Empey: Scottish split ‘may reignite Troubles’
INDEPENDENCE for Scotland risks reigniting conflict in Northern Ireland, an Ulster Unionist peer has warned.
Lord Empey said that if Scotland broke away from the United Kingdom, people in Northern Ireland would have “a foreign country on one side of us and a foreign country on the other side of us”.
He told peers during a debate about the Scotland Bill: “We would end up like West Pakistan. We are all hewn from the same rock. Just imagine the situation we would be placed in.
“We have just spent decades overcoming nationalist terrorism and we gradually after years and years and years managed to settle down our community.
“I don’t wish to exaggerate but if the Scottish nationalists were to succeed it could possibly reignite the difficulties we have just managed to overcome. I do not say that lightly.”
His comments came as Tory Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, a former Scotland secretary, questioned why the Government was going ahead with the Bill, which gives additional powers to the country, when two consultations are under way on an independence referendum and the Scottish Parliament has yet to signal its consent to the legislation.
He accused Scotland First Minister Alex Salmond of proposing, in a consultation published on Wednesday, to put forward plans for a “rigged” referendum and compared him to the leaders of North Korea and Cuba.
And he said that if Scotland went ahead with a referendum without consent from Westminster it would have no practical effect and be merely the “most expensive opinion poll in history”.
But Lord Empey told peers to “forget” about Mr Salmond and focus on the issue of what would happen if the UK was broken up.
He said: “We are talking about the future of over 60 million of us. We are naturally all in this together in every sense of the word.”
And he added: “I have spent many years negotiating with Irish nationalists of different shades and I have to say we have got to get the tone of the debate right.
“We should not hector or bully the Scottish people – we must not, we cannot, and if we do we do so at our peril.”
He called on supporters of the Union to emphasise the strengths and shared history of the UK.
Lord Forsyth, who put forward and later withdrew a motion to hold up the committee stage of the Bill, called for the Government to legislate to bring in a referendum that delivered a “clear and decisive” result.
And he hit out at the way Mr Salmond was preparing to set up a referendum.
He said: “The First Minister, looking at this consultation paper, has betrayed the trust that has been put in him as First Minister and appears to be putting his party’s interest in front of his country’s interest while posing as a champion of national interest.”
He added: “We have a rigged question, a rigged role for the regulator, a rigged expenses system and, on top of that, the question that there should be rigged franchise.
“He wants to give the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds. My researches tell me that there are only nine countries in the world that give the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds, two of which are North Korea and Cuba – both of which also have leaders with a high opinion of themselves.”
Advocate General for Scotland, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, replying to the debate, said it continued to be the Government’s “very strong view” that the Scottish Parliament could not legislate for a binding referendum on independence.
He said the parties in the Lords had agreed to debate the parts of the Bill in such an order that the issue of referendums would not come up until after the end of the UK Government’s consultation on the issue on March 9.
Lord Wallace added that Lord Empey had raised “some important issues”.
