David Davis
Main Page: David Davis (Conservative - Haltemprice and Howden)Department Debates - View all David Davis's debates with the Leader of the House
English Votes for English Laws
David Davis Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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The Leader of the House of Commons (Chris Grayling)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of English votes for English laws.
This is, as I promised in the business statement last week, the first of two days of debate on the subject of English votes for English laws. It gives me the opportunity to explain once again the Government’s proposals and to listen to views from across the House. We committed last week to have two days of debate . We will have the second day when the House returns in September. I decided that for practical reasons it was not sensible to have a debate over two days with a large gap between them, so today’s debate is on a motion for the Adjournment. We will continue after the recess with the second day of debate, when the substantive motions will be put and debated. As I committed to the shadow Leader of the House, we will make provision for amendments to be tabled for that debate. It was always the intention that that would happen. The appropriate motion will be passed ahead of that debate to enable her and anybody else who wishes to do so to table amendments for discussion during that day’s debate.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I commend my right hon. Friend for amending the timetable on this matter, which is serious and important for the interests of the English, the Scots and the Union. Before the next debate, will he publish a list of the measures in the Queen’s Speech that he thinks will be affected in terms of who can vote for them?
Chris Grayling
I am happy to do that. We have already indicated previous Bills that would have been affected by this measure, and we continue to work on that. The certification process that will exist in future has not existed in the past, and there is a fundamental difference between territorial extent as indicated in a past Bill that, for example, might refer to England and Wales as a single jurisdiction but be applicable to England only. I am happy to ensure that what my right hon. Friend asks for happens. In the current Session, I am aware of only one Bill that is likely to be entirely English-only, which is the proposed buses Bill. Many other Bills will be partly English—or English and Welsh—only. I remind the House that, notwithstanding any future certification by the Speaker, every Member of Parliament will vote on every Bill that passes through this place, and no one will be excluded.
Chris Grayling
I am cognisant of the hon. Lady’s point. She would not expect me to announce the business in advance, but I take note of what she says. I can assure her that we will have a sensible process, and of course I will be available to hear comments from Members while the House is sitting and when it returns.
The other point raised with me, apart from the question of timetabling, was Members’ ability to vote on legislation that might have implications for the block grant, the so-called Barnett consequentials. There has been some discussion about how the House makes decisions on the block grant and how the Barnett consequentials work. This House approves the Government’s spending requirements each year through the estimates process, and we did that last night. The Government publish our spending plans, broken down by Department. The cash grants to the devolved consolidated funds that in turn fund the spending of the devolved Administrations are included in the relevant estimate: Scotland Office, Wales Office or Northern Ireland Office. Some of the individual departmental estimates are debated each year. The choice of these debates is a matter for the House through the Liaison Committee.
The decisions on the estimates are given statutory effect in a Bill each summer. The whole House will continue to vote on these supply and appropriation Bills. Through those means, decisions on the block grant funding to the devolved Administrations are taken. The block grant total each year is based upon a number of factors, including the calculation of Barnett consequentials, or the impact of individual spending decisions in different parts of the UK.
There are no readily calculable Barnett consequentials arising from individual Bills, because there is no direct relationship between any one piece of legislation and the overall block grant, even when the Bill results in extra spending or savings. An education Bill for England does not change the Department for Education’s budget outside the estimates process.
The two processes are separate. Decisions relating to departmental spending, including the block grant and the outcome reported to the House, are taken first in spending reviews and then in the annual estimates process. It is up to Departments to operate within the limits of the Budget allocation agreed. Any costs associated with legislation they take through Parliament must be borne within a Department’s overall budget.
We have listened to Members’ concerns and I understand the need to clarify the position relating to expenditure, so I want to be crystal clear. In order to assist today’s debate, I have republished the changes we propose to make to the Standing Orders of this House, with some small but important clarifications. They make it absolutely plain that Members from across the entire House—all Members—will approve departmental spending, which, as I have said, sets out the levels of spending for the devolved Administrations, reflecting Barnett consequentials. All MPs will vote on the legislation that confirms those decisions.
In addition, we have clarified that where legislation involves an increase in a Department’s expenditure, as voted on by the whole House in the estimates process, all MPs will continue to vote on that specific decision. All aspects of public spending will continue to be voted on by the whole House.
Mr David Davis
I am one of those who have raised very firmly with my right hon. Friend the question of the Barnett formula. The handling of the House’s procedures is as much about perceived fairness as it is about actual fairness. He is right to say that most Bills do not have large carry-over implications for funding, but occasionally they might and under such circumstances the Bill’s money resolution becomes incredibly important. I make this point speculatively—I have not come to a conclusion on it myself yet—but perhaps my right hon. Friend should allow the House to debate such money resolutions so that if, for example, the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) wanted to object to a particular measure because of its money implications, he could then do so.
Chris Grayling
I have listened carefully to my right hon. Friend. Money resolutions will also be voted on by the whole House. There will not be a decisive English say. I take note of my right hon. Friend’s comment on the timing of debates. Mr Deputy Speaker, I suspect that you and your colleagues in the Chair would regard comments about a money resolution as in order in a debate on a Bill, but if that proves to be a problem I am very open to looking at whether we can find another way to ensure that money resolutions can be debated.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I propose to speak very briefly as I have only one substantive point of principle to make.
I start by again commending the Leader of the House for taking on board the concerns of Members on both sides of the House and for the approach that he has taken. I have as much taste for political combat as the next man, but the tenor of this debate—I say this to my Unionist colleagues in all parts of the House—matters almost as much as the content in terms of not generating grievance and nationalist causes, shall we say, as a direct result of our attempt to stabilise our constitution.
That said, I do take issue with the Government over the approach of using Standing Orders. The simple argument made to me at the beginning was that this was to protect any change from interference by the courts. While I understand that, the same argument would have applied equally to the Bill that became the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, for example, yet that was capable of being drafted in such a way that the courts would not dare meddle in it, as they would not dare meddle in this. Whatever the legal position, the political position of our courts is that they would not interfere in something as fundamental as the balance of power between the parts of the Union. I take a very serious view of this, because it takes out of play, in a constitutional ruling, the House of Lords and the whole mechanism that we usually apply to these matters.
We are thus in the peculiar position of having a constitutional change to our House of Commons that is put in very quickly, with probably not enough consideration, and that a future Government can take out equally quickly. That is, in many ways, even more dangerous than the mechanism we have chosen.
Graham Stuart
That is one of the strengths of using Standing Orders. The very fragility of it means that, contrary to the constant use of the word “partisan” by the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), it will need to have consensus across the House. At any election, any party would be asked whether it felt that it had become the settled will and the right way to run things, and if not, legislation could indeed be passed. The Leader of the House has said that when the review is conducted in a year or so, that is one of the options that would be looked at.
Mr Davis
I am afraid that I could not disagree more. The simple truth is that we have made it down the centuries with an unwritten constitution that has existed because of the respect given to it on both sides of the House. That has fragmented in the past decade or two. I do not want to have a circumstance where the rules of operation adversely affect the democratic rights of our citizens. By the way, we have been talking all the time about the democratic rights, or standards, of MPs and whether we have one or two classes of MP, but what matters is that we have one class of citizen. I do not want that to be subject to the vagaries of any future Government.
Pete Wishart
I am pleased that the right hon. Gentleman has picked up on the issue of legal challenge. The reason we are having Speaker certification as opposed to legislation is to put the matter beyond legal challenge, so there will be no opportunity for the citizens he describes to challenge decisions that are made in this House. Surely he, as someone who takes an interest in this, must think that that is thoroughly wrong.
Mr Davis
It is wrong, for the reasons I described. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, I take the view that Governments should be subject to the law of the land and subject to courts. I am less happy with the idea that the courts could rewrite our constitution in a way that we do not see fit.
Sir William Cash
The Scotland Act 1998 already has provision for judicial review in questions relating to ultra vires—where whether a function is devolved is in dispute—so the courts are already involved.
Mr Grieve
I was going to make this point later, but I may as well make it now because that is the purpose of debate. I must say that I have some slight anxiety about the justiciability of measures that we take in this House. I appreciate article 9 of the Bill of Rights, but we are certainly moving into rather uncharted territory and I do not think we can rule out legal challenges to decisions on the Speaker’s certificate.
Mr Davis
The House will take that on board.
My other point about what the Leader of the House has done so far is to commend him on at least attempting to address the problem of the Barnett consequentials. This is very important for the point on which I will finish. The problem started in 1998. I guess that the right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) will remember—no one else in the House would have reason to do so—that in 1998 I argued for fiscal autonomy for the new Scottish Parliament, for a more federal solution and for proper treatment of the West Lothian question. All those things were self-evident in 1998 as long-term problems with the devolution proposal. I must say to Opposition Front Benchers, that our points were received with a completely implacable lack of understanding, let alone a lack of sympathy, from the primary driver of that, Gordon Brown.
The problem arises from the confusion in the Scotland Act and the Scotland Bill that is currently going through the House. The 1998 Act failed to create what, in my view, would have been stable fiscal autonomy for the current Holyrood Parliament. It would have done so if it had separated out the funding streams for the Scottish Parliament’s spending and the spending that emanates from this Parliament. If that had been done, we would have had very few, if any, Barnett consequentials.
We cannot of course solve everything. The right hon. Member for Gordon has quite rightly made the point about other impacts, such as in relation to tuition fees. There will be tax competition between the parts of the United Kingdom, and competition between policies of various sorts. We cannot resolve all that. We cannot necessarily give Scottish Members some sort of veto over England’s right to do the best for its citizens. This is not entirely soluble, but it would have been much more soluble if we had written the Scotland Act in such a way that it created a more rational structure than what exists in our kingdom at the moment.
All that gives us and the Leader of the House the problematic issue of how this can be done with utter fairness to all sides, because that is the test. I am afraid that the British establishment always seems to have a preference for fudge rather than clarity and for ambiguity rather than logic. We see that written through all this constitutional area, because the establishment does not want to address the problem. The establishment does not want an English First Minister who is more powerful than the UK Prime Minister. Yet if we went down a proper route of English devolution—if that is what it is—we would of course end up with an English Government who were a challenge to the UK Government.
The Leader of the House has now given us the summer to think about this. We can, I hope, deliberate about it at great length before we return in September, and I hope that he will take on board what he hears today. The only point of principle I will make to him is that the test for this is very simple. It is not whether this creates two classes of MP, but whether it creates two classes of citizen. The test is whether it deals with and removes any prospective grievance not from the Members on the SNP Benches, the Labour Benches or the Government Benches, but from the people we represent. It should take away any grievance for the English, the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish, not any grievance for the Labour party, the Conservative party, the SNP or the Liberal Democrats. The test he should apply is whether it puts our citizens first.