Select Committees

Debate between Andrew Percy and Alex Salmond

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)]

I welcome your ascent once again to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. Your popularity is almost unrivalled in the House. I have to say, however, that popularity is not exclusive to the Chair these days. With this system of secret ballots for the election of Select Committee Chairs across the parties, I can report that I have never been more popular in this House with Conservative and Labour Members. I am approached in all precincts of the House and asked for my views on a whole variety of things. Never before have I been in a position of being able to dispense such wisdom. Members whose names I do not know are approaching me. People I did not even know were Members are approaching me.

I just say to the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) that I hope he is not standing as Chair of a Select Committee.

[Andrew Percy]

No, I am not.

[Alex Salmond]

That is good, because that means he is a man of independent mind, although unfortunately it is a wayward independent mind. The reason why the Health Committee considers matters that affect Scotland is the Barnett formula. Through the Barnett formula, what happens in finance for the health service in England has knock-on effects for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Perhaps I did not catch the hon. Gentleman correctly, but did he say that he served on the previous Health Committee?

[Andrew Percy]

indicated assent.

[Alex Salmond]

I find it very strange, then, that he did not realise that, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out, issues debated in the Health Committee had implications for Northern Ireland. He must have been taken absent without leave during the proceedings, otherwise he would have known that.

[Andrew Percy]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for calling me wayward—although I do not know whether it is a compliment. My point was that matters discussed in the Health Committee affect other parts of the United Kingdom, although our business is primarily English. For the same reason, English Members of Parliament have an absolute right to sit on the Scottish Affairs Committee, because the matters it considers affect my constituents in the same way.

[Alex Salmond]

I once heard the Barnett formula described as being like the Schleswig-Holstein question in European politics, in that only three people ever understood it: one is mad, one is dead and I have forgotten it, but I will try to remember enough of it to allow the hon. Gentleman to understand how it works. For example, additional public spending on health in England has a knock-on effect in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The reverse does not apply—it is not a question of allocating for Northern Ireland and then reverse-allocating England.