Devolution (Implications for England)

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend’s constituents are representative of opinion across a wide swathe of England, which is why so many people in England want to see this issue addressed and the injustice that has emerged put right for the future.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

These proposals fundamentally breach the theory advanced by William Pitt and William Wilberforce in the Act of Union 1801, which declared that all Members of this House should be equal—whether they are on the Back Benches or Front Benches, however big their majority and whatever kind of constituency they represent. The proposals will also lead to a bifurcated Government and they will drag the Speaker, whoever they may be, into constant party political decisions about whether or not a Bill is an English-only Bill, which is why I fundamentally disagree with them. But will the Leader of the House explain why it can possibly be right for Baron Smith of Kelvin in Glasgow to be allowed to vote on legislation on which the Member of Parliament covering Kelvin in Glasgow, who is elected, will not be allowed to vote?

[Mr Hague]

The answer is that Members of the other House are not elected representatives of any particular part of the country. [Interruption.] That is the answer. If the hon. Gentleman did not know the answer to that, he does not know the answer to very much. He should be careful about going into the history of the Act of Union with Ireland. He is quite right that William Pitt the Younger advocated that all Members of this House should be equal, but that is because the Irish House of Commons voted itself out of existence in 1799, and the decision was made to have a Union Parliament without any devolved Parliaments. What has happened in the past 15 years is the introduction of devolved Parliaments, so we have an entirely different situation from that prevailing in 1800.