THE WEST LOTHIAN QUESTION
Below is a copy from Hansard of the transcript of a speech made by Lord Baker yesterday, presenting his bill, which is an attempt to introduce English votes on English Laws for the House of Commons.
Although this falls short of creating a proper English Parliament, this speech does set out the unacceptability of the status quo.
Parliament (Participation of Members of the House of Commons) Bill [HL]
11.40 am
Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Before addressing the details of the Bill, I cannot help reflecting on the last half hour of debate. Devolution has not gone far enough in the United Kingdom; the sooner Northern Ireland has an Assembly to deal with these matters, the better.
This Bill seeks to answer the West Lothian question, which was raised by Tam Dalyell in the 1977 debates when the Labour government introduced their first measure to establish a directly elected Assembly in Scotland. Tam would get up on clause after clause and ask, “What should Scottish MPs do at Westminster after Scotland has its own Parliament?” Enoch Powell dubbed that the West Lothian question. The Bill in 1977 did not proceed because the government did not secure a guillotine, but they resumed with another Bill in 1978 to establish a Scottish Parliament and it was on a measure in that Bill that they were defeated in 1979.
The West Lothian question is not a new constitutional question. It was first addressed by Edmund Burke during the American Revolution, when he advocated local self-government for the 13 American colonies. He described it as “local patriotism”. The colonies would then come under the Westminster umbrella, which would convey “imperial patriotism”. The writings of Edmund Burke influenced Gladstone very strongly in establishing the first Home Rule Bill in 1886. He had to grapple with exactly the West Lothian question. He said:
“If Ireland is to have domestic legislation for Irish affairs they cannot come here for English or Scottish affairs”.
The first Home Rule Bill of 1886 excluded Irish MPs from coming to Westminster altogether. The second Home Rule Bill in 1893 modified that. It rejected the proposal that I shall be putting to your Lordships later, which is called “in and out”. Gladstone went for a policy that reduced Irish representation at Westminster. He reduced the number of Irish MPs who were allowed to come to Westminster from 103 to 80; it was quite a modest reduction. That was also proposed in Asquith’s Bill, which reached the statute book and was implemented in 1914. Both Harcourt and Morley pointed out to Gladstone that reducing the number of Irish MPs did not really solve the question at all, because Irish MPs could attend and vote and determine policy in England, Scotland and Wales. The Gladstonian settlement had within it the seeds of future friction.
I shall briefly address the position of the Government on devolution, which is important, as they have been the main proponents of it and have made the most significant changes. The early Labour leaders, Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald, were Scottish home rulers, but the Attlee government did not turn to devolution at all. Attlee was not remotely interested in it; he would let sleeping dogs lie. Indeed, that was also the position of the first Wilson government from 1964 to 1970, apart from one very interesting debate in 1965, when Wilson had a majority of only two. It was a measure on steel denationalisation. This is what Wilson said:
“I am sure the House will agree that there is an apparent lack of logic, for example, about steel, when Northern Ireland members can, and presumably will, swell the Tory ranks tonight, when we have no power to vote on questions about steel in Northern Ireland because of the fact that the Stormont Parliament has concurrent jurisdiction in these matters”.
There was a devolved Parliament, but Northern Ireland Members could come here. Wilson asked the House of Commons to,
“look at the question of why he”—
the leader of the Conservative Party—
“gets the support of his honourable Friends beside him—for example, on matters affecting housing discrimination in London—when we English, Scottish and Welsh Members cannot express our views about housing conditions in Belfast”—[Official Report, Commons, 6/5/65; cols. 1560––61.]
Harold Wilson did not pursue the matter; he decided to have another general election and to try to secure a majority of more than two. None the less, he had focussed on it. The Labour Party was fairly cool about devolution. The Labour Party conference of 1968 passed a resolution opposing devolution. However, by 1970, the Scottish nationalists had appeared as a serious and major threat to Labour in Scotland, having one MP in 1970 and 11 in 1974, with 30 per cent of the vote. It was the second Wilson administration, from February 1974 to October 1974, which committed the Labour Party to a directly elected Scottish Assembly.
My point is that the conversion was relatively late. It was always opposed by certain distinguished Labour Members of Parliament. Neil Kinnock was strongly opposed to it, as was Eric Heffer, because they realised the consequences of the policy. We have just discovered in the past three or four weeks that one of the major supporters of the policy was Denis Healey. According to the papers released by the Public Record Office, as Chancellor of the Exchequer he urged the setting up of a Scottish Assembly to defeat Scottish nationalists, as he did not want the Scottish nationalists to get their talons on North Sea oil. For all those reasons, the government were committed, but they failed to do it. John Smith promoted the policy, and Tony Blair accepted that legacy and introduced the Acts of 1998 and 1999.
Why is this now a question? Why should it come up again now? First, the constitutional settlement that the Government have imposed on the country is neither static nor final. Since 2000, the Acts have been extended as regards devolution. Since that time, control over fire and rescue services, animal health, the audit of devolved bodies, the ombudsman and student support have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament. As for Wales, the Government now have the Government of Wales Bill before the House of Commons, which creates a Welsh Executive, rather like the Scottish Executive, and a chief Minister in the Assembly. It also creates a form of legislation that is virtually that for a Parliament, in that the Welsh Assembly will in the future be able to draft legislation and bring it forward in a complete form to this House, and we will approve it with an hour’s debate through an Order in Council. That makes the Assembly a Parliament in all but name, but it is not called a Parliament. There would have to be a referendum, if the Government win the next election, to decide whether it should be called a Parliament. In fact, the change is very significant. Since 2000, there has been a steady movement away from the hub to the rim of the wheel, and I think that that will continue. Certainly, Mr Jack McConnell, Scotland’s First Minister, wants it to continue. He has argued that he wants the Scottish Parliament to have control over drugs, firearms, broadcasting, immigration and nuclear power. The current settlement is neither static nor final.
We have now had six years of devolution. Before the creation of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, the West Lothian question was to some extent rather academic and theoretical; it was really a synonym for opposition to devolution. That is not now the case and we now have to address the question. So far, the Government’’s response is a modified form of the Gladstonian solution of reducing the number of Scottish MPs. At the last election, the number of Scottish MPs was reduced to 59. As a side issue—I do not wish to feature on this very strongly—if it was truly proportionate it would be 54, not 59, but I leave that argument aside. Scotland is over-represented in the House of Commons. When it comes to Wales, for which there has been no reduction, as it does not have a Parliament—it has an Assembly, although that is going to get powers to make it virtually a Parliament—the numbers should be reduced from 40 to 32. That should make a reduction to 86 Scottish and Welsh MPs.
But if you take the principle that operated when Stormont existed, there should be a further reduction. When Stormont existed as a separate Assembly in the United Kingdom, Ulster should have had 17 MPs in the other place, but did not; there were only 12 MPs. I see the former leader of the Ulster Unionists nodding, so I have got the facts right. If you reduced that 86 proportionately by a third, the Scottish and Welsh MPs—if the Government believe that this is the solution to the West Lothian question—should number 56, not 84. I do not really think that that answers the West Lothian question.
The Government depend on the Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs, although there is one fewer as a result of the by-election yesterday—I was going to say 40 Scottish Labour MPs, but it is now 39, and 29 Welsh Labour MPs, which makes 68 altogether, to carry the Government’’s legislation in the lower House. They will have to carry contentious and difficult legislation that affects only England. That is outrageous. It is outrageous that the Member for Doon Valley or the Member for Paisley North—the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will have a chance later and I will refer to him several times—or the Member for Caithness should be able to decide over the schools in my former constituency of Dorking. Why should they come and tell my constituents how they should appoint head teachers, how they should select children or whether they should have trust schools? When I was the Member for Dorking, I had no control over education in Paisley North, Doon Valley or Caithness—in fact, the Members for those constituencies do have any control over that. That is outrageous and unacceptable. You should have English votes for English laws.
Let me give a further example. Your Lordships will recall that the Scottish Parliament decided that there should be a total smoking ban in Scotland. In the Health Bill, which is before the lower House, the Government, prompted by Dr John Reid, who is a Scottish MP—no matter—said that they wanted a partial ban. That is part of the Bill that will eventually come to this House. Before Christmas, in a Commons committee, Sir George Young, a long-term anti-smoker, moved that there should be a total ban in England. That Motion was lost by one vote. A Scottish Member of Parliament decided whether we should have a partial or total ban in England. That is absurd. I put it again to the honourable Member for Doon Valley, who is also, I believe, the chairman of Motherwell Football Club.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: Heart of Midlothian.
Lord Baker of Dorking: I am sorry, my Lords, Heart of Midlothian. If he was still a Member of the lower House and he had voted on the smoking ban, he would be telling Chelsea supporters where they could smoke, how they could smoke, when they could smoke and whether they could smoke. Whereas the supporters of Heart of Midlothian, if they exist—
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, they would have absolutely no influence on it at all. It is absolute absurdity.
Another example is roads. I resent the fact that the present Secretary of State for Transport is a Scot, because he is making decisions on roads in East Sussex, where I live, which I think are lunatic and wrong; but there we have it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr Darling made a huge faux pas by going to Dunfermline at the beginning of the by-election and saying that there would be no increase in the Firth of Forth tolls. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Alistair Darling have no control over the tolls on the Firth of Forth bridge. That is a matter for the Scottish Parliament. Many Members of that Parliament are very offended that the Chancellor and Mr Darling went up there and said that. In fact, I think they contributed to last night’s defeat, because the people of Dunfermline were saying clearly, “We want to run our own affairs, we do not want to be bullied by Ministers coming from Westminster, particularly the Chancellor”. The Chancellor is responsible for the loss of Dunfermline. I gather, in the repositioning of Gordon Brown, he will take a greater interest in constitutional matters. I hope he starts by figuring out what he has done so far.
The Government recognised that the case for English votes for English laws is unanswerable, so they decided that their answer was to have English regional assemblies. They asked their Deputy Prime Minister to fly the kite, and we all watched it thud to the ground.
My proposals in the Bill are designed to resolve this matter. I seek to give the Speaker powers, or rather confirm powers that the Speaker already has, to certify the territorial extent of a Bill. He has that power and he has exercised it in regard to Scottish Bills. He would designate groups of MPs—English MPs, Scottish MPs, Welsh MPs and Northern Ireland MPs—allowing them to vote only on such Bills, parts of Bills and statutory instruments. That is the nub of my proposals. There are many objections to them and I should like to deal with some of them.
The first objection is technical—can you separate out bits of Bills? The answer is that clearly you can; it is done in much legislation. In this Bill, I have given considerable power of discretion to the Speaker to decide on these matters. The Speaker can take advice from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, if he wishes. For the Government to say that it is not possible to define Bills, parts of Bills and statutory instruments is not an acceptable argument. I know that my noble friend Lord MacGregor has spoken and written about that and, no doubt, will refer to it later.
The second argument is that my proposal creates two classes of MPs. Well, there are already two types of MPs. When I was in the House of Commons before devolution, we were all equal. We could vote on absolutely everything that we wanted to and we had the right to do so. Devolution changes everything. For example, English MPs in the House of Commons can vote on English roads, English hospitals and English schools, whereas Scottish MPs cannot vote on Scottish roads and so on. Two classes of MPs already exist, so the argument that you would create inequality between them does not stand up.
Do not think for a moment that this is just a Conservative point of view. Many people on both sides of the House of Commons share it. In the debate in January on the Government of Wales Bill, the Father of the House, Alan Williams, who is a well respected Labour MP for Swansea, said the following:
“I abstained on tuition charges because I felt that I should not vote on them, but we have an anomalous situation whereby Scottish and Welsh Members, who are not answerable to English constituencies, will vote to impose on them measures that will not apply in Scotland or Wales. That affronts my concept of the democratic accountability that I thought existed in our country”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/1/06; col. 55.]
It is not only Alan Williams. Peter Kilfoyle, a well known supporter of the Government, said:
“It seems a perverse form of democracy when members representing Scottish or Welsh seats decide on matters which, in their case, are devolved to the Welsh Assembly or the Scottish Parliament.
“Those members would rightly take umbrage at interference by the British Parliament in such devolved areas. I take exception to any member who wants it both ways”.
And it is not only him, but someone from the mainstream of the Labour Party, Tony Wright, the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee. Speaking at a meeting with the Prime Minister and heads of other committees, to a resounding chorus of “Hear, hear”—or so it says in the Scotsman, so it must be true—he said that his
“middle England constituents resented Scottish MPs having power over their affairs”.
That support for my Bill extends not only to the Labour Party, but to the Liberal Party. Simon Hughes has made it clear that he supports this measure. An article in Times Online this week stated:
“Campbell would stop Scots MPs voting”.
The Government have to address this question very seriously indeed. They can no longer shelter under the answer given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who is in a place—not his former place—in the Chamber. He said of the West Lothian question that the best thing to do about it was not to ask it. That was just about tenable in 1998 and 1999, but not now, because we have had the experience of seeing what happens. While you can turn a blind eye if you are a daring and imaginative commander in war, if you are dealing with a constitutional matter, turning a blind eye is an excuse for torpor and friction. This matter has to be addressed.
The third objection that I have heard many times is that the Scots and sometimes the Welsh will say, “Well, in the Thatcher years you imposed a whole lot on us that we objected to fundamentally”. I see the Lord Chancellor nodding. I am glad, because the noble and learned Lord has the capacity of occasionally stumbling upon the truth. Then he picks himself up as if nothing had happened. Of course, we did what we did because it was a unitary Parliament. But devolution, I say to the Lord Chancellor, changes everything. Once you establish in a unitary kingdom a federal unit with power to make laws—absolute power—with only a theoretical control from Westminster, you change everything. We have to address that problem.
The fourth argument is that the Westminster Parliament is supreme—the noble and learned Lord is nodding again. The argument is that the Westminster Parliament can vote on anything, and that is in the Bill that the noble and learned Lord introduced to the House. In theory, that is right, but its Members can legislate in Scotland only if they get the approval of the Scottish Parliament through a Sewel Motion. Theoretically they are able to legislate on, say, road speeds in Scotland but, if they did not get a Sewel Motion, there would be a major constitutional crisis because the Scottish Parliament would say, “That is for us to decide, not Westminster”.
The sovereignty of Parliament is at best a dormant sovereignty. The point that the House should grasp is that, once sovereignty is devolved, it is not a devolution but a division and sharing of sovereignty. That is what happens and that has been consolidated by the experience of the past six years.
The last argument is so trivial that I shall barely touch on it. It is that, because measures before Parliament affect the constituents of Scottish Members of Parliament, they should have a say on them. In the debates on tuition, some Scottish Members of Parliament said, “We’ve got constituents who go to English universities and therefore we are involved and want to have a say on it”. That is a totally absurd argument. Let us suppose that their constituents went to Trinity College, Dublin. Those MPs would not ask for a seat in the Irish Parliament, would they? The same would apply if their constituents went to the Sorbonne. Of course that would not be the case. One might as well say, “I’’m a Scottish Member of Parliament. I may fall ill in England and so I want a say on how hospital trusts are run”. It is an absolutely ridiculous and absurd argument.
I come back to the point that devolution changes everything. It is not static or final but is moving further and further on as we speak. The Procedure Committee in the Parliament of 1997 to 2001, which had a majority of Labour members, argued for a proposal very similar to my own. The government of the day totally rejected it, although it was supported by a Labour majority. The clear principle is that there should be English votes for English laws.
I am a Unionist. I believe that the United Kingdom has been an enormous success. It is neither a nation nor a country; it was a political creation in the middle of the 18th century and it has served the peoples of our countries well and it has served the world well. But I do not believe that it would hold together if there were manifest inequalities and unfairness between the constituent parts. Again, I quote Gladstone:
“The concession of local self-government is not the way to sap or impair but the way to strengthen and consolidate unity”.
I support that totally. I married a Scot; all my children went to a Scottish university, as did their mother; I even go on holiday to Scotland—I do not know Sharm el-Sheik. I am aware of the Scottish dimension. I believe that the only way in which we will hold our United Kingdom together is by recognising that we should have English votes for English laws.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Baker of Dorking.)
Although this falls short of creating a proper English Parliament, this speech does set out the unacceptability of the status quo.
Parliament (Participation of Members of the House of Commons) Bill [HL]
11.40 am
Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Before addressing the details of the Bill, I cannot help reflecting on the last half hour of debate. Devolution has not gone far enough in the United Kingdom; the sooner Northern Ireland has an Assembly to deal with these matters, the better.
This Bill seeks to answer the West Lothian question, which was raised by Tam Dalyell in the 1977 debates when the Labour government introduced their first measure to establish a directly elected Assembly in Scotland. Tam would get up on clause after clause and ask, “What should Scottish MPs do at Westminster after Scotland has its own Parliament?” Enoch Powell dubbed that the West Lothian question. The Bill in 1977 did not proceed because the government did not secure a guillotine, but they resumed with another Bill in 1978 to establish a Scottish Parliament and it was on a measure in that Bill that they were defeated in 1979.
The West Lothian question is not a new constitutional question. It was first addressed by Edmund Burke during the American Revolution, when he advocated local self-government for the 13 American colonies. He described it as “local patriotism”. The colonies would then come under the Westminster umbrella, which would convey “imperial patriotism”. The writings of Edmund Burke influenced Gladstone very strongly in establishing the first Home Rule Bill in 1886. He had to grapple with exactly the West Lothian question. He said:
“If Ireland is to have domestic legislation for Irish affairs they cannot come here for English or Scottish affairs”.
The first Home Rule Bill of 1886 excluded Irish MPs from coming to Westminster altogether. The second Home Rule Bill in 1893 modified that. It rejected the proposal that I shall be putting to your Lordships later, which is called “in and out”. Gladstone went for a policy that reduced Irish representation at Westminster. He reduced the number of Irish MPs who were allowed to come to Westminster from 103 to 80; it was quite a modest reduction. That was also proposed in Asquith’s Bill, which reached the statute book and was implemented in 1914. Both Harcourt and Morley pointed out to Gladstone that reducing the number of Irish MPs did not really solve the question at all, because Irish MPs could attend and vote and determine policy in England, Scotland and Wales. The Gladstonian settlement had within it the seeds of future friction.
I shall briefly address the position of the Government on devolution, which is important, as they have been the main proponents of it and have made the most significant changes. The early Labour leaders, Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald, were Scottish home rulers, but the Attlee government did not turn to devolution at all. Attlee was not remotely interested in it; he would let sleeping dogs lie. Indeed, that was also the position of the first Wilson government from 1964 to 1970, apart from one very interesting debate in 1965, when Wilson had a majority of only two. It was a measure on steel denationalisation. This is what Wilson said:
“I am sure the House will agree that there is an apparent lack of logic, for example, about steel, when Northern Ireland members can, and presumably will, swell the Tory ranks tonight, when we have no power to vote on questions about steel in Northern Ireland because of the fact that the Stormont Parliament has concurrent jurisdiction in these matters”.
There was a devolved Parliament, but Northern Ireland Members could come here. Wilson asked the House of Commons to,
“look at the question of why he”—
the leader of the Conservative Party—
“gets the support of his honourable Friends beside him—for example, on matters affecting housing discrimination in London—when we English, Scottish and Welsh Members cannot express our views about housing conditions in Belfast”—[Official Report, Commons, 6/5/65; cols. 1560––61.]
Harold Wilson did not pursue the matter; he decided to have another general election and to try to secure a majority of more than two. None the less, he had focussed on it. The Labour Party was fairly cool about devolution. The Labour Party conference of 1968 passed a resolution opposing devolution. However, by 1970, the Scottish nationalists had appeared as a serious and major threat to Labour in Scotland, having one MP in 1970 and 11 in 1974, with 30 per cent of the vote. It was the second Wilson administration, from February 1974 to October 1974, which committed the Labour Party to a directly elected Scottish Assembly.
My point is that the conversion was relatively late. It was always opposed by certain distinguished Labour Members of Parliament. Neil Kinnock was strongly opposed to it, as was Eric Heffer, because they realised the consequences of the policy. We have just discovered in the past three or four weeks that one of the major supporters of the policy was Denis Healey. According to the papers released by the Public Record Office, as Chancellor of the Exchequer he urged the setting up of a Scottish Assembly to defeat Scottish nationalists, as he did not want the Scottish nationalists to get their talons on North Sea oil. For all those reasons, the government were committed, but they failed to do it. John Smith promoted the policy, and Tony Blair accepted that legacy and introduced the Acts of 1998 and 1999.
Why is this now a question? Why should it come up again now? First, the constitutional settlement that the Government have imposed on the country is neither static nor final. Since 2000, the Acts have been extended as regards devolution. Since that time, control over fire and rescue services, animal health, the audit of devolved bodies, the ombudsman and student support have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament. As for Wales, the Government now have the Government of Wales Bill before the House of Commons, which creates a Welsh Executive, rather like the Scottish Executive, and a chief Minister in the Assembly. It also creates a form of legislation that is virtually that for a Parliament, in that the Welsh Assembly will in the future be able to draft legislation and bring it forward in a complete form to this House, and we will approve it with an hour’s debate through an Order in Council. That makes the Assembly a Parliament in all but name, but it is not called a Parliament. There would have to be a referendum, if the Government win the next election, to decide whether it should be called a Parliament. In fact, the change is very significant. Since 2000, there has been a steady movement away from the hub to the rim of the wheel, and I think that that will continue. Certainly, Mr Jack McConnell, Scotland’s First Minister, wants it to continue. He has argued that he wants the Scottish Parliament to have control over drugs, firearms, broadcasting, immigration and nuclear power. The current settlement is neither static nor final.
We have now had six years of devolution. Before the creation of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, the West Lothian question was to some extent rather academic and theoretical; it was really a synonym for opposition to devolution. That is not now the case and we now have to address the question. So far, the Government’’s response is a modified form of the Gladstonian solution of reducing the number of Scottish MPs. At the last election, the number of Scottish MPs was reduced to 59. As a side issue—I do not wish to feature on this very strongly—if it was truly proportionate it would be 54, not 59, but I leave that argument aside. Scotland is over-represented in the House of Commons. When it comes to Wales, for which there has been no reduction, as it does not have a Parliament—it has an Assembly, although that is going to get powers to make it virtually a Parliament—the numbers should be reduced from 40 to 32. That should make a reduction to 86 Scottish and Welsh MPs.
But if you take the principle that operated when Stormont existed, there should be a further reduction. When Stormont existed as a separate Assembly in the United Kingdom, Ulster should have had 17 MPs in the other place, but did not; there were only 12 MPs. I see the former leader of the Ulster Unionists nodding, so I have got the facts right. If you reduced that 86 proportionately by a third, the Scottish and Welsh MPs—if the Government believe that this is the solution to the West Lothian question—should number 56, not 84. I do not really think that that answers the West Lothian question.
The Government depend on the Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs, although there is one fewer as a result of the by-election yesterday—I was going to say 40 Scottish Labour MPs, but it is now 39, and 29 Welsh Labour MPs, which makes 68 altogether, to carry the Government’’s legislation in the lower House. They will have to carry contentious and difficult legislation that affects only England. That is outrageous. It is outrageous that the Member for Doon Valley or the Member for Paisley North—the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will have a chance later and I will refer to him several times—or the Member for Caithness should be able to decide over the schools in my former constituency of Dorking. Why should they come and tell my constituents how they should appoint head teachers, how they should select children or whether they should have trust schools? When I was the Member for Dorking, I had no control over education in Paisley North, Doon Valley or Caithness—in fact, the Members for those constituencies do have any control over that. That is outrageous and unacceptable. You should have English votes for English laws.
Let me give a further example. Your Lordships will recall that the Scottish Parliament decided that there should be a total smoking ban in Scotland. In the Health Bill, which is before the lower House, the Government, prompted by Dr John Reid, who is a Scottish MP—no matter—said that they wanted a partial ban. That is part of the Bill that will eventually come to this House. Before Christmas, in a Commons committee, Sir George Young, a long-term anti-smoker, moved that there should be a total ban in England. That Motion was lost by one vote. A Scottish Member of Parliament decided whether we should have a partial or total ban in England. That is absurd. I put it again to the honourable Member for Doon Valley, who is also, I believe, the chairman of Motherwell Football Club.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock: Heart of Midlothian.
Lord Baker of Dorking: I am sorry, my Lords, Heart of Midlothian. If he was still a Member of the lower House and he had voted on the smoking ban, he would be telling Chelsea supporters where they could smoke, how they could smoke, when they could smoke and whether they could smoke. Whereas the supporters of Heart of Midlothian, if they exist—
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Baker of Dorking: My Lords, they would have absolutely no influence on it at all. It is absolute absurdity.
Another example is roads. I resent the fact that the present Secretary of State for Transport is a Scot, because he is making decisions on roads in East Sussex, where I live, which I think are lunatic and wrong; but there we have it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr Darling made a huge faux pas by going to Dunfermline at the beginning of the by-election and saying that there would be no increase in the Firth of Forth tolls. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Alistair Darling have no control over the tolls on the Firth of Forth bridge. That is a matter for the Scottish Parliament. Many Members of that Parliament are very offended that the Chancellor and Mr Darling went up there and said that. In fact, I think they contributed to last night’s defeat, because the people of Dunfermline were saying clearly, “We want to run our own affairs, we do not want to be bullied by Ministers coming from Westminster, particularly the Chancellor”. The Chancellor is responsible for the loss of Dunfermline. I gather, in the repositioning of Gordon Brown, he will take a greater interest in constitutional matters. I hope he starts by figuring out what he has done so far.
The Government recognised that the case for English votes for English laws is unanswerable, so they decided that their answer was to have English regional assemblies. They asked their Deputy Prime Minister to fly the kite, and we all watched it thud to the ground.
My proposals in the Bill are designed to resolve this matter. I seek to give the Speaker powers, or rather confirm powers that the Speaker already has, to certify the territorial extent of a Bill. He has that power and he has exercised it in regard to Scottish Bills. He would designate groups of MPs—English MPs, Scottish MPs, Welsh MPs and Northern Ireland MPs—allowing them to vote only on such Bills, parts of Bills and statutory instruments. That is the nub of my proposals. There are many objections to them and I should like to deal with some of them.
The first objection is technical—can you separate out bits of Bills? The answer is that clearly you can; it is done in much legislation. In this Bill, I have given considerable power of discretion to the Speaker to decide on these matters. The Speaker can take advice from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, if he wishes. For the Government to say that it is not possible to define Bills, parts of Bills and statutory instruments is not an acceptable argument. I know that my noble friend Lord MacGregor has spoken and written about that and, no doubt, will refer to it later.
The second argument is that my proposal creates two classes of MPs. Well, there are already two types of MPs. When I was in the House of Commons before devolution, we were all equal. We could vote on absolutely everything that we wanted to and we had the right to do so. Devolution changes everything. For example, English MPs in the House of Commons can vote on English roads, English hospitals and English schools, whereas Scottish MPs cannot vote on Scottish roads and so on. Two classes of MPs already exist, so the argument that you would create inequality between them does not stand up.
Do not think for a moment that this is just a Conservative point of view. Many people on both sides of the House of Commons share it. In the debate in January on the Government of Wales Bill, the Father of the House, Alan Williams, who is a well respected Labour MP for Swansea, said the following:
“I abstained on tuition charges because I felt that I should not vote on them, but we have an anomalous situation whereby Scottish and Welsh Members, who are not answerable to English constituencies, will vote to impose on them measures that will not apply in Scotland or Wales. That affronts my concept of the democratic accountability that I thought existed in our country”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/1/06; col. 55.]
It is not only Alan Williams. Peter Kilfoyle, a well known supporter of the Government, said:
“It seems a perverse form of democracy when members representing Scottish or Welsh seats decide on matters which, in their case, are devolved to the Welsh Assembly or the Scottish Parliament.
“Those members would rightly take umbrage at interference by the British Parliament in such devolved areas. I take exception to any member who wants it both ways”.
And it is not only him, but someone from the mainstream of the Labour Party, Tony Wright, the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee. Speaking at a meeting with the Prime Minister and heads of other committees, to a resounding chorus of “Hear, hear”—or so it says in the Scotsman, so it must be true—he said that his
“middle England constituents resented Scottish MPs having power over their affairs”.
That support for my Bill extends not only to the Labour Party, but to the Liberal Party. Simon Hughes has made it clear that he supports this measure. An article in Times Online this week stated:
“Campbell would stop Scots MPs voting”.
The Government have to address this question very seriously indeed. They can no longer shelter under the answer given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who is in a place—not his former place—in the Chamber. He said of the West Lothian question that the best thing to do about it was not to ask it. That was just about tenable in 1998 and 1999, but not now, because we have had the experience of seeing what happens. While you can turn a blind eye if you are a daring and imaginative commander in war, if you are dealing with a constitutional matter, turning a blind eye is an excuse for torpor and friction. This matter has to be addressed.
The third objection that I have heard many times is that the Scots and sometimes the Welsh will say, “Well, in the Thatcher years you imposed a whole lot on us that we objected to fundamentally”. I see the Lord Chancellor nodding. I am glad, because the noble and learned Lord has the capacity of occasionally stumbling upon the truth. Then he picks himself up as if nothing had happened. Of course, we did what we did because it was a unitary Parliament. But devolution, I say to the Lord Chancellor, changes everything. Once you establish in a unitary kingdom a federal unit with power to make laws—absolute power—with only a theoretical control from Westminster, you change everything. We have to address that problem.
The fourth argument is that the Westminster Parliament is supreme—the noble and learned Lord is nodding again. The argument is that the Westminster Parliament can vote on anything, and that is in the Bill that the noble and learned Lord introduced to the House. In theory, that is right, but its Members can legislate in Scotland only if they get the approval of the Scottish Parliament through a Sewel Motion. Theoretically they are able to legislate on, say, road speeds in Scotland but, if they did not get a Sewel Motion, there would be a major constitutional crisis because the Scottish Parliament would say, “That is for us to decide, not Westminster”.
The sovereignty of Parliament is at best a dormant sovereignty. The point that the House should grasp is that, once sovereignty is devolved, it is not a devolution but a division and sharing of sovereignty. That is what happens and that has been consolidated by the experience of the past six years.
The last argument is so trivial that I shall barely touch on it. It is that, because measures before Parliament affect the constituents of Scottish Members of Parliament, they should have a say on them. In the debates on tuition, some Scottish Members of Parliament said, “We’ve got constituents who go to English universities and therefore we are involved and want to have a say on it”. That is a totally absurd argument. Let us suppose that their constituents went to Trinity College, Dublin. Those MPs would not ask for a seat in the Irish Parliament, would they? The same would apply if their constituents went to the Sorbonne. Of course that would not be the case. One might as well say, “I’’m a Scottish Member of Parliament. I may fall ill in England and so I want a say on how hospital trusts are run”. It is an absolutely ridiculous and absurd argument.
I come back to the point that devolution changes everything. It is not static or final but is moving further and further on as we speak. The Procedure Committee in the Parliament of 1997 to 2001, which had a majority of Labour members, argued for a proposal very similar to my own. The government of the day totally rejected it, although it was supported by a Labour majority. The clear principle is that there should be English votes for English laws.
I am a Unionist. I believe that the United Kingdom has been an enormous success. It is neither a nation nor a country; it was a political creation in the middle of the 18th century and it has served the peoples of our countries well and it has served the world well. But I do not believe that it would hold together if there were manifest inequalities and unfairness between the constituent parts. Again, I quote Gladstone:
“The concession of local self-government is not the way to sap or impair but the way to strengthen and consolidate unity”.
I support that totally. I married a Scot; all my children went to a Scottish university, as did their mother; I even go on holiday to Scotland—I do not know Sharm el-Sheik. I am aware of the Scottish dimension. I believe that the only way in which we will hold our United Kingdom together is by recognising that we should have English votes for English laws.
Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Baker of Dorking.)
posted by erc @ 11:59 pm
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