A TORY peer has said that Scotland will “almost certainly” become independent in the next decade, which he claimed would be a “constitutional and political tragedy”.

Lord Patrick Cormack warned that this was being made more certain by a rising tide of English Nationalism in the Conservative party, and urged the UK Government to safeguard the Union.

Speaking in the House of Lords today during a committee debate on the Internal Market Bill, Cormack said he found himself echoing several of his peers in asking: “What is the point of this bill?”

Cormack was made a Lord in 2010 after serving as a Tory MP for four decades.

He told the house: “I was not, way back in the Seventies, an advocate of devolution, and I sometimes think that my fears have to come to pass.

“But the fact is, we do have devolution and we cannot ignore what we have, or we will truly endanger the future of the Union. That, we must not do.

“We cannot ride roughshod over what has now been established for some 20 years or more. And if we do, we will truly endanger the future of the United Kingdom.”

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He went on: “There is no subject which should cause more concern or potential heartache to any member of [the] house than the subject of the future of the United Kingdom.

“It would be a constitutional and political tragedy if, a decade from now, we had Northern Ireland broken away, maybe Wales, but almost certainly Scotland.”

Although he stressed the “seriousness” of what he called “this threat, this danger” to the Union, Cormack did not take aim at the SNP or “divisive” Scottish Nationalism as some of his Tory colleagues have done.

Instead, Cormack said the threat to the Union was coming from English Nationalism, which he said seemed “to be a little too predominant in [the Conservative] party at the moment”.

The Tory peer said he hoped Boris Johnson’s Government would “head off the forces of English Nationalism”, adding: “I would feel that [allowing the UK to break up] would be the ultimate betrayal of the British parliament and of the Union it is our duty to safeguard.”

His comments came as peers began a committee stage debate on the controversial Internal Market Bill, which sets out the way that trade within the UK will work once it is outside the EU's single market and customs union.

Cross-party amendments have been tabled to strike out clauses linked to the most contentious part of the bill, which aim to give ministers the power to breach the Brexit divorce deal - known as the Withdrawal Agreement - brokered with Brussels last year.

Green Party peer Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb said the Government was using Brexit as an excuse to "take more control of the country" and accused ministers of creating a "Frankenstein's monster" to "grab more power".

But business minister Lord Callanan rejected their criticisms, saying: "We are not riding roughshod over the devolution settlements.

"Devolved administrations will acquire dozens of new powers they have not exercised before once we leave the EU transition period.

"This bill is about ensuring that those powers are exercised in a non-discriminatory manner," he said, adding that it would also ensure goods continued to flow freely throughout the UK.

Labour peer and former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Hain said the UK Internal Market Bill "deliberately and cynically drives a coach and horses through the UK's respect for the rule of law".

Introducing his amendments to the Bill, Lord Hain told peers: "Amendments 3, 157 and 177 effectively ensure that the Bill cannot come into force unless the full provisions of both the Irish protocol and the Good Friday Agreement remain in tact.

"Even if the Government actually listens to the clamour and removes part 5, these amendments seek to add much-needed protections which the Bill could really benefit from.

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"They bind the Government to fully respect the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, to fully respect the Withdrawal Agreement and fully respect the protocol of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

"The amendments therefore provide a much-needed safeguard for the protections of two international agreements the United Kingdom has entered into and ratified freely - namely the Belfast Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol within the EU Withdrawal Agreement - and would therefore continue peace and security for the people of Northern Ireland."

In a second speech given a little later, Cormack also warned of the threat posed to the Good Friday Agreement by these controversial clauses of the Tories’ bill.

He said: “It would be an act of supreme folly if anything we did that endangered the continuity of the Good Friday Agreement. It is absolutely crucial that each one of us recognise this. This agreement is our heritage and it is our duty to conserve it.”

Cormack stressed that his position on Ireland had nothing to do with Brexit or the EU, Leave or Remain, saying: “That argument is over.”

He went on: “But what is not over is the continuing relevance and importance of an island of Ireland without hard borders and of the principles and achievements of the Good Friday Agreement being maintained.”