Standing Orders (Public Business)

Debate between Chris Bryant and William Cash

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I will make some progress.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I will try to keep it lively, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I might fail.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds)makes a good point. I agree with him and with some of the points that the Leader of the House has made. I believe that England needs a distinctive voice in this Parliament and I personally have no objection whatsoever to an England-only Committee to do the line-by-line consideration of legislation that applies only to England. However, like the McKay commission, I believe that there is a real danger when a veto is given to English MPs only, as that creates two tiers of MPs.

There is a further problem. As McKay points out, if the Government or the whole House feel at some point that they have to override English MPs, which is perfectly legitimate, it should be absolutely clear that that is what they have done. The whole House or the Government would then take the political risk, just as the Government would take it on the head if they appointed a Welsh MP to a post that involved largely devolved responsibilities.

[Sir William Cash]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, as I am aware of the time constraints. He has sympathy with the approach, but does he not appreciate that it originated in 1997 when I tabled an amendment on similar but much shorter lines—only seven lines long—to deal with the problem? At the end of the day, this is not about different classes of MP but about different functions conferred under the process of devolution.

[Chris Bryant]

I am not so sure. At first sight, the hon. Gentleman’s suggestions seem perfectly sensible, but I have often found when I examine them a little more carefully that they do not really work in practice. He is nodding his head; he agrees.