Rather than answering the question about the contrast in the Government's two attitudes to devolution, he said:I hesitate to cross swords with a distinguished academic … but my recollection of 1886 and the Crisis in the Liberal Party when Mr. Gladstone brought forward the proposals relating to Home Rule included observations by a very distinguished constitutional lawyer who was strongly opposed to the principle of Home Rule and indeed took a High Tory position on it, but who did acknowledge as a constitutional lawyer that there was nothing about the constitution of the United Kingdom which required the manner in which the different parts of the kingdom are governed to be universal.