 Thank you very much for inviting me here today. A visit over to Dublin is always welcome. It's almost doubly welcome because having decided to come here this afternoon, I then found myself sitting next to the president of your law society at a dinner in London on Wednesday and properly got invited to dinner here in Dublin this evening as well. So I'm prolonging my visit and extending it into Saturday, although I have to go back rather early. I last came here when I was Attorney General, I came over, in fact, to talk about issues particularly surrounding the EU and the UK's approach to EU jurisprudence and some of the challenges we saw in relation to the European Union at that time and the working of the court. Of course, because I was at that time the Attorney General, I was very well looked after. Before I made that speech, a very nice chap came up from the fourth floor of my office and said, Attorney, what do you want to say? And then produced a script which I was able to play around with and come along and deliver it seamlessly to you. Now, of course, I'm out of office in part, I think, I can probably fairly say, because of my approach to at least one of the matters I want to talk to you about this afternoon. So you will forgive me that I have made copious notes, but I've been rationing myself to seven written lectures a year. And I've already exceeded that limit in the last six months since leaving, ceasing to be Attorney General. And I felt that the easiest thing for me to do, therefore, this afternoon, was to come and give you a sort of stream of consciousness. I certainly don't mind, I think, if the, I suppose we better have it on Chatham House rules when we come to do the discussion afterwards. But in truth, as I'm no longer in government, I can't really get myself into trouble, or at least not too much. I want it, as was suggested, to concentrate this afternoon on the issue of the EU, the European Convention on Human Rights, and devolution. Those may not necessarily be seen as connected issues, but I have to say that in my time in government and particularly since leaving government and therefore having time for the first opportunity of thinking, I happen to think that they do all have links which are of some interest about the future of the United Kingdom and our system of governance and how we respond to some of the challenges of the 21st century. And as coming to Dublin is always an interesting experience because it's a sounding board towards an environment where there's a shared history but some marked divergencies, I hope very much I will get something back out of this for your views on some of the points that I wanted to touch on. Before I go on to that though, I just did want to do a moment's scene setting. I get up in the morning and go off to the Palace of Westminster and of course now I'm no longer the Attorney General, I no longer have a ministerial car to come and sweep me up at my front door. I travel in on the underground and the first and most noticeable thing that one picks up is that the underground and the Russia in London now compared to 10 or 15 years ago starts about an hour earlier and continues for about an hour later each morning. There are one million more people living in London than there were 18 years ago when I was first elected to Parliament. London is about to reach its previous top population in 1939 after years of people moving out. But if you move out you will also see the signs of growth, change and development. And this growth and change is now very rapid. I certainly don't want to this afternoon get bogged down in economics. You'd have heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer's budget statement on Wednesday, but on the whole, although we haven't quite had the marked revival of your exports that you've had in Ireland, the British economy seems to be taking off again. And in truth, if you look around Britain, I happen to see a country which makes me very optimistic about its future. On the face of it, we seem to be weathering some of the changes of globalisation rather better than some of our continental neighbours. Despite the arrival of a vast tide of immigration, our integration seems markedly better than it is, if I, for example, go to France, a country I know well and indeed have many family links with. And when one's looking at statistics, if indeed Britain was about to go down the plug hole, then it is quite curious that we live in a society of almost churning change, yet at the same time, along with the rest of the western world, our crime rates are undoubtedly going down. London looks cleaner, neater, less graffiti than it was 10 or 15 years ago. And actually, there seems to me to be a real sense of purpose and indeed conviviality within the British environment, which I don't necessarily remember throughout the years of my childhood and youth. I think it's a very interesting phenomenon and it was commented on, I think, during the Olympics in 2012. And I think it's a real one, and you don't just notice it in the metropolis. Yet, despite those features, if I went to be honest with you about the first three weeks of the general election campaign, when I was out on the doorstep, not just in my own constituency, where there is a substantial Conservative majority, and therefore I'm encouraged to go to where there are smaller Conservative majorities or seats we want to win, then the opinion you'd pick up on the doorstep tended to be rather different. I don't think I can remember an election campaign where, certainly for the first part of it, there was a more negative response on the doorstep to politics and politicians generally. Far from people, people may well have been taking an interest, but they certainly weren't expressing it in an enthusiasm for the future. Rather, they tended to be, of two opinions, one considerable cynicism about politicians. I think a really rather sinister change that whereas in the past their view of politicians was that they came out and made promises, which unfortunately events prevented them from keeping, which I see as a healthy cynicism, the modern cynicism is that actually we're coming to tell them lies and wish to deceive them in respect of our policies. This may in part be due to the difficulties that British politics has got into with the expenses scandal in the late 2008-09, but I don't think it's all of it. And then underlying that, some very real long-term concerns about the future of Britain in the world. Even in the worst moments of Britain's industrial and economic decline in the 1970s when I was a boy or at university, I suppose one could go to bed at night securing the knowledge that the western world collectively was so dominant on the planet that apart obviously from the threat of nuclear holocaust with the Soviet Union, which was never, which was always so much in the background as to not to be overwhelmingly present, actually we called most of the shots. That of course is now gone. Daily British citizens looking at their television sets, just as you I'm sure do here, are bombarded with evidence of global dislocation, torrents of people trying, desperate people trying to cross the Mediterranean and drowning in sight of Lampedusa and Pantylaria, cues of desperate people at Calais who want to come in, and also the clear evidence that they're just looking around their own communities that although it's not those desperate people who actually get to this country, its demographics are changing rapidly. There are large communities of newcomers making up significant elements of the population in a country which is crowded and moreover, where people are uncertain and worried about the long-term future and security for their children and grandchildren. I don't think therefore that it should come as a surprise that so many now seem to be attracted to alternative approaches to politics. Whether it's the Scottish National Party up in Scotland, or UKIP down in the rest of the United Kingdom, indeed UKIP are present in Scotland as well, it does seem to me that those alternatives are in a sense the reverse of the same coin. They're attracting people who want to manifest their anxiety by some form of activity that might lead to some very different or radical outcome in their daily lives, be it withdrawal from the European Union or Scottish independence. I was in Edinburgh at the very end of the Scottish referendum campaign, and what struck me so forcefully about that was that the atmosphere was not so much one of some steady or growing desire for Scottish independence, but rather one of an almost anarchic celebration of an opportunity to kick the system and shake the tree. It did make me think that in certain aspects the British political system, I wouldn't like to describe it as broken, I think that would be an exaggeration, but it does seem to me that it is now under some very considerable strains, and it's with that in mind that I then want to turn to my three topics this afternoon. The first one is the European Union, one which I know for all of you here is of very relevant concern because of the anxieties over Brexit. Now I should have to start with a confession to you because I think you should always identify where your speakers coming from. 40 years ago last year in my gap year between school and university, I was an activist member of the Keep Britain in Europe campaign which at that stage was not regarded as improper for an aspiring Conservative politician. Nowadays it's not necessarily something of which one will go around trumpeting. But it's also right to say that in that intervening 40 years I myself have experienced moments and tides of Euroscepticism shared by my own party, and I sometimes laugh when I am identified in the press as being a sort of died-in-the-wall urophile because that's never where I had quite put myself. We need to get things in perspective as we approach the referendum. Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom is not new. The evidence is overwhelming that it was much higher in the early 1980s when 65% of the population were being polled so they wanted to leave the EU as soon as possible than it is today when it meanders around the 40% mark and may indeed even at the moment be falling lower. But unlike in Ireland the EU has never been a popular cause and as I keep on pointing out to the ambassadors of EU countries in this case when I go to their dinners I say you have very lovely dinners but they're always attended by the tiny minority who are positively enthusiastic by the EU and you don't have a dialogue with any of the others. Why that popularity shouldn't be there is probably mired in our history. There's no doubt that the European Union is seen as being challenging in terms of infringing the British English idea of sovereignty. And of course that constant presence in the background which has tended to make us quite cynical about some aspects of European development on the whole in the past has never prevented us from active engagement. Indeed it may be that one of the best things we can bring to the European Union is a gentle reality check when some of its fantasies start to run away with itself and we've done that on frequent occasions be it the European constitution or indeed at the development of the euro. But we can't escape the fact that part of the present crisis is that for the first time really in my adult life the European Union is seen as essentially being in a state of economic failure and moreover not just in a state of economic failure but a state of economic failure appearing to be at least marginally greater than the one we have in our own country. With emerging markets growing by 5.2% and the EU and Eurozone by minus 0.2% the conditions and contrasts couldn't be starker. It's very easy in the United Kingdom to stand up on a platform and make the point that as we're doing less trade with India than we are with Belgium it might be more sensible to start to broaden our horizons and not look so much locally. The second issue I have no doubt which is affecting public perception on the EU is migration. Indeed I would see it as the absolute central issue to the likely outcome of any referendum. I say that because the sheer numbers of people coming into the United Kingdom at a time when it's effectively operating as an economic buffer to the inertia elsewhere within the Eurozone has been quite startling. Britain may be a country of 62 million people but we do live in a very crowded island and a very crowded environment. People's perception of their identity is intimately bound up with their landscape with the field at the bottom of their garden with the question as to whether the village that will town down the road is going to be a place of 4,000 people or is suddenly going to be programmed for expansion to 40. The hard reality, as has been highlighted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer this week is that we lack housing, we lack infrastructure, we lack schools to cope with the population growth, we lack doctor surgeries at which people can rapidly go and see a GP and all these things are at least in part fuelled by the sheer level of population pressure particularly in the south and east of England. So this will I think be quite an important issue because my personal view as I'll come on in a moment is that I think a referendum is likely to deliver a yes vote and a rather resounding yes vote to stay in the EU. But if anything is likely to prevent that happening it would be between now and the date of the referendum another series of serious dislocation brought on by migration and it's worth bearing in mind in that context that I think for the average British voter there is a mixed and unfortunately fuelled by some of the tabloid press. The perception is that the country is being flooded out with desperate people from the Margreb and the Sahel whereas actually what we're getting are extraordinarily respectable people from Poland and Romania coming to carry out the vital services that our economy needs. But that's not how it's seen and it's going to be a very interesting challenge during the course of the referendum as to how we tackle that issue. Turning then to some of the more techy matters which I think underpin the UK's anxieties. There's undoubtedly a major fear that the single market will be subordinated to the eurozone and I have no doubt at all that David Cameron's primary task in the course of his renegotiation is going to get or try to get the cast down assurances that that cannot happen if the eurozone continues to tighten into a single fiscal unit. I don't think this is fantasy. The recent challenge by the European Central Bank attempting to prevent euro denomination, denominated instruments from being traded in London because it wasn't a eurozone location mercifully and successfully challenged by me. I actually sent the reference, I wasn't around when the judgement came but I ordered the reference to be made to the European Court of Justice was I think a rather anxious reminder of Britain's vulnerability in this respect and I do very much hope that we don't see any such examples in future. I think also in speaking as a lawyer that I do worry that the European legal order really doesn't work. I don't want to repeat what I said when I came here on the last occasion but nothing very much has changed for me to change my view on this. The legal order is essential to maintain a single market in goods and services. It's what generates the single market of 500 million people, 21 million companies and 11 trillion pounds of activity but there are too many examples of the capricious selection of title bases for those such as ourselves with the justice and home affairs opt out which suggests that there are those who wish to use the legal system of the EU in order to try to manipulate the treaty obligations that we all have to each other and if that continues to be an issue I have to say it will continue also to have a corrosive effect on Britain's participation. The other one which is very rarely touched on is the European Court of Justice itself on the whole lawyers are reluctant to criticise the judges in front of whom they're likely to appear and therefore governments don't normally do it but I do worry about the European Court of Justice because it seems to me that it is too much of a teleological court and not enough at times of a court applying common sense to whether the treaties are working properly or not and with the intention that was behind them. For that reason and I think it is at least for that reason that I suspect David Cameron will be seeking at some point in the negotiations to try to deal with that strange word the ever closer union. I do remember being told by successive Labour governments that this was merely an expression of desire and that it had no legal significance whatsoever but the trouble is that I think it does often have legal significance when the court is trying to feel its way in a difficult environment as to what the intention of the parties really should be and for that reason I think something else is needed or at least if the word is going to be left in something is needed to balance that out against the clear intention of the treaties and what countries have actually signed up to. Finally or not quite finally in my list of things which I think need attention there's a view in Britain that the European Union is dysfunctional in its institutions. Now had I written this six months ago I would have said very dysfunctional in its institutions but I have to admit that after the Prime Minister's best efforts to prevent Mr Juncker becoming the president of the commission there do seem to be some enchanting signs that the present commission is working far, far better than its predecessors. So perhaps either we succeeded in making a point at the time of it setting up or alternatively we were wholly mistaken in our assessment of how things would develop. But it is worrying and still worries me that you should have this complete discord at times between the commission and the council of ministers and indeed with the parliament steaming in. The whole of the EU is underpinned by the duty of sincere cooperation. I don't really see the sincere cooperation when you find the commission signing up a memorandum of understanding with Switzerland on financial contributions on the very day when it's about to be considered by the council and without the council's consent. That suggests an organisation that has got some serious problems as to how its decision making takes place and that too undermines confidence particularly amongst politicians in the UK about its functioning. And then finally of course we get what I call the rubbish which is that the tabloid press in London will always centre upon olive jugs, Hoover power settings and all the other things of the minor regulatory form that irritate the public although in reality they're unlikely ever to encounter them in practice. But we would do well if the EU was able to try to avoid some of them. So I hope that's given you a little overview about where I think the UK will be going in its negotiations. But to give you a word of reassurance why do I think there will be a yes vote? Ultimately because although the United Kingdom is not necessarily very enthusiastic about the EU as a concept I think in fact it's remarkably comfortable with the reality of EU membership. And amongst the informed classes who bother to pay some attention to this my judgement is that the evidence is overwhelming that they see EU membership as being vital to our long term economic prosperity. Even my friend and colleague in Paterson who of course you will know when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in delivering a major speech on calling for us to threaten to withdraw from the EU or to initiate withdrawal as an instrument of policy had to admit that of course he wasn't contemplating restricting freedom of movement in the EU at all because he would still have to be members of the EEA. If that is indeed the case and it manifestly is then at least one plank of the argument for pulling us out in order to pull up the drawbridge and bring down the port cullus disappears. And I think most of the business men in my constituency most of whom are Eurosceptics nevertheless know very well that their businesses much as they would like to develop them elsewhere in the world outside of the EU are dependent on the free trade agreements that the EU can negotiate with other power blocks whether it's China or the United States and indeed that they are reassured in truth by some of the regulatory framework under which they operate even if they sometimes complain about it. And finally on this theme I'll just say this ultimately the United Kingdom in many of its moreies and attitudes is very much a European state. I'll just take you a little example on this and this is about extradition and the European arrest warrant. As you know the European arrest warrant is a controversial topic in Britain people think it's wrong and in some cases they're very concerned and I think sometimes for understandable reasons about individuals who are extradited to some EU states which frankly have rather shaky records when it comes to their justice systems. But they certainly don't complain about people being extradited to the Republic of Ireland. They certainly don't complain about Germany, Sweden, Norway, France or actually our closest European neighbours. And whilst it's true that the old Commonwealth countries tend to attract respect you only have to look at the amount of disquart about extradition to the United States of America to see actually how firmly embedded we are in the European traditions which relate to justice and proportionality in the criminal justice system. It's a small and I think telling point for me that ultimately with two million Britons abroad in the EU the vast majority of my fellow citizens are in fact broadly very comfortable with the European identity indeed so Nigel Farage tells us is he. And for that reason I think when it comes to the crunch unless as I say we get knocked off course by some surprising event I'm confident that as long as the political leadership is there I think we will get a yes vote and remain in and I hope in the process but we may also get some reforms which will benefit to other EU countries and not just exceptionalism for ourselves. Can I then turn to my second topic which is the Human Rights Act and our adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights which I think was responsible for my leaving office at last July. For reasons which I don't always entirely fathom but I will try to explain to you in a dispassionate way the Prime Minister of my country has a being his bonnet about the European Convention on Human Rights. I think it may date back to the days when he was the special adviser to Michael Howard but it has induced in him a view which is shared by many in my party which is that whilst in fact there are resolute upholders of human rights and indeed the UK's record in promoting human rights globally is really second to none and one of which I'm proud and not only am I proud but they are proud as well but nevertheless when it comes to difficult issues of state policy which bring tension between human rights and of the individual and the human or the rights of the wider community they have a strong sense that in the British parliamentary tradition these are issues for the executive, answerable to parliament and that the judicial activism which they have seen develop both at home through our own courts as a result of interpreting the Human Rights Act and also in Strasbourg has become excessive. I hope that encapsulates what I think the issue is and this undoubtedly has some resonance with the British public. I can promise you that the moment you can hear it in parliament the moment a denunciation is made of the abuse of human rights there are cheers from my conservative colleagues on the back benches and you will get exactly the same thing if you have a public audience in Britain and we shouldn't forget that this is sufficiently widespread but when it came to the court of human rights decision in Hearst on prisoner voting the then Labour government in 2005 despite an enormous majority felt quite unable in the ensuing five years in office to do anything about complying with that by changing our law to giving some prisoners the vote but although that may be the case if you actually settle down and have a discussion with people all the convention rights attract and there's been opinion polling on this widespread support so the issue is not about the rights themselves it is I'm afraid about how they are seen to have been interpreted in ways that may have been unintended now as you may have appreciated I don't share this view in signing up to the European Convention of Human Rights in 1950 the United Kingdom was following a very clear historical tradition of seeking to improve the world by developing mutual obligations we do it with the UN Charter we've done it since with the UN Convention for the Prohibition of Torture we have been doing it for a very long time indeed I once asked the foreign office how many treaties we were signed up to and ratified they were incapable of answering the question they finally tentatively said that they thought since 1834 we had signed up to 13,200 treaties I suspect the United Kingdom is the biggest treaty maker in the world and that comes from our history because of the very small imperial power punching well above our weight we spent a large part of the 19th and 20th century even in the heyday of empire tying other people down with mutual obligations and the European Convention on Human Rights is exactly that it is an acceptance of an arbitral mechanism to try to make sure that the UN Charter what Mrs Roosevelt so rightly said was the Magna Carta of the 20th century would have some bite in the signatory countries rather than just being a mere expression of desire or in some cases a mere expression of hypocrisy when one considers the number of countries that are signed up to the UN Charter and whose record in respect of human rights is diabolical so I happen to think that it's one of those straight issues in which you have to make a choice if you want other people to conform and develop their human rights if you want to see the progress brought about by the Strasbourg Court in Azerbaijan and Romania, Russia and Ukraine and I met with the Georgian public defender two days ago who said how successful the ECHR was in leveraging change from a reluctant government when human rights abuses were identified if we want those things to continue we've got to continue to be signed up and interestingly, although I may no longer be in office I note that the Prime Minister has got the point because on a number of occasions in the last three months he has announced, which wasn't our position in October last year that we were going to remain within the European Convention on Human Rights if we are remaining in the European Convention on Human Rights then we could replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights but the reality is that we're either going to add rights which are not protected by the Convention or in practice the Riggle Room that we have to limit rights within the Convention is astonishingly limited and the Prime Minister's dilemma I hazard the suggestion is he's going to find that they are so limited that they fail to meet the Daily Mail test and as a result of that and the fact that both the Mail, the Express, the Sun and the Telegraph have all been campaigning to scrap the Human Rights Act they are going to end up disappointed in their expectations because exactly the same problems will exist under a British Bill of Rights in respect of deporting people to countries where they might be tortured or the difficulty of reconciling private and family life with protecting people from prisoners you want to deport at the end of their sentences all those problems will be present in exactly the same way as they are today so we're either going to end up with modest and cosmetic change or we are going to end up with a change which is so significant that it wrecks the UK's international reputation and of course there is a crossover to the EU because the Charter of Fundamental Rights is based on the Convention and as I have pointed out on a number of occasions to people if we are no longer complying with the Convention I have a nasty feeling that the European Court of Justice if we are still in the EU will start to make us do it and I can't believe that that is in the government's interest to promote this you also I know have a very distinct issue here over the Belfast Agreement and indeed the way in which the Human Rights Act is embedded in the devolution settlements to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland I hazard the suggestion again that this may prove to be the single biggest argument for not doing anything and I think there is an appreciation within government that this is not a technical issue and although of course human rights are reserved matter it's quite clear that the Human Rights Act is a reserved matter to Westminster the reality of devolution where we are today is I don't think that we could properly at Westminster change that without first consulting with and getting the agreement of the devolved administrations there would be absolutely no possibility of getting the Scottish Government over that matter the Welsh Assembly Government to agree it the DUP in Northern Ireland probably would but then they've never signed up to the Belfast Agreement in the first place as they are always very happy to point out to us so again if I can perhaps sound a note of reassurance there is clearly going to be a major debate on human rights in the United Kingdom and I think it's going to happen quite quickly I had wondered if it would be simply kicked into the long grass but I think there will be a paper published in the autumn I think there is a desire at the moment to publish a bill in early for the next session from 2016 to 2017 I am at a loss at the moment to see what will be in it there is talk of trying to have mechanisms of democratic override so that the British Government would only implement an ECHR judgement if Parliament allowed them to which of course is in breach of article 46 of the Convention I think the Government is going to find it has a lot of problems in this area my intention, if you want to know what I'm up to is to persistently and gently point out that there are better ways of spending our time than worrying over this particular issue because at the end of the day I think the Government will have a difficulty getting the majority in the House of Commons to carry through anything other than the cosmetic change Finally, before I bring my remarks to a close I wanted to talk about Scotland should say at the beginning I am a unionist I was brought up with a unionist spoon in my mouth and there was a silver spoon but it was certainly a unionist spoon my family come in part from Scotland as well as Ireland for that matter but I've never seen myself as English The Conservative Party is a unionist party I sometimes appreciated that at the referendum last year where at a broad church we can disagree within my party on all sorts of things but actually if you carried out a dissection of the Conservative soul the word unionism features somewhere in the centre of it Last year's referendum in Scotland did not however resolve the issue of Scottish independence and I think for the very reasons which I touched on earlier because in fact I think the issues that were being debated may have had less to do with independence than with the structures of government under which we currently operate in the United Kingdom collectively We're now embarked on what seems to me to be quite a potentially dangerous course of doing two things The first one is of course fulfilling the vow to give Scotland more powers I don't have any objection to that I should make that clear Indeed it's inevitable that we must honour the terms of the vow although perhaps rather not surprising that the terms of the vow are now being fought over as to whether we're honouring them properly or not We've also moved at Westminster to have a mechanism of English votes for English laws which is not actually what it says at all it's a rather conservative with a small C measure which would simply give English and Welsh MPs a veto that would prevent the imposition of a passage of a law through the House of Commons against their will using Scottish MPs to lever the majority but it would only apply to English or English and Welsh business alone and it clearly would have to exempt any business with a knock-on consequence in Scotland Scotland is funded by a formula which has a knock-on consequence for virtually everything we do at Westminster The number of legislative acts going through Parliament which are likely to concern us and not concern the Scots will in reality be tiny The government's back down on pushing that through next week but I think it will go through in the autumn by changing the standing orders of the House of Commons which is itself a rather archaic thing to do because we don't want primary legislation because it could have an impact on the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty and allow the speaker's decisions on what is an English bill to be challenged in a court and that, ladies and gentlemen, brings me to my denouement of this talk today The problem I think that we have fundamentally in the UK at the moment and this is a purely personal view but it's born of my time in office and everything I've seen in my 18 years in government is that the simplicities of governance which I was brought up with and always taught was one of Britain's great strengths Mae once have been one of Britain's great strengths but I have serious doubts that it is really a strength at present Parliamentary sovereignty which essentially accrued all power to Westminster where a government with a majority in parliament could essentially do anything it wanted circumscribed obviously by convention and by the common law and principles which would ultimately see a government thrown out if they didn't adhere to it does not lend itself well to the distribution of power that devolution entails dare I say it, this is an old song because I suspect it was exactly what was being discussed in London in the 1880s as Home Rule was first being considered and so I think that we are going to have to face up to some choices Scotland's powers through devolution are not saying irrevocable times can change and opinion can change but if we want to maintain a single polity we are going to have to change the way we go about our governance and of course that then raises the prospects of having a written constitution a framework within which the political system operates and that inevitably brings in the prospect of judges adjudicating on issues concerning the constitution which of course in the extent they are already doing we've had aspects of the Wales Act 2006 adjudicated on by our Supreme Court with quite surprising results as to what had been devolved and what had not or at least put it this way the Westminster government which I was a member was rather surprised to discover that we had devolved agricultural wages boards to Wales when we were absolutely 100% confident that we had not I find that the direction of travel we are taking is not one that is going to inevitably lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom but it does not have any strategic coherence and that must raise the risk of such break-up through no one ever being satisfied with an outcome now all democracies evolve you can't just close it down and preserve it in ASPIC but I think if we want the union to thrive and I happen to think there are really powerful reasons why we should want it to thrive because I think the total is much greater than the sum of its parts for those reasons I think that we are going to have to grapple at some point in the not too distant future with how we conduct our government and that will indeed be I suppose a profoundly not revolutionary but a profound change to the way in which the British state has always seen itself we're a very simple place we're there because we're there virtually anybody one of the reasons we integrate people so well is that people come over everything's done by oaths as you're probably aware I take an oath of office when I become Attorney General MPs take oaths, police officers take oaths, judges take oaths all devolves down from the crown anybody can participate if they want to and that's of course why the Sinn Fein MPs don't wish to participate at Westminster that's the structure of the British state in all its simplicity it is a pre-modern state almost feudal actually in this sense in the ties and obligations that bind us all together and I have to say it's something I'm rather proud of but realistically the list of things I've been going through today tells me that while I'm a great optimist about Britain's future I think one of the big issues that is not going to go away is how we create a framework in which we can both give people the local government they need the devolved governments they need maintain the centre to deliver the identity which I think most people in the United Kingdom do wish to share and was clear to me from the result of the referendum last year in Scotland but where nevertheless they also want their individuality to be able to manifest itself that I think is the great challenge for this century how it will be resolved I don't know I've probably spoken for too long thank you very much for listening