A SENIOR Scottish Nationalist MP has backed the call from a cross-party group pushing for a new Act of Union that Holyrood should determine what powers it has rather than Westminster giving it “crumbs from the table”.
While the Constitution Reform Group (CRG) believes that the bottom-up federal model would "wrest back the initiative from the separatists" and save the 300-year-old United Kingdom from the continuing threat of Scottish independence, Angus Brendan MacNeil supports the proposal but as a halfway house to his preferred option of full Scottish independence.
Giving evidence last week to the House of Lords Constitution Committee, Labour peer Lord Hain, a member of the CRG’s steering group, said the four nations would "federate upwards to the UK and decide what is done at the centre and at a national level".
The Herald's View: Federal solution worth pursuing
He claimed the bottom-up federal system would make the UK a lot stronger and be more appealing, particularly to Scots who want more powers in Edinburgh.
Under the CRG proposal, Scotland would be "deciding what is done at the centre rather than the centre deciding what is allowed to be done by Scotland".
Mr MacNeil, who represents the Western Isles, urged the group to engage more with MPs and highlighted the Danish model, where Greenland and the Faroe Islands determined which powers they wanted to have and then allowed other powers to be reserved to Denmark.
“Those governments take their own powers back from Copenhagen as they feel appropriate; not crumbs from the table as London feels Scotland can have,” explained the SNP backbencher.
In November, Mr MacNeil presented a 10-minute Rule Bill to the Commons, arguing for a similar bottom-up federal system of devolution under what he described was Scottish votes for Scottish laws or Svsl.
He proposed a Svsl amendment to the 1998 Scotland Act, whereby more powers went to Holyrood when the Scottish Government wanted them; a move that would have to be ratified by the Scottish Parliament and also by Scottish MPs at Westminster in what the MP described as a “devolution triple lock”.
The Western Isles MP added: “Let us turn the telescope and instead of getting crumbs from the table, let us open the larder door.”
MPs are due to debate Mr MacNeil’s Bill on March 11, in the run-up to the Holyrood campaign.
Indeed ahead of the May 5 election and local polls in Wales, Northern Ireland and England, the CRG is due to publish its draft legislation to enable the idea of a new constitutional settlement to be "injected into the political bloodstream".
The group is also planning to hold a string of focus groups and opinion polls to gauge public support for its proposed drive towards a new Act of Union and the creation of a federal system for the UK.
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