Standing Orders (Public Business)

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

It baffles me that English Labour MPs seem to be set against these sensible and balanced proposals. They do not exclude anyone from debate, but they give the English a clearer voice so that they can say no to something being imposed on them against their wishes.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

A few weeks ago, the Leader of the House was talking about English votes for English laws, whereas today it has been about English and Welsh votes for English and Welsh laws. Will he develop this a bit further: can we have Scottish votes for Scots laws? Might I hope that he will support a 10-minute rule Bill by the end of November containing a triple lock that would enable the Scots Government, the Scots Parliament and Scots MPs here to say what should be happening for Scotland and that it will not be blocked by Conservative Members?

[Chris Grayling]

The reason we have taken this approach and the reason we are concerned about England is because Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have their own legislative Assemblies. The difference in Wales is that its devolution settlement is different from the ones in Scotland and in Northern Ireland. Key areas such as policing and justice are not devolved in Wales, and I would not countenance a situation where Welsh MPs were disadvantaged in debates on those issues. When I talk about this sometimes being English and Welsh votes for English and Welsh laws, it is to protect the interests of Welsh MPs as well. I hope that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), a Welsh MP, will bear that in mind.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr MacNeil]

I am very grateful—

[Mr Graham Allen (Nottingham North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can you inform the House of your view of Members who intervene and wish to be one of the 50 who are waiting to contribute to this debate? Good knockabout stuff though it is, some Members have already intervened two or three times. Will you take that into account?

[Chris Bryant]

Right. I am not giving way—

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I am not giving way for a while.

These measures will also not deliver the Government’s declared aim. The Library has examined every Division since 2001—some 3,000 Divisions in all. Library staff looked at what would happen if no Scottish MPs had voted in any of those Divisions. They found just a tiny proportion where that would have changed the vote— 25 in all. Yes, I admit that perhaps I could understand the Government if all the measures that we are debating this afternoon were intended to deal with those 25 cases, but of the 25, nine were on UK-wide or England, Wales and Scotland legislation, such as anti-terrorism legislation, so not affected; 10 were on non-legislative motions, such as whether the screen should be installed, so also not affected; three were on private Members’ Bills and, to answer the question from the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) earlier, would not have been affected by the measures under consideration this afternoon; and one would have been tied and would therefore have fallen.

The most contentious subject, which the Leader of the House rather inadvertently deceptively mentioned in the previous debate, was on 27 January 2004, when the Higher Education Bill was given a Second Reading by five votes when 46 Scottish MPs had voted in favour and 15 against. Interestingly, the Tories voted against it then, but a few years later trebled tuition fees. However, that vote would not have been changed by today’s proposals, as I hope the Leader of the House acknowledges. It would not have been changed, would it? He need only nod. It would not have been changed, would it? [Interruption.] Oh, he thinks it would. No. The vote was on Second Reading, and Second Reading is not covered, a point that he has made several times. He does not understand his own provisions which he introduced this afternoon. [Interruption.] No, it was not. There is no point in the Leader of the House intervening again if he does not understand his own proposals.

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[Chris Bryant]

I am not going anywhere near the hon. Gentleman.

I say to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) that it is right that there should be line-by-line consideration by an England-only Committee. There should be a voice, but not a veto.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He correctly identifies a problem. It is a minor problem and he goes back to 2004 to identify it. The problem is very different. When the Scotland Bill came through this Parliament this year, when 95% of Scottish MPs, the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament backed amendments, they were blocked by English and Welsh Members, despite Scotland wanting its power. That is where the problem is for this Parliament. It is not English votes for English laws.

[Chris Bryant]

I am sympathetic to some of what the hon. Gentleman says, except that when we are discussing a constitutional measure, that is a matter for the whole House. Today’s proposals are also a constitutional matter, the biggest constitutional change for some considerable time, which is being introduced through one House without a constitutional convention, which would have been a better way of doing it. Why on earth did the Government refuse to reply to the Lords’ request for a Joint Committee to consider the constitutional implications first?

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[Chris Bryant]

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman. Much as I enjoy what he has to say, there are others who need to speak.

The honest truth is that this is not a conservative set of measures. It is quite a dangerous set of measures. It is a bureaucratic nightmare and hon. Members will regret it. As Lord Forsyth said last night in the House of Lords, it is like an Uber driver without a sat-nav. It is not a unionist set of measures, either. It is as if the Prime Minister had decided to fashion a new grievance for Scotland—God knows the Scots have never needed a new grievance—because he wanted to antagonise them.

[Mr MacNeil]

If I understand the hon. Gentleman correctly, he is suggesting that 95% of Scottish Members looking for powers to be devolved to Scotland but being blocked by other Members is not a cause for grievance. If that is not a cause for grievance, what is?

[Chris Bryant]

I have just said that there are grievances, and there are English grievances too. I believe that we need to come to a proper constitutional settlement in this House—and across the whole of Parliament—that delivers an elected House of Lords so that the whole country is represented and so that we do not have the anomaly of a baron who was born in Scotland, lives in Scotland and claims expenses for travelling from Scotland to Westminster—[Interruption.]

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[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

I thank the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, on which I was privileged to serve, for preparing the report.

I want to make two points. I think the Leader of the House has heard enough from me, and I am grateful to him for his patience in listening to me. First, I intervened on him to ask why MPs from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland would be excluded from the English Grand Committee set up under these proposals, but there would be no exclusion for English MPs from the Welsh Grand Committee, the Scottish Grand Committee and the Northern Ireland Grand Committee. He gave me no answer. The reason for that is that MPs in this House are being treated differently, a point made with superb eloquence by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman).

If the Leader of the House really believes in the Union, and if he really believes in the equality of Members of Parliament in this place—I do passionately, which is why I feel strongly about this, and I hope he will forgive me for my short-temperedness at some stages in this process—then will he please see that he is giving an enormous gift to those who wish to split up the United Kingdom? I believe passionately in devolution. It is right and proper that we decentralise more within England and devolve to Wales and Scotland, but this is not the way to do it. It has been a fractious, bad-tempered and foul debate today, one that I have not enjoyed listening to, and this is just the start of the process. But the process does not address the needs of my constituents.

My second point is that I represent the constituency of Wrexham in north-east Wales, which is on the border. In my constituency—I will give one example, but I could provide the House with more—NHS services are designed to be supplied from hospitals in England, for example in Gobowen, Liverpool, Manchester and Chester. On the boards of those foundation hospitals are people who represent and are elected from the population of north Wales. The proposals will give me a second-class say on the future of those hospitals.

[Mr MacNeil]

There is a secondary issue with health. The UK always sets its health budgets for the needs of England. If Wales has a greater need, there will be no extra money sent to Wales, with consequentials going elsewhere. They are always set for England. We therefore must have a voice on this issue.

[Ian C. Lucas]

I will leave the Barnett consequential argument to others because time is very limited, but clearly it was one that was heard very often in the Procedure Committee.

My constituents, who get their services from specialist hospitals in England, need to have representation through me, speaking on their behalf, in connection with those hospitals. If the proposals go through and the England Grand Committee excludes me from speaking on their behalf, my constituents will not have a voice in this Parliament. To my knowledge, this process is unprecedented. The Leader of the House knows I will not have the opportunity to move amendments in that Committee in connection with the future of, for example, those hospitals. That is the situation. I have spoken to my constituents and they believe very strongly that that is wrong.

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[Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)]

“Fairness” seems to be the word of the day—the word of English votes for English laws. I heard it when the Prime Minister was on the steps of Downing Street following the Scottish referendum, I heard it when William Hague was drafting these proposals, and I now hear it every time this Bill is mentioned: “English votes for English laws—it’s all about fairness.” It is, after all, why we all are here—why this Chamber exists. We are here to decide the fairest way to spend our taxpayers’ money, the fairest way to operate our public services, and the fairest way to run our country. Fairness, fairness, fairness—but what exactly is fair about this Bill?

[Mr MacNeil]

In reality, the hon. Gentleman is talking about a grievance—an English grievance. They never finish in this place talking about Scots with a grievance, but the reality is that the grievance is an English grievance and they dress it up with the word “fairness”. This is grievance, grievance, grievance on the English side.

[Chris Davies]

I will stay with “fairness” for now, thank you very much.

Is it fair that I will have no power over whether a vote that will affect my constituents will be vetoed? As a Welsh MP with my constituency bordering England, I will, in effect, lose my voice on matters across the border.

The word the Bill uses is “relates”. What matters relate to my constituency, but what matters do not relate to my—border—constituency? I have constituents whose children go across the border to school in Shropshire or Herefordshire. I have constituents who get their healthcare across the border. Indeed, my own wife, who is a cancer radiographer, works in Hereford hospital and treats many patients from Brecon and Radnorshire on a daily basis. How can I look them in the eye and say, when a Bill gets vetoed by the new system, “This does affect you but, sorry, the House said it does not relate to us, so there is nothing I can do”? That is what this Bill is asking me to do, and so I ask: is that fairness?

Or is it fair, Mr Speaker—I fully realise the risk I take here—that it is down to the occupant of your Chair and your office to decide which Bills “relate” and which do not? I hope you remain in that Chair for many, many years to come, but we may end up in future with a Speaker who hails from a devolved nation and find ourselves in some difficulty. I defy any Speaker from a devolved nation not to feel a certain pang of desire for their fellow countrymen and women’s voices to be heard. Would that be fair?

Given what I have said so far, people may be forgiven for thinking that I am totally opposed to this Bill, but they would be mistaken. I cannot fault the principle behind it—it is absolutely right. It is not fair that a Member of this House is able to vote according to their opinion when the result of their judgment will not affect their constituents. The current system opens the door to opportunism and divisiveness, as we have already heard today. I hope that some Members’ opposition to the Bill does not fall into that category.

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[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

I would be the first to acknowledge that the decisions of this Parliament over the last two decades to devolve political power within the United Kingdom have created an anomaly in terms of the governance of England. There are many ways for that anomaly to be solved. We could have an English Parliament. We could have English legislative assemblies. We could even consider giving a quasi-legislative function to some of the existing structures of local government. They would give English people more power and more control over their own lives. These proposals do not.

These proposals are not an exercise in the decentralisation of the state and they are not an exercise in the devolution of political power. They are a political tactic by the Conservative party to try to pander to the English nationalism of the UK Independence party and to try to shore up haemorrhaging support from its right flank. I say that to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) and his colleagues here today. I say to the English people: be very careful about what they are promising, because they are abusing your trust. They are hijacking your aspiration for their own political ends.

[Mr MacNeil]

My hon. Friend is making a fine speech and he is absolutely correct. What we are seeing here today from the Tory Benches is a grievance culture. They never hesitate to point at us and talk about a grievance culture. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is the grievance culture right in front of us?

[Tommy Sheppard]

I agree completely with my hon. Friend. The process Tories are engaged in—it is fair enough; it is a political party and I understand that—would be all well and good and just so much political banter were it not for the point that in doing so they are trying to corrupt and degenerate the procedures of this institution.