I will canter through this. I can go on a bit so if I do, it will be my fault if I miss my flight. Senator Black asked about the role of the White Paper, which was pivotal when it was launched. It is telling that there was no equivalent document on the UK side of the argument to say what it would mean if people voted "No". We were told about a lot of the things that would happen if we voted "Yes". For example, we were told we would have significant economic difficulties and we would be out of the European Union. Thank goodness, none of that happened. The White Paper was huge and it provided answers and a forum and basis for discussion. If it had a shortcoming, I would argue that it was in danger at times of being overly prescriptive in policy terms, whereas it might have been better being stripped back to what the arrangements for the state would be. What is then done with those arrangements is entirely down to the realms of politics. In that sense, it changes nothing except it gives the power to change everything. That would be an argument from the Scottish perspective rather than the Irish one. If the White Paper was in danger of misfiring anywhere, it was on that point because it could have pushed some people away in some aspects. As a document that was produced to answer the questions it could answer and to signpost, it played an important role. This comes back to what I said about the clarity of proposition.
On when to hold a referendum, the short answer is that for any proposition, the right time is when you think you might win. However, for a significant constitutional process with international ramifications, you would want it to be at the end of a thorough process involving as many stakeholders as possible, one in which there has been dialogue, listening, understanding and accommodation before the question is then tested in a binary format.
On Scotland's independence referendum, I hope one will be held in autumn of next year. Members might have seen that the proposition is in the United Kingdom's Supreme Court because, unlike in 2014, there has been no agreement to date between the United Kingdom Government and the Scottish Government about whether the Scottish Parliament has the powers to legislate. There are 8,000 pages of submissions but to boil it down to its essence, one either believes the power to do that is reserved in Westminster, in which case a referendum cannot be held, or, alternatively, because the referendum is not self-executing and does not of itself change the UK constitution, it is within the Scottish Parliament's power. That is a simplistic and boiled down version of the argument. When the referendum happens will depend to a great extent on what the outcome of that judicial process is. Polls are nip and tuck; they go up and down but, broadly speaking, the gap has narrowed since 2014. That is largely attributable to Brexit and its consequences. It is still eeksy-peeksy, as we might say in Scotland.
Senator Ó Donnghaile asked about the importance of the Scottish Government's role in civil society. Its role was huge and it produced the White Paper, which enabled a range of discussions to then take place. It was the work of the civil servants involved in preparing that document that allowed the concept to emerge from the abstract.
To that extent, it was very important. There were many people on the opposite side of the argument who, with remarkable speed and skill, dismissed it within minutes of the document being published, but it endured well beyond that. Questions were also levied about how fair it was that one side of the argument should have access to the levers of the state to produce this. From my perspective, I thought the UK Government, particularly the Treasury department, was not slow about producing alternative documents to boost its own case. Again, I think that comes down to clarity of proposition and clarity of process about how one would wish that to happen.
The Scottish Government also tried to foster a national conversation. It was not successful in getting political parties other than perhaps the Scottish Greens and some of the parties on the left to join that. I thought that was regrettable because it would have provided a level playing field. There was no doubt about the fairness and impartiality of the civil servants who would have been fostering that. These discussions were very important.
I have spoken about the proposition. It might have been better if it was minimalist. In terms of big data and the clarity of process agreed between the governments, it is very important to make sure there is an equal playing field in terms of spending data and how things like that might work.
In terms of community discussion, and Mr. Docherty-Hughes will have different stories from his neck of the woods in Scotland, I remember packed village and town hall discussions, which one would not normally get in an election. I remember Nicola Sturgeon coming to Inverurie, which is a town at the heart of my constituency, and the place was absolutely packed, with more than 300 people there. In the end, we tried to get people who were voting “Yes” to leave to allow people who had not made up their minds yet to come in and hear what we had to say. The public meetings and that sort of level of engagement were unparalleled, in my experience. We certainly did not see anything like that for the Brexit referendum.
I will finish with a story about a lady in Inverurie who I canvassed during the referendum. When I knocked on her door, she looked me up and down and I thought, “What is coming here?” I gave her my spiel and asked her could I ask some questions. We had a sliding scale of 1 to 10 and I asked her what she thought about independence, with 1 being “never in a month of Sundays” and 10 being “sign me up now”. She did not really answer me. She said, “Well, if you had asked me two weeks ago, I would probably have been a 2 or a 3, but if you ask me now, I would probably be about a 6 or a 7.” I thought that was very interesting and asked her what prompted that. She said her son was still very much against it but that, in the past week, she had been in a friend's house to share a bottle of wine and they started talking about the referendum, as everyone does. She said that over the course of that evening, with that discussion, her friend had started to change her mind. This was not a professional politician or even an amateur politician; it was just a discussion. You could sense it going through the streets and communities. No doubt it happened the other way as well, but it was almost like people giving each other permission to feel a particular way about something, in the sense that if somebody like you can support this, perhaps somebody like me can do so as well. Quite often, it was discussions that the politicians were not directly involved in that were crucial in helping people to make up their minds. Nonetheless, without that clarity of process and clarity of proposition, and the effort to disseminate information in as impartial a way as possible, as well as all the normal campaigning that went on around that, I do not think we would have had nearly as satisfactory a process as we did.
My party is often told to respect the outcome of the referendum, and of course we have done so because Scotland is not independent. However, even on a split that was narrow, it was as decisive as it needed to be and all parties were able to emerge at the end of that process respecting the outcome and getting on with all that the public expected them to do afterwards. I do not think we could have done that if we did not have such a clear process and a commitment to sharing as much information as possible and to having that open dialogue. Irrespective of the proposition or irrespective of where that discussion is taking place, these are key elements that anybody should aspire to try to replicate as far as possible. We did not get everything right by any stretch of the imagination, but I think we got quite a lot of things right and that is reflected in the state of our politics currently.
