West Lothian Question

David T C Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Paul Murphy]

My right hon. Friend wants a vote and will get it. He eloquently expressed my next point, which I will not make because he made it better than I could.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

I apologise for the fact that I have to leave in a moment to chair the Welsh Affairs Committee. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving me this opportunity to say, as a proud Welshman and a Unionist, and in support of my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who made the very point that I wanted to make, that we cannot possibly have a situation where Welsh MPs can tell the English what to do with their health service and education, but English MPs cannot have any say over what goes on in Wales. Surely the answer for all Unionists across the United Kingdom is to give the English their own Parliament, with powers similar to those of the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments, and have some kind of a federal structure to deal with everything else that matters to the UK.

[Paul Murphy]

The issue of whether England, by which I mean English regions—I shall come to that in a second—should have its own regional governments is a different matter. That is, ultimately, the answer to the question. Incidentally, I say this to the hon. Gentleman, who is leaving: I recently read a quotation from a senior Conservative, who said in the 1960s, in a discussion on the West Lothian question—it was not called that at the time—that

“every Member of the House of Commons is equal with every other Member of the House of Commons.”

That was Peter Thorneycroft, who was then the shadow Attorney-General. He was the Member of Parliament for Monmouth, so that will be of interest to this hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies). His party had a different view of such things in those days, but I will come to that later.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) mentioned cross-border issues.