Yesterday, Labour set out a plan for a New Britain: a fresh economic and constitutional partnership between us, the Scottish people, and the rest of the UK that delivers the autonomy Scotland desires but also the cross-UK cooperation that Scotland needs – faster, safer, fairer change that can be delivered without years of conflict.
This New Britain will be founded on a new agreement, set in stone, obliging all future UK governments to fight child and pensioner poverty, to guarantee free healthcare and to create a sustainable environment.
I believe it can give all of us – no matter our views on independence and the Union – a way to realise our shared Scottish dream: a poverty-free, opportunity-rich nation built on the back of high-paid jobs that can finally end the cost of living crisis.
Our plan for a New Britain is the result of a two-year journey talking and listening to people across the United Kingdom.
In Scotland, we brought together those who back independence and those who don’t. Across the UK as a whole, we listened to those who opposed Brexit and those who supported it. We heard about their wishes and shared aspirations.
For all that we are told Britain is divided, we got a very clear, and united, message. Most of us agree Britain cannot continue with business as usual.
And most of us emphatically believe that Westminster must change, and radically so, and that it is time to remove the dead hand of an over-centralised state, and to set fire to the assumption that the “man in Whitehall” knows best.
As we heard this message, we came to understand where Britain’s devolution journey over the last 25 years had fallen short. The process of devolution since 1999 has focussed on just half the solution – delivering more powers to the different geographies of the UK.
But it is clear there has been a missing half. For while we created new institutions across the UK’s nations and regions, we left an unreformed centre of government virtually untouched. In the rebuilding of our country, it is as if we put the second floor in without considering the need to reconstruct the ground floor from scratch.
The centre of power in the UK is out of touch with people’s values, out of line with people’s demands, out of its depth when it tries to micromanage, and, given the decline in public standards and the recent conflicts of interest and blatant corruption, increasingly out of control, too.
So our plan for a New Britain is founded in a mission to create a New Westminster and a New Whitehall. Firstly, Labour will scrap the unreformed and undemocratic House of Lords and replace it with a new Assembly of the Nations and Regions in which Scotland, Wales, and the North will have heightened representation. We will give it a key job – to safeguard the devolution settlements and Britain’s new constitutional statutes.
And to clean up Westminster, Labour will create a new Integrity and Ethics commission to uphold standards in public life side by side with a new anti-corruption agency to root out the kind of abuses that have recently disgraced the award of contracts and honours.
Never again will a prime minister like Boris Johnson be able to use our honours system to reward his personal friends.
But our reforms go deeper and into the corridors of power in Whitehall. We will empower the rest of the UK by removing thousands of civil service jobs and dozens of agencies out of London and setting them up in the rest of the country at a saving of about £100million.
And we will shift the balance of power by creating a new Council of the UK chaired by the prime minister on which Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments can meet UK ministers to discuss matters such as trade, defence and security, the environment and welfare.
We believe this new cooperative approach – in which power is shared more equally – is necessary if Britain is to prosper in the modern world. For it is only by pushing political power out of London that we will create an economy that works for everyone.
Finally, we want to strengthen Scottish devolution, too. Our plan will legislate to ensure MSPs have the same status as MPs and to prevent any future Tory Government can scrap the Scottish parliament. We will give our parliament more control over employment creation and working conditions.
We also propose giving the Scottish Parliament the right to sign treaties in devolved areas, so we could – if we wanted – apply for membership of UNESCO or some European Union programmes like Erasmus.
I am convinced this programme – reforming Westminster, ending “Whitehall knows best”, improving UK wide cooperation, and strengthening devolution – is what most Scots want.
The vast majority of people, including a majority of those who would vote SNP, say they want to keep the UK pension, a UK defence force and the UK pound.
There are better ways of standing up for Scotland than ending cooperation with the rest of our island.
The better way is a stronger Scotland within a stronger UK. Our proposals add up to a concrete deliverable plan that the SNP do not have.
Crucially we set out today a plan that can be implemented the minute we have a new government.
For wishful thinking about a distant horizon or simply sharing people’s pain without being able to show when you change things can never be enough: we have to give people hope that we can deliver with a plan for today.
Let’s deliver a new economic and constitutional partnership between Scotland and the UK. Let’s build a new plan that can make Scotland an economic superpower.
Let’s create the new Scotland in a new Britain that restores our world-class schools and hospitals so they are once again the world-beating institutions they once were. Let’s give all of Scotland – Yes voters and No voters - the positive change it wants now.
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