English Votes for English Laws

Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Leader for having missed the first moment or two of her speech. I contribute to this debate more in sorrow than in anger—but with an element of anger. The Leader promised that the House should have an opportunity to express views. This debate is providing that opportunity; I welcome that. What I do not welcome is that the Government are going ahead with their Motion for changes in the Standing Orders tomorrow, when they will hardly have had the opportunity to read in Hansard what has been said in this evening’s debate. Nothing could make it more clear that the Government do not propose to take any serious account of your Lordships’ views on this matter.

As has been pointed out, on 21 July this House passed by a very large majority a Motion inviting the Commons to set up a Joint Committee to look into the constitutional aspects of these proposals. We have not had a reply from the Commons to that proposal. As she has said, the Leader made it very clear in that debate on 21 July that the Government were opposed to a Joint Committee. But this is not just a matter for the Government. This was a message from the House of Lords, which the House of Lords passed by a large majority, to the House of Commons—and the House of Commons has not replied to it. The Leader said that such a reply might be provided tomorrow as a result of the House of Commons voting on an amendment put down by Mr Graham Allen, a Back-Bencher. But that is not adequate. The Leader herself said that the amendment might not be selected by the Speaker. The House of Commons should have replied to this proposal from the House of Lords. It is a gross discourtesy that it has not and that the Government have not made sure that it replied.

There is a precedent for the House of Commons to go ahead without taking any account of a Motion from the House of Lords proposing a Joint Committee. The precedent was in 1911. Not for 104 years have the Government proceeded without taking any notice of a proposal such as this from the House of Lords. Why are the Government treating your Lordships’ House with such disregard? Mr Grayling has made clear his reasons on a couple of occasions. In reply to a question in the other place on 15 October, he said that,

“this is a debate about the Standing Orders of the House of Commons and it would be quite a big step for us to take a move towards inviting the House of Lords to rule, consider and act on our own Standing Orders”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/10/15; col. 506.]

That is an obtuse answer and I am afraid that it is deliberately obtuse. These proposals are about the constitutional relationship between different parts of the United Kingdom. As the noble Lord, Lord Reid, said, that is a matter on which the Government should proceed with extreme caution—and they are not doing so.

However, blessed is he who repents. We hear tonight that the Leader of the House of Commons has asked the chairman of the House of Lords Constitution Committee to take a part in monitoring the constitutional aspects of the operation of the Standing Orders. The Leader has played some part in achieving that repentance—but it is merely satisfactory as far as it goes, and the discourtesy to this House has not been removed.

The Government propose to go ahead tomorrow regardless with their changes to the Standing Orders. I have said from the outset that I welcome the Government’s seizing the nettle of the West Lothian question. I advised the Conservative Party’s task force under the right honourable Kenneth Clarke, which proposed one of the three solutions rehearsed in the White Paper of Mr Hague, as he then was, at the end of the previous Parliament. That solution was better, in my view, than the one now put forward. I note that in addition to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, about a diagram that would look like knitting, even the Procedure Committee in the other place described the Government’s proposals with adjectives such as “complex”, “rococo” and “over-engineered”. For that reason, the Select Committee had great reservations about them.

The Government have not explained why a simpler solution has not been proposed. My objection to the Government’s proposals is, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, that for the first time it gives a veto to a group of MPs in the Commons—English or English and Welsh MPs—over legislation that Parliament as a whole wishes to pass. That is unprecedented. The proposal of Kenneth Clarke’s Democracy Task Force put it the other way round. It gave English or English and Welsh MPs the opportunity to amend a Bill in Committee and on Report and then the whole House the final say on accepting or rejecting the result. That seems both simpler and more in line with our parliamentary traditions than a veto.

Why does the difference matter, apart from a veto being a constitutional innovation? I suggest it matters for this reason, among others. If a veto is to be given to English MPs, or English and Welsh MPs, over legislation affecting only their areas, is a similar veto to be given to Scottish MPs on legislation in the Westminster Parliament that affects only Scotland? There is such legislation. An example which was brought to my notice is the Partnerships (Prosecution) (Scotland) Act 2013. If such a veto is not going to be given to Scottish MPs, why not? What is sauce for the English and Welsh goose should be sauce for the Scottish gander. If the Government do not give similar rights to Scottish MPs to those that they propose to take for English and Welsh MPs, they are giving Scotland a legitimate grievance. In the current state of the union, that is a dangerous and unwise thing to do.

There are many other questions about the Government’s proposals, which other noble Lords have raised. The Hansard Society has produced a paper entitled Five Early Questions about them. Why are the Government rushing into these proposals without waiting for the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, the Scottish Affairs Committee and the final report of the Procedure Committee in another place to give their advice on these issues? It is very unwise of the Government to be doing so. Their answer is, “Let’s give our proposals a try and review them in a year’s time”. We have heard that sort of argument before. It is like saying, “We will jump over the cliff and grab a bush on the way down so that we can review our decision about whether we were right to do so”.

As has been pointed out, there is no need for this impetuous rush. The current position is that there is both an overall majority for the Government, and a majority in England and Wales for the Government, in the House of Commons. The Government can easily afford to allow their proposals to be properly considered by both Houses of Parliament. They are acting like a bull in a china shop—if that is not an inappropriate analogy in this particular week. However, it is clear that whatever we say tonight, the Government will push ahead with their proposals in the Commons tomorrow. There is only one chance that prudence will prevail and that this House’s invitation to the House of Commons to set up a Joint Committee will be adopted, which is that the House of Commons passes Mr Allen’s amendment tomorrow and accepts our proposal for a Joint Committee. The matter is now in their hands.