a border poll was 'sufficiently remote for it to be irrelevant to Irish politics in the foreseeable future'.
The other excessively glib assumption is that the south will accept re-unification if a majority in the north vote for it.

The Republic of Ireland may not want to import the troubles from the north, either in the form of a recalcitrant unionist minority, or in the form of Sinn Fein. One sign of that is Sinn Fein’s poor performance in the elections to the Irish parliament last summer. And the Republic may also not welcome taking on responsibility for the laggard economy in Northern Ireland, with its very large public sector, which may prove a drag on the Celtic tiger to the south.

The English Question

Let us now turn to England. England is the gaping hole in the devolution settlement. We have studied the implications of devolution for England closely over the last ten years, and in 2006 we brought our findings together in a book called The English Question. We divided the English Question into two: whether England needs a stronger political voice, to balance the louder political voice now accorded to Scotland and Wales; and whether England too would benefit from devolution, by devolving power within England.

To devolve power within England, the government has experimented with regional assemblies, city regions, and now regional ministers. Elected regional assemblies are dead for the time being, following the resounding defeat by 4:1 of the government’s proposals for a North East regional assembly in 2004. Dead for now but not necessarily for ever: remember what happened to devolution in Wales, where the government’s proposals were also defeated by 4:1 in the first devolution referendum in 1979. City regions are the brain child of Ed Balls. The government is inching in this direction, with multi-area agreements going live this year, and the possibility in future of city region development authorities. But going all the way to create full fledged city regions would require a further round of local government reorganisation, for which there is at present no political appetite.

In summer last year as part of his new government Gordon Brown appointed nine new regional ministers, one for each of the regions including London. They are a group of junior ministers tasked with representing their regions in Whitehall and Westminster, while also representing central government in their regions. They fulfil these roles alongside other full time junior ministerial posts, so their impact is unlikely to be great. My guess is that they will spend more time representing central government in the region rather than the other way round. But they may be checked in this tendency once Parliament has established regional committees to scrutinise them, which the House of Commons is planning to do. The key question is whether this attempt to give a stronger voice to the regions proves to be a centralising or decentralising measure. I fear that it is likely to be centralising, because of the focus on Whitehall and Westminster; but I hope I am proved wrong.

What about the other side of the English Question, whether England as a whole needs a louder political voice? Here the running has been made by the Conservatives, who have been searching for an answer since William Hague was their leader at the dawn of devolution ten years ago. Hague considered two possible answers: an English Parliament, and English votes on English laws. He flirted with the former before plumping for the latter, and in the 2001 and 2005 elections English votes on English laws was Conservative party policy in their manifesto.

How to implement English votes on English laws is now being considered by the Conservative Democracy Task Force headed by Ken Clarke. Last October Sir Malcolm Rifkind claimed to have found an answer, by proposing that English laws would be scrutinised by an English Grand Committee at Westminster. Is this the magic answer which has eluded all previous searchers? And can it be made to work?

I don’t think so. The difficulties remain formidable, at both a technical and a political level.

The technical difficulty is identifying those English laws which would be referred to Grand Committee. Strictly speaking there is no such thing as an English law, in the sense of a Westminster statute which applies only to England. The territorial extent clauses in Westminster statutes typically extend to the United Kingdom, Great Britain or England and Wales. Many statutes vary in their territorial application in different parts of the Act. Is the Speaker to identify in advance those parts or clauses which apply only to England, and rule that those parts be referred to Grand Committee? If the Conservatives are hoping that Parliamentary Counsel could draft statutes differently, separating out all the English provisions into England only bills, then they really need to take a year’s worth of the statute book to demonstrate how this might be done.

If the technical difficulties are daunting, the political difficulties are even greater. Proponents of special procedures for English laws tend to under-estimate just what a huge change would be involved. An English Grand Committee would effectively create two classes of MP, ending the traditional reciprocity whereby all members can vote on all matters. It could in time lead to the creation of an English parliament within the Westminster parliament. And after close fought elections, the UK government might not be able to command a majority for its English business, leading to great political instability. These political difficulties cast doubt on the likelihood of English votes on English laws ever becoming political reality. It may be significant that David Cameron, in his speech on the Union given in Edinburgh in December, made no mention of English votes on English laws.

What might be giving him pause? By ending the equal voting rights of all MPs, the Conservatives could no longer claim to be Unionist, but would have become an English party. An English party does not sound like a party of government. The Conservatives might find it more expedient to reduce the numbers of Scottish and Welsh MPs, than to attempt the more complicated task of trying to restrict their voting rights. Research that we have done shows that Scottish and Welsh MPs have seen their workloads reduced since devolution, and I believe it would be justifiable to reduce their numbers. Following the precedent set during the first Northern Ireland Parliament from 1922 to 1972, their numbers might be reduced by one third. It would not eliminate the possibility of Scottish and Welsh MPs voting on English laws, but it would further reduce the likelihood of their votes being able to tip the balance.

David Cameron faces some difficult tactical and strategic choices in deciding whether to support Rifkind’s proposal. English votes on English laws is far more than just a procedural issue. It is seen by some proponents (Kenneth Baker is an example) as the precursor to an English Parliament. William Hague flirted with an English Parliament in 1999 but backed away. If the Conservatives now were to embrace a policy which led to an English Parliament, the issue might conceivably split the Conservative party, much as the Irish Question split the Liberals in Gladstone’s time. So I apologise for devoting so much time to this seemingly arcane issue; but it is potentially a big issue, with high political stakes attached, and I think Cameron is beginning to understand that.

Future of the Union

Having taken you on a whistle stop tour of the UK, I come back to the future of the Union, and what the UK government needs to do to safeguard it. We must start by analysing the nature of the problem. Essentially it is this. Devolution introduced a fundamental change to the British state, but it was accompanied by only the most minimal changes to the machinery of government at the centre. Westminster and Whitehall carried on largely as before. The rump of the Scottish Office was renamed the Scotland Office, and the Welsh Office became the Wales Office, and that was more or less it. Devolution was introduced piecemeal, with no sense of a big picture; and it has been managed piecemeal, as a series of bilateral relationships, with no capacity to think about devolution in the round.

There was no capacity because there was no single minister or team in Whitehall responsible for devolution strategy. Instead there were four or five centres responsible for their different bits: three separate centres in the Scotland Office, Wales Office and Northern Ireland Office; plus ODPM (as was) responsible for regional government in England; plus a tiny bit of the DCA (as was) nominally responsible for overall devolution strategy.

This worked – just – so long as there was a Labour government here in London and Labour led administrations in Cardiff and Edinburgh. It is coming seriously under strain now that there is a nationalist government in Scotland and nationalist parties sharing power in Wales and Northern Ireland. Gordon Brown recognises there is need for a more coherent devolution strategy, and in the autumn he appointed a senior official from the Scottish Executive, Jim Gallagher, to be Director General for Devolution in the Ministry of Justice and Cabinet Office, and there are now half a dozen officials working with him on devolution strategy.

What should their devolution strategy be? I switch now into the forward looking role of coach and mentor which Sir John commends to all good auditors. The first tip from me as coach is for Gordon Brown, not for Jim, and it is to merge the separate territorial Secretaries of State. They are part of the old pre-devolution structures in Whitehall which have no place in the post-devolution world. They perpetuate the piecemeal approach which sees devolution as a set of bilateral relationships. Until we have a single Secretary of State for the Union, or the Nations and Regions the government will never be able to think about devolution in the round. Nor can Parliament: because reflecting the fragmented structures in Whitehall, the House of Commons has three separate Select Committees for Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Affairs, rather than a single committee responsible for devolution.

Second, the government needs to prepare for a review of the Barnett formula which determines the change each year to the budgets of the devolved governments. All parties in Scotland are demanding greater fiscal autonomy for the Scottish Parliament; Rhodri Morgan is starting his own review of Barnett in Wales. When two out of the three devolved governments demand a review the UK government should take notice. But it should think hard about the machinery for a review. An internal Treasury exercise of the kind which produced the Barnett formula would not wash now. There must be an independent body, with representation from all the devolved governments or territories, to examine the options and come forward with recommendations.

Third, the government needs to revive the machinery for managing intergovernmental relations under devolution, called the Joint Ministerial Committee. Under the 1999 Memorandum of Understanding with the devolved governments, the UK government undertook to hold plenary JMCs – summit meetings - between the Prime Minister and devolved first ministers at least once a year. Tony Blair quickly got bored with these, and the last one was held in 2003. Alex Salmond has made repeated requests to Gordon Brown for the JMC to be revived, but has received no reply. These meetings need to be revived, especially now that devolution is entering choppier waters: it is not clever to leave the machinery to rust, and only to wheel it out once there is a crisis. It needs to be kept in working order.

Fourth and last, the government needs to give a clearer account of what the Union is for. Here I think the British government has a strong story to tell, and I am surprised it is so clumsy about telling it. I remarked at the beginning that there were no celebrations to mark the 300th anniversary of the foundation of Great Britain which took place on 1 May last year. The reason given was that it was tricky at the time of the devolved elections. That seems to me a strange confusion of party interests with the interests of the state. We are a very old state in comparative terms, and that in itself is something well worth celebrating.

Perhaps because we are very old state, we tend to take for granted some of the things that nation states are for. Let me in closing just remind you of some of the benefits of the Union. I shall start with some pretty basic things, because those tend to get overlooked; but I shall work towards some more interesting or challenging things, and end with some questions for all of us. Ministers agonise a lot about this, and are planning a huge consultation exercise around a British statement of values; but I do feel that they fret unnecessarily, and by focusing on Britishness they risk starting in the wrong place.

The Union rests on much firmer foundations than you might suppose from listening to ministers’ private worries or public speeches. The devolution settlement is generally accepted all round. The opinion polls have shown steadily growing support for devolution in Scotland and Wales over the last ten years, with only 10 per cent wanting to turn the clock back, and no growth in support for independence in either country. There is also strong support in England for devolution to Scotland and Wales; there is no English backlash. There may be the beginnings of a backlash in a sense of injustice at some of the consequences of devolution. But it is the consequences which need to be dealt with, not devolution itself.

The Union certainly rests on firmer foundations than you might guess from reading the speeches of Gordon Brown. His speeches on Britishness are based upon shared values; but the values he enumerates – liberty, public service, fair play, the welfare state, enterprise – could be said to define any modern democracy. I agree with Brown that we need a rethinking and restatement of the ties that still bind together the four nations and 60 million citizens of the UK. But we can do a lot better if we include the interests and the institutions which bind the British together, as well as their values.

Nation states exist to defend interests; and values and interests find expression through institutions, of the state and civil society. Let me start with interests. What is the Union for, in terms of protecting our interests? Well, it defends and represents some very important interests – the most basic human interests of safety, food, subsistence, survival. It is the UK government which is responsible for defence, and security against terrorism. It is the UK government which provides for our collective security through representing us at the UN, in NATO, and the EU. It is the UK Treasury which is responsible for macro-economic management, and the UK Dept for Work and Pensions manages the whole national welfare system of pensions and social security and other benefits. The UK government provides the basic framework and all the funding and redistributive mechanisms for the welfare state. It ensures a minimum level of ‘social citizenship’ across the UK. And it manages a mechanism for equalisation and territorial redistribution across the UK, transferring large sums from the richer to the poorer parts of the country. We don't hear enough about those transfers, and we don't hear enough about the values which underpin them: values which I would express as equality and social solidarity.

Next, how does the Union protect our interests and express our values, in terms of institutions? I have already mentioned some of the main UK government departments. There are the armed forces, and the civil service. Above them there is the Westminster Parliament, which provides representation for all of us at the UK level; the Monarchy; the new Supreme Court, the judiciary and the common law, which infuses all three legal systems of the UK. And to express our values there are national institutions like the BBC and the NHS, which although divided into four health services holds in common the fundamental principle of free health care for all at the point of delivery.
So much for the basics. I apologise for restating them; but you don’t hear enough about them in ministerial speeches. Let me now move on to more interesting matters, which I will put in a concluding series of questions, to open up for discussion.

Q1 Are the basics under threat from devolution? I don't think so. The UK government remains responsible for all the things I have just listed, and no further functions can be devolved except with the consent of the UK government and Westminster parliament.

Q2 Do we risk losing a common level of ‘social citizenship’ across the UK, as some of my academic colleagues have argued, when in Scotland there is free long term care for the elderly, in Wales and Scotland there are free medical prescription charges etc? I’m not so worried, because I think this kind of policy divergence is likely to be self-limiting. First, because of budgetary constraints: the Scots have found they cannot afford any more generous gestures. And second, the power of the national media, who create strong pressures for uniformity: think of hospital waiting list targets, imposed in England, adopted voluntarily by Wales when theirs fell out of line.

Q3 If the UK government supplies equalisation funds across the UK, is the government entitled to prescribe minimum standards? At present it does so quite fiercely with local government in England, but not at all with the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Quite right, you might say: devolution requires a more hands off approach. Well, federations don't necessarily think this way: in countries like Australia and Canada a lot of federal funding comes in the form of tied grants, linked to specific services or service standards. So if we are concerned about social citizenship, we could enforce minimum national standards through tied grants rather than block grant.

Q4 My last question comes back to what is the Union for? There is something seldom articulated but fundamental to the kind of Union that we are. We are a voluntary Union. For the last 35 years, we have said to the people of Northern Ireland, if you ever want to re-unite with the Republic, we won't stand in your way. That has knock on consequences for Great Britain. Having granted such a right to the people of Northern Ireland, the UK government cannot deny it to the people of Scotland and Wales. I don’t know many states which recognise a national right of self-determination to peoples within their territory. The UK can do so because we have the confidence of being a very old state, which in this respect makes us a new, post modern kind of state: a state which recognises that sovereignty rests ultimately not upon claims of territory but upon consent. So with this question I come to the end of my lecture. In thinking about the future of the Union, do you think it is a strength or a weakness that we have said to the people of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales: there is the exit, go if you will? And should we add, with British understatement, but we rather hope you won’t?