English Votes for English Laws

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Graham Stuart]

I will make progress, if I may.

In the aftermath of the Scottish referendum result last autumn—which SNP Members find so hard to accept—and as the consequent further transfer of powers takes place, a solution must be found. The Prime Minister was right that day when he said that he would take action. There is no widespread desire for an English Parliament. I have gone around my constituency and talked to my constituents, and I find no such desire. The people of England do not want yet another Chamber, with more legislation, more politicians, more costs, and more confusion. This Parliament has stood at the apex of our democracy for 800 years.

The Government’s proposal is right to focus on delivering fairness in the House of Commons by ensuring that English issues will require the consent of English MPs. The ability of all MPs to amend and vote on legislation is maintained. One would be hard put to know that if one had listened to either the hon. Member for Wallasey or the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, but it is true. However, there will now be mechanisms to ensure that England’s specific consent is needed to pass clauses and Bills that affect only England.

I welcome the Government’s proposals wholeheartedly. They are a big step forward. In saying that, I should acknowledge that the process of determining whether or not a clause did indeed affect only England, or England and Wales, might occasionally be tested. However, I hope the convention would be that in the event of doubt, or likely controversy, the tendency would always be for the Chair to err on the side of ensuring that everyone had the vote—that it was open to all. I think such controversy would be likely to arise on very few occasions, and I would hope SNP Members would join us in seeking to cut through that Gordian knot and make sure that, as much as possible, there was that clarity and separation.

[Graham Stuart]

I simply say to the hon. Gentleman that the vow was made, it has been brought forward here, and it is being passed through—[Interruption.] It is being fulfilled. I say to the hon. Gentleman that, rather than coming forward with a hard—[Interruption.] He can try to shout me down if he wishes, but I would simply say that this proposal is to change Standing Orders; it is a rather fragile way of making this change, and we will have a review in a year or so, and the Leader of the House has explicitly said that if legislation is required, he will look at that. The truth is that if this did not work, given the fragility of the Government majority it would take only a handful of colleagues on the Government Benches in conjunction with those on the Opposition Benches to reverse it. If it was in place today, it could be reversed tomorrow as easily as that. So, again, suggesting this is some form of sustained constitutional vandalism is entirely at odds with the truth, and I say to SNP Members, who, as I have said, have but a single thought, that if they want to pursue that cause, they will find it most effective with their own constituents, or indeed in this place, if they say what they know to be true and do not try to make out something is something when it is not.

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman says there will be confusion with an English Parliament. I am quite sure the English people could manage a Parliament of their own. After all, the French and Germans do so without any help whatever from the Scots.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned asymmetric devolution. I ask him to cast his mind back and remember that before devolution there were 72 MPs and the quid pro quo for devolution at the time was 59 Scottish MPs. He is now saying that in this incorporating Union not only do we have fewer MPs, but we have less power. We are not first-class citizens or even second-class citizens; we are fourth-class citizens based on what our rights will be in this House. The hon. Gentleman is making a huge mistake from his point of view. From our point of view, he is probably giving us a huge lever to break the Union apart, and we will only have the Union of 1603—the Union we should have—left.

[Graham Stuart]

The lacklustre support for that even from the hon. Gentleman’s own disciplined Benches says a lot; that was not a worthy contribution by him. He knows full well there is no change to the role he will play. His status is not being diminished in any way. This change simply means there will be consent here. It is the tiniest step towards the very principle the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues have espoused for many years. It seems that just as soon as the Government make a proposal, it is said not to be enough—if we introduce a Scottish Bill to fulfil the vow, it is not enough. Every single speech given by every single SNP Member is to express disappointment and say whatever is in front of them is not what was promised. That wears thin, and I ask the hon. Gentleman to recognise that this minimal change is not making a fundamental change to his status in the House.

SNP Members here have to recognise that the existence of MSPs to determine devolved matters in Scotland means they cannot reasonably expect to decide such matters in England without English consent. They will still be playing their role; my constituents will see Scottish MPs playing a full role in passing legislation that affects only them, but with one proviso, which is that consent is given from English MPs.

The way in which Labour Members vote on this issue is a litmus test of whether they understand the country they want to govern. The hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) has shown characteristic courage in arguing that her party must accept the fairness of English votes for English laws. In recent years Labour has consistently placed itself on the wrong side of public opinion in constitutional issues, whether that be denying us all a say on the Lisbon treaty or fighting the last election on a refusal to trust the people with a referendum on a reformed European Union. I have great affection and respect for the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), but his description of English votes for English laws as “racist” was tasteless and untrue. It spoke to Labour’s wider problem of not recognising that the people of England want to determine their own future, at least partly in the way the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish do, not through an English Parliament, with all the expense and risks that that would involve, but simply through consent mechanisms delivered in this place.

The Opposition cannot continue to classify Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolution as the pure pursuit of patriots while classifying English devolution as the agenda of bigoted nationalists or, as the hon. Member for Wallasey suggested, as partisan manoeuvring by Conservative Members. That, too, was beneath her. That caricature is as grotesque as it is offensive. In less emotive terms, the shadow Leader of the House has warned about the risk of creating two classes of MP, as have many on the Labour Benches. That is a similarly bogus argument. As we know, there are already multiple classes of MP: Front Benchers; Back Benchers; those representing the devolved nations, who work in tandem with Members of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies; the Speaker and his deputies; Select Committee Chairs; and Privy Counsellors.

The Government’s proposals simply seek to establish the principle that English issues should be decided with the consent of the English. All MPs will still get to vote on all legislation on Second Reading and on Report. However, the Committee stages will provide an important democratic safeguard to ensure that English, or English and Welsh, MPs approve the matters that affect only their constituents.

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Graham Stuart]

That is a principle that the hon. Gentleman has espoused for many years, but he has now been told, for reasons of opportunism and a certain amount of cynicism, to change his mind. I give way to him.

[Mr MacNeil]

I notice that the legislative process in the House of Lords will not be changed, so Scottish Lords will still be able to vote on English matters. Scottish MPs—especially Labour MPs—have been voting on English matters since devolution in 1999, but these changes are being proposed only now that 56 SNP MPs have been sent here. Internationally, this will look like a partisan measure against one party. If this proposal is carried, it will be the action of this Parliament against one party: the Scottish National party.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is an experienced and long-standing Member of this House, and he will know that Members of the House of Lords do not represent any particular area. It is bogus and false—as so many of the arguments from his Benches have been today—to suggest otherwise.

If our democracy is to function properly, it needs to be accountable to all the nations of the UK, and English votes for English laws is an important step towards achieving that. At a time of great constitutional change, it will ensure equity in our devolution arrangements. Almost 50 years have passed since the West Lothian question was first raised in this House by a Labour Member of Parliament, Tam Dalyell. The need to resolve that question now is greater than it has ever been. The proposals in front of us represent a modest but important step towards providing the equity and balance that will ensure that we can remain one great United Kingdom, however much that might frustrate those who might be in the wrecking business but are not very successful at it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian C. Lucas]

It is not the same system—it is an entirely different one. These proposals are, for the Speaker, unprecedented because they require detailed knowledge of constituencies that the Speaker cannot be expected to have.

[Mr MacNeil]

I want to follow up on the point made by the hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) about his “Westmeath question”. That of course has been solved, with Members from Westmeath now in the Dáil Éireann, where they should be, and nobody in this House would now roll that back. Ultimately, this is all leading to the same place—to independence for Scotland.

[Ian C. Lucas]

As ever, my position is different from that of the hon. Gentleman.

One practical example from my parliamentary experience addresses the issue of the decisions made by the Speaker. The last Labour Government introduced legislation to establish foundation hospitals, and these applied only in England. Health in Wales is devolved to the National Assembly, but hospitals such as those in Chester and in Gobowen in north Shropshire provide services to patients from Wales. Indeed, they depend on those patients, paid for by the Welsh Government, for their viability. From 1997 to 2001, I was a non-executive director of the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen, approximately one third of whose patients come from north and mid-Wales. It depended for its financial viability on those patients continuing to come. Those patients depended upon MPs making representations in this place to Ministers to ensure that they were represented as patients on the boards of foundation hospitals in the same way as patients from England were.

Although health is a devolved issue—I say this with particular reference to north Wales—it is essential to people in north Wales that Members of Parliament are able to speak up on their behalf, draw to the attention of Ministers the fact that the issue existed and secure a change in legislation. No Speaker at the beginning of the legislative process—before any of these matters are discussed—will be aware of the issue. There will be no reason for the Speaker to recognise that it is not an England-only issue.