West Lothian Question

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve, as always, under your Gower chairmanship, Mr Caton. I welcome the opportunity to have this debate for a number of reasons. It gives me the chance to reflect on an issue that was important in the 10 years that I spent as a territorial Minister in both the Wales Office and the Northern Ireland Office. In the case of Northern Ireland, my job was to oversee the talks that led to the establishment of the Assembly and the Executive. In Wales, I worked with the Welsh Assembly in the first decade of its life. I have, therefore, a particular personal interest in this issue.

Secondly, the Government, it seems—I am not quite sure that I have seen the detail; I am certain that the Minister will enlighten us later—have called for a commission to look at constitutional issues, and specifically the West Lothian question. I hope that when the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) makes his winding-up speech, he can tell us about the nature of that commission—who will sit on it; when it will meet; whether its recommendations are likely to be binding; whether, although this would be unusual, it will be consensual—and all the details that surround the issue.

Thirdly, the constitutional issues that have affected Wales as a consequence of the Government’s policies have had little chance of being debated in the House of Commons. Those issues affecting Wales—the loss of its Members of Parliament and other issues—did not reach the stage of being debated on the Floor of the House, and as you will know, Mr Caton, we were refused a meeting of the Welsh Grand Committee to discuss those important issues of constitutional change.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

On the consensual nature of the commission, what hope does my right hon. Friend hold out that it will be consensual, bearing in mind the constitutional changes of the past eight months, including the alternative vote, which is simply to please the Liberals, and the equalisation of seats, which is simply to please the Tories?

[Paul Murphy]

None. The Welsh dimension is important, but the West Lothian question affects Northern Ireland and Scotland as well. The issue is of particular interest to Welsh Members because, as the Chamber will know, a few weeks ago the referendum result in Wales was a decisive vote in favour of increased powers and the right of the Assembly to pass its own legislation. Of course, the West Lothian question was being debated and discussed well before that.

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[Mr Field]

There is very much an argument for that. It is not particularly a Conservative party idea, but I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The nub of his point is correct. We have tended to look at devolution as a political settlement. In 1997, after 18 years of Conservative rule from which the Scots and Welsh felt disfranchised, political momentum allowed devolution to go ahead in a way that would not have happened 20 years earlier.

[Chris Ruane]

If the logic of the Conservative party—not necessarily the hon. Gentleman’s point of view—is that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs should not be allowed to vote on health and education issues that affect London, should that logic be carried forward to London MPs who have the Assembly?

[Mr Field]

I think it must be to an extent. As I have said, I feel slightly uneasy about issues of policing and transportation. In the dim and distant past when I was on the Front Bench of my party, I was asked to be a transport spokesman. Because of this issue I did not feel able to take up such a role, and I was offered something else instead. It is an issue, although it is a more byzantine and mixed situation. The Home Secretary still has overall control of London policing—

[Chris Ruane]

You wouldn’t know it

[Mr Field]

One would not necessarily know it from articles in The Daily Telegraph from the past 24 hours, but it is a slightly more complicated situation and therein lies part of the difficulty.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about these issues. From my point of view—this is my individual point of view, rather than that of my party—it is regrettable that we have not looked at all issues concerning the constitution so as to try and obtain a relatively logical patchwork. I accept that historical analysis of such matters means that logic is often thrown out of the window. The worry is that we have moved ahead with breakneck speed in a way that will have a big impact on the House of Commons and affect our relationship with our constituents and within our countries. The House of Lords has not been part and parcel of that, and 117 peers have been added at the same time as we needed to reduce the size of the House of Commons on cost grounds. That is illogical. We may have considerably more peers given that the coalition agreement mentions equalising the proportion of peers for each party based on the vote at the last general election. That suggests there will be another couple of hundred peers, and some older Members of the House of Lords are very hacked off at the idea of not getting a seat in their own Chamber. It is regrettable that we have not looked at that matter, and I hope that as part of the West Lothian question, we will look at all those constitutional issues together and try to obtain a position for the whole constitution over the years to come, including an analysis of the separation of powers referred to by the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans).

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) for securing this important debate. Despite the chuckles that I detected from Government Front Benchers, there has been a lack of opportunity to talk about these hugely important issues as they affect not only Wales, but the United Kingdom. The Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011 that we have just seen rammed through the Commons was entirely partisan in its composition. Crucially—this point was picked up by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field)—it basically ignored the position of the House of Lords and dealt only with the House of Commons. In terms of a constitutional settlement that is a massive mistake, and these issues must be addressed. House of Lords reform will be on the political agenda, and it was a massive mistake not to consider that when looking at the number of MPs in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England.

The Conservative manifesto made no reference to removing the right of MPs from Wales to vote on matters relating to England. Characteristically, it made little reference to Wales and stated:

“Labour have refused to address the so-called ‘West Lothian Question’: the unfair situation of Scottish MPs voting on matters which are devolved. A Conservative government will introduce new rules so that legislation referring specifically to England, or to England and Wales, cannot be enacted without the consent of MPs representing constituencies of those countries.”

That is the nub of the issue.

Since the general election, however, Ministers have taken a different tone. We have, of course, heard about the commission that will be set up to address the West Lothian question. The Minister has stated that the commission’s work

“will need to take account of our proposals to reform the House of Lords to create a wholly or mainly elected second Chamber, the changes being made to the way this House does business and amendments to the devolution regimes, for example in the Scotland Bill presently before the House. We will make an announcement in the new year.”—[Official Report, 15 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 822W.]

It is very unfortunate that a major constitutional Bill has gone through the House of Commons before the commission has been set up. We do not know the detail of the commission and we all hope that we will hear something about that later today. It is very much to be regretted that the House of Lords and the House of Commons are not looked at together when this issue is considered.

There has been no substantive discussion that I am aware of with Members of Parliament from Wales of whatever party about the issue. It was absolutely disgraceful that the Secretary of State for Wales refused to engage in a debate in the Welsh Grand Committee about the number of Members of Parliament in Wales under the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. That showed extraordinary constitutional illiteracy, because the settlement that exists in the United Kingdom at this time is very complex. As we all know, it is partly written and partly unwritten and has been established as a result of centuries of history. It has been reached as a result of huge political events that have affected the islands that lie off Europe, including Ireland and, of course, Great Britain.

The changes that were put through, for what I believe were partisan political purposes, in the recent Bill changed that constitution without any real consent, and what was extraordinary in that context was the lack of involvement of Conservative MPs from Wales, who of course voted like turkeys approaching Christmas, but also took no substantive part in the debate. As a consequence, the views that had been recently expressed by members of the public in the general election in Wales were in effect excluded when the number of Members of Parliament in Wales was reduced by one quarter.

We all know that opportunities for Welsh Members of Parliament to discuss these matters were extremely limited if not non-existent in the Chamber. I think that I made a speech on Third Reading, but we did not get to the point of making any submissions on amendments because of the timetabling. As a consequence, there is a real sense of frustration among Members of Parliament from Wales about the matter.

The lesson that I learned is that the Conservative party has changed. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen referred to the Kilbrandon review in the 1970s. There was a time when the Conservative party was the Conservative and Unionist party and did not simply represent the views of English MPs. Increasingly as I sit in the House of Commons now and listen to speeches from those on the Government Benches, I am learning—this has been evidenced again in today’s debate—that the Conservative party does not speak for the United Kingdom any more. It speaks for England. It is not driven by any wish to reach out to the peoples of Scotland and Wales.

[Chris Ruane]

Would my hon. Friend extend that list to include the people of the northern cities of England—the north-west and the north-east?

[Ian Lucas]

For present purposes, I will resist that temptation because I am talking specifically about Scotland and Wales. We know that the Conservative party has done very badly in elections in Scotland since 1997 and still has only one Member of Parliament in Scotland, despite huge numbers of relaunches in that country. We know also that even last year, the share of the vote that the Conservative party secured in Wales when it ended up forming a Government with its friends the Liberal Democrats was less than it secured in 1992. It has not made the progress in Wales that it would have liked to make.

The lesson that I would have liked the Conservative party to learn from that is that it needs to reach out more to the peoples of Scotland and Wales than it has done. My view is that it has done exactly the opposite. It has withdrawn from the battlefield. We saw, for example, that the Secretary of State for Wales did not feel able to make her position clear on the recent referendum in Wales before it took place. The Prime Minister is in effect treating Scotland and Wales at the moment as a franchise—something that is given over to someone else and that does not really affect the person who gives it over. It is the political equivalent of SUBWAY.

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[Mr David]

Yes, I think that is very important. It is necessary, in this complex mosaic of devolution in Britain, that we have a series of different relationships. Quite often the representation of English MPs to the Wales Office is indeed important. One concern I have is the lack of proactivity from the Wales Office. Increasingly people are asking—

[Chris Ruane]

Where is the Secretary of State?

[Mr David]

Yes, where is she, and what is the point of the Wales Office? The Wales Office has a point; there is a need for a Secretary of State for Wales, but he or she has a job to do. That job needs to be promoted effectively, which is not being done at the moment.

I want to pick up something said by my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas). As someone who passionately believes in devolution—as power should rest close to the people—and who believes in Wales and the United Kingdom, my concern is that there is almost an unholy alliance, an inadvertent alliance, between Welsh nationalism and the Conservative party. Although they might sometimes be pulling in different directions, the common ground is the break-up of the United Kingdom. The Conservative party is becoming an English party. That worries me intensely. It goes against the whole grain of history. Nevertheless, it is becoming an objective truth.

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[Owen Smith]

That is of course right. I was using shorthand and have fallen into the trap set by the Minister in so many of those debates, even when we did not get to the Welsh clauses.

Asymmetry also exists in other countries. Canada has an asymmetrical system of devolution, as has Spain. One could argue that de facto we have a federal system of sorts, a unique British federal system, but it is certainly asymmetrical. Why is the issue raising its head? Why are we so worried about it now? It has never been true that any individual Government have held a majority purely predicated on the basis of Scottish and Welsh votes. There can be no concern that political imbalances arrive by virtue of there being more Scottish Members, or having misrepresentation from Wales and Scotland. That issue has ostensibly been dealt with by the Government. I fear the headlong rush is due to opportunity, momentum and a partisan view from the Government. There is a sense that the iron is hot, the moment is right for the Tories to strike and secure electoral advantage. That underpins the decisions taken in respect of the constituencies Bill, and I fear it is driving the considerations we are looking at today.

It would be foolhardy to pursue that. History tells us that inevitably not just in this country but others, when constitutional reforms are pursued for electoral reasons and the partisan politics of one party, they fail.

[Chris Ruane]

Would my hon. Friend compare and contrast the constitutional changes that came about in Scotland, where they had a convention involving civic society, the Churches and the trade unions for many years before that important decision was made?

[Owen Smith]

That is an important point. My hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) was extremely eloquent in making a persuasive case that we should be worried about pursuing constitutional changes of this magnitude—[Interruption.] On the back of an envelope, as we heard. These are deep-rooted issues, and they require deep consideration. They should not be treated in this fashion.

We have heard a lot today about resentment in the English shires, and that is a worrying position for the Tory party. It is a little Englander position. The party has spoken on a broader canvas for the whole of its history. It should reflect on that and offer leadership to the country. It should not be driven by English nationalism.