THE Smith Commission proposals for enhanced devolution have been “overtaken by events”, according to former Chancellor Alistair Darling, who led last year’s campaign against independence.
And a former Tory Scottish Secretary has said the “revolution” in Scotland has triggered the need for a White Paper to be produced setting out how full fiscal autonomy would work in practice.
The Scottish Green Party has also stepped into the debate, with their co-convener Patrick Harvie saying they had objected to the “break-neck speed” of the Smith Commission.
Lord Michael Forsyth, who served in John Major’s government, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think we have to recognise what happened in Scotland last Thursday was a revolution.
“The Conservative in me was full of joy for what David Cameron had achieved but the unionist in me is greatly dismayed.
“We used to say if the SNP won a majority in seats in Scotland then they could have independence.
“They got 50 per cent of the vote and 95 per cent of the seats and the reality is you have to respond to that, and I think what the government needs to do is produce a White Paper which sets out how fiscal autonomy, devo-max, call it what you will, would work in practice so people are aware of the advantages and the disadvantages.”
Alistair Darling told the same programme: “I think the Smith Commission proposals have been completely overtaken by events.
“It won’t do the business for Scotland, it’s lopsided, therefore it is unfair on England – and if you compound that, as David Cameron has suggested, by saying that essentially English MPs will decide tax and spending, you are well on the way to breaking up the Union.
“I think we’ve always turned our backs on a federal solution simply because of the fact that 80 per cent of the population lives in England, but I think you can move towards that and say for Scotland, for Wales, Northern Ireland here are substantially more powers and responsibilities – critically, they have got to be more responsible for raising the money to pay for things, but at the same time you remove this anomaly where, when I was an MP, I could vote for English education, but I couldn’t vote for Scottish education.”
He added: “That’s got to be dealt with, there’s no question about that. But I think if we’re intelligent about this we’ve got a chance for building a constitution for the 21st century.”
Harvie told The National: “We argued that the whole country deserved the chance to contribute in a more participative way.
“Instead the public were largely ignored; the STUC’s ideas about workplace devolution and the loud calls for full control of areas like welfare and equality fell on deaf ears.
“It was inevitable that the result would go too far for some people and not far enough for others, but the rush ensured that it was also an incoherent package. It certainly shouldn’t be seen as the last word, either by unionists or by independence supporters.
“If a fresh approach is taken it should be based on an open process that the public can engage in, rather than just another deal between political parties meeting in private.”
Forsyth added that Labour’s pre-election proposal for a constitutional convention was a “sensible suggestion”, and said the different parts of the UK needed to be treated fairly.
“We just can’t go on with this piecemeal additional powers and tinkering of the constitution that we’ve seen which simply feeds the nationalist tiger and has created the disastrous situation we have now where the unionist parties have a single MP in Scotland representing each of them,” he said.
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