UK Government: Scotland

Debate between Gordon Brown and Dominic Raab

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

England makes up 84% of the Union. Scotland makes up 8%, Wales 5% and Northern Ireland 3%. When that is translated into Members of Parliament, the 533 English Members can outvote the 117 parliamentarians from the rest of the UK at any time and routinely if they choose. The English predominance is so great that every generation has had to balance the power of the majority to impose its will with some protection for the interests of the minority nations.

America, Australia, Spain, Switzerland, Mexico, Brazil, Germany and many other countries, through their constitutions, have found ways to manage the gross inequalities in the sizes of their regions, provinces or nations. The provisions that those countries make for minority states or regions show that a blanket uniformity of provision, such as English votes for English laws simply mimicking Scottish votes for Scottish laws, does not ensure fairness of treatment.

The House knows from our debate on Tuesday that in America, the smallest state of just half a million people has the same number of Senators as the largest state of 38 million people. Tasmania, the smallest state in Australia with 700,000 people, has the same Senate representation—12—as New South Wales, which has 7 million people. This is true of the Spanish Senate, the Swiss Council of States, the South African National Council of Provinces, and the Brazilian, Nigerian and Mexican Senates. In Germany, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia—in a constitution written by the UK—has about 30 times the population of the state of Bremen, but only double the number of Bundesrat seats. We are not unique. Countries have to make special arrangements that recognise the position of minority nations or regions, and ensure that uniformity of provision is not the means to ensure equality and fairness of treatment.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and recognise his tenacious defence of the Union. May I ask him about money and the issue of equality he has raised? As a result of the Barnett formula, Scotland has double the ambulance staff and nurses per person that England has, and Wales gets a third less spending on social services for the elderly. By ruling out any change or review of Barnett—I appreciate that that is what the vow involves—the right hon. Gentleman is sending a message to the elderly, the patients and the vulnerable in my constituency that somehow they matter less. What would he say to them?

[Mr Brown]

I should not have given way to the hon. Gentleman as he has not read what the Prime Minister and the leader of the Liberal Democrats said, as well as the leader of the Labour party. It was not me who committed us to the Barnett formula; it was them. The Barnett formula exists to allocate resources according to need across the whole United Kingdom. Let us be clear—this is the issue at stake—that there is no country in the world whose Parliament has a first and second class of representatives. There is no democratic state in the world, federal or otherwise, where one part of the country pays its income tax to the national Government, and another part does not, yet those are the two proposals of the Conservative party. It would be strange if this House, which is known as and calls itself the mother of Parliaments and is a worldwide beacon for fairness and equality before the law, became the first law-making body in the world to decree two classes—a first and second class—of representation.

If this were only about the rights of Members of Parliament, it might remain an insiders’ issue among the political elite. But the designation of elected representatives as first and second-class citizens is not simply about the sensitivities of a few politicians, but about the status of each nation in what has hitherto been one United Kingdom. According a first-class status to England, but a second-class status to Scotland—and possibly then to Wales and Northern Ireland—is bad enough, but the effect of that is that the Government of the day would also be a servant of two masters, and not sure whether their continuation depended from one day to the next on English votes or the votes of the whole United Kingdom. Government Members might find it appealing that no MP from a Scottish seat could, under such a system, ever again be Chancellor or Prime Minister of this country, but if I may say so, that is closing the door 20 years too late.

This change would also contradict the Conservatives’ devolution commission report that I mentioned earlier:

“Scottish MPs are and must remain as qualified as any other to hold high Government office, including the offices of Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

That is not my view but the view of the Conservative party report from the Strathclyde Commission.

In conclusion, there is a way forward that listens to more sensible voices; a way forward that starts with a balanced programme of devolution that maintains income tax as a shared tax, is built around a sensible accommodation on exclusively English Bills, and is open not only to devolution within England—including to the powerful cities and regions of the country—but also to a wider debate about what kind of constitution our country needs. What Scotland has shown is that it is possible to engage the public in a debate about the distribution of power in our own country. Therefore, as the debate about English cities and regions and the future of the British constitution gathers pace, the constitutional convention that the Leader of the Opposition has proposed makes a great deal of sense.

Under the last Labour Government, we brought citizens together to debate how their rights could be respected. By extending that process to a constitutional convention that embraces every region, nation and civic group, the voice of England would be heard. It would be heard not in angry opposition to the voices of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but alongside them as part of securing what I want to see with the proposals we are putting forward today: a better future for all nations and regions as part of one United Kingdom.