Proposed Changes to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, I do not wish to repeat the arguments that were put in the debate last Thursday which was initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, or indeed in the debate on Friday when we discussed the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis. However, the Motion proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, is a very sensible one. It is of course a matter for the House of Commons whether it wants to have a Joint Committee but it is also a matter for the Government to provide a lead on what is becoming a highly complex series of interconnected issues.

If, for example, we are to keep the Barnett formula and have English votes for English laws, as it is dubbed, that will have an impact when we come to discuss the Scotland Bill which is before the House of Commons. I wonder what the problem is here that EVEL is trying to solve. I have had a look at the Bills promised in the Queen’s Speech, and only one of them could conceivably be affected by EVEL. That is a buses Bill which gives local mayors—in Manchester, Birmingham or wherever else—the power to run the buses. If I amend that Bill when it comes to this House to include provosts in Scotland, despite it having already been certified as an English Bill, it will go back to the House of Commons as a United Kingdom Bill. There will be no opportunity for the House of Commons to consider the amended Bill in Committee; instead it will be subject to a double vote: one of English MPs and one of the House as a whole.

On Thursday, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, my noble friend the Leader of the House said:

“English MPs cannot overrule the whole House and the whole House cannot overrule English MPs; neither side can force something through without the consent of the other”.—[Official Report, 16/7/15; col. 764.]

That is not the case here. What is happening is that English MPs are being given a veto, which is not what my noble friend described. This is the concern that is being created.

I was talking to a colleague from the other end of the building the other day who said, “We have to have EVEL—look what they have done to us on foxes”. EVEL would make no difference whatever to any vote on foxes, whereas, as my noble friend and others have suggested, reducing the number of Scottish MPs would have an impact on such a vote.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, referred to one thing which really exercises me: at the very last moment, on the revised version, it was made clear that EVEL would apply to finance Bills. Income tax must be about 20% of a Government’s revenue, and that change would mean that a Labour Government, who would perhaps have a majority in the country, would have to have a majority in England in order to get their supply through.

When I was a little boy at school, I was told that the House of Commons was there because it enabled Government to get supply and the consent of the people, and that if a Government could not get supply then it folded. We already have five-year Parliaments and bigger majorities than simple majorities. Now we are adding to that. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, is absolutely right that all these issues must be looked at together so that we have a long-term, stable basis on which to go forward.

On the question of stability, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, also pointed out that the commitment made by William Hague in the last Parliament was that this would be put on a statutory and therefore permanent basis. Amending Standing Orders means that the moment you lose a majority in the House of Commons somebody else can go along and add their version of it. It is not a permanent solution to the problem with which our manifesto was concerned: that we must do something about the fact that we have devolved power to Scotland and English MPs are not able to vote on those issues while Scottish MPs are able to vote on the others.

I hesitate to disagree with my noble friend Lord Wakeham, particularly as it is his 30th wedding anniversary today and he was my former Whip. I have always shown great deference to Whips. On the other hand, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, as Cabinet Secretary was, as I said on Friday, the next thing to God as far as I was concerned when a Minister. Yet Gladstone wrestled with this issue: the whole debate was about “in” and “out”. In the end, they tried all this with Irish votes for Irish laws, British votes for British laws and the rest—and they gave it up. They concluded that the right thing to do was to keep a United Kingdom Parliament and reduce the number of MPs commensurate with the amount being devolved. We have done this for years—we did it with Ulster. When there was more power here, when we had direct rule, they had more Members in the House of Commons Chamber. That works. It has even worked with Scotland. Even Alex Salmond in the last Parliament accepted that there would have to be a reduction in the number of Scottish MPs if there were to be more powers. That is what this very building will discuss over the next period.

The other thing I was taught as a little boy was that constitutional changes to the golf club or anywhere else should be done by consensus. You should not do something that gets one group against you as they will then do that to you when they get the chance. That is why a Joint Committee would be a good opportunity to get consensus. To be fair to the Labour Party, I nearly fell off my chair the other day when listening to the spokesman for the Labour Party in Scotland—their sole MP in Scotland; like us, the party is now outnumbered in Scotland. He said that Labour accepted in principle the question of English votes for English laws. If we agree the principle, then a Joint Committee might be able to get something permanent which will not damage Parliament or help the nationalists—who are making hay. A recent poll in Scotland found that a majority of people had no idea what the Smith commission was about or what the new powers being given to Scotland were but at the same time a big majority felt that those powers did not go far enough. This is what happens if you proceed in a piecemeal manner and move forward on the basis of pressure rather than a coherent, constructive approach.

I am attracted to this idea because the Government have set their face against a constitutional convention. That is unfortunate but when I listened to the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and all the things he would have put into his constitutional convention—it was all to be decided within a year—I began to see the Government’s point of view. If you are to have a constitutional convention, the terms of reference should be narrow and the timescale set. The Government set their face against that. A Joint Committee is an alternative that would enable them to keep control.

In the debate on Thursday, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, pretty well said that if the Government do not set up the constitutional convention others will and they will have the resources. We made a big mistake in Scotland not in opposing devolution—we said it would lead to this mess—but in refusing to participate in the constitutional convention. We were not there to make the arguments about the asymmetry that led to this difficulty. We should not repeat that mistake.

When I was a youngster, I used to work in my father’s garage. He once asked me to strip down an engine and put it back together again. I did that but I was left with one bolt at the end, so I had to do it all over again. The Government are in danger of being left with more than one bolt. We need an engine that will take our country forward. I strongly support the noble Lord’s Motion.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, it would be perverse of me not to say that I have every sympathy with English votes for English laws. After all, I want Welsh votes for Welsh laws, and on that basis quite clearly the same should apply for England. However, with regard to the provisions being put forward by the Government, there are questions relating to Wales that have just not been answered. The most fundamental question has to do with the financial implications of the Barnett formula. We had Acts in the last Parliament that were supposed to be England-only, such as the Health and Social Care Act 2012. We are told that 99% of health is totally devolved, yet that Act had a negative effect of £11 million on my local health authority. Because of the way the Barnett formula works, issues arise with regard to cross-border communications between Wales and England.

Quite frankly, these proposals do not start to answer the fundamental questions. If we accept that there will not be independence for Scotland or Wales, certainly within this Parliament, what stable, ongoing constitutional settlement will be able to meet the reasonable aspirations of people in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland but also deliver the English votes for English laws proposal that the Government have in their manifesto? One needs to get the answer right in the long term, not just apply bits of sticking plaster. I am quite prepared to look at any proposals that the Government put forward to move in the right direction on this, but I beg that the Government, and indeed all parties, try to find that long-term stable solution, rather than short-term expediency.

[Lord Lisvane (CB)]

I support the Motion in the name of my noble friend. Comity—a relationship of mutual respect between the two Houses—is extremely important, as the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, has pointed out with his customary wisdom. It is therefore equally important that this Motion is seen not as an attempt to interfere with the Standing Orders of the House of Commons but as a means of examining a constitutional problem, to which what has been proposed is only one possible solution. It is a very complex solution—a complexity to which I have fallen victim—for which I must apologise to your Lordships.

When I spoke during the QSD last week, I said that, were this House to change an English-only certified provision into a UK-wide provision, it would go back to the Commons, escape certification and be subject to a different procedure, which might produce a different outcome. However, I hope your Lordships will forgive my error on just a minor point of detail. I had reckoned without proposed Standing Order No. 83O(4), which says that if this House turns an England-only or England and Wales-only provision into a UK-wide one, the Speaker must still certify it as being an England-only or England and Wales-only provision. To take an extreme example, if your Lordships inserted acres of Scottish provisions into a certified England-only clause, that amendment would be subject to the England-only procedure when it reached the Commons and a majority of English MPs would be required in order to approve it. That seems a little counterintuitive and it may come as a surprise to some. However, it does seem to me an example of the sort of thing that a Joint Committee could tease out in its implications.

Finally, if the Standing Orders route is chosen, it is possible that the courts may become involved, because although Article 9 should be a protection, if the Speaker is to be invited for the first time to rule on an objective matter of law, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace of Tankerness, pointed out, that is a hazard. If the legislative route is chosen, it would be possible to put in an ouster clause to say that the Speaker’s actions were not justiciable in any court, but that might not be a foolproof device. On the Anisminic precedent, which noble and learned Lords know much more about than I do, a court might still have a locus. Either outcome would still be of concern to this House just as much as to the House of Commons—so that aspect of jointery becomes very important. But careful analysis and firm conclusions by a Joint Committee might well discourage a court from going down a highly experimental route.

I understand the Government’s wish to press ahead with speed. However, I suspect that they may find a Joint Committee with the early out-date suggested by my noble friend useful insurance and, perhaps, in the outcome, not altogether inconvenient.