Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Friday 11th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

As a new Member, I drew No. 7 in the private Members’ Bill ballot. Some might think that it is great foolhardiness to have chosen to raise the knotty constitutional issue of the West Lothian question in the House today, but it is with a great sense of privilege and trepidation that I today present a Bill that is designed to be extremely helpful to you, Mr Speaker, if you were ever asked to certify whether a particular piece of legislation applied to a particular part of the United Kingdom.

Mr Speaker, you will be very aware that the question of Members voting on issues that do not affect their own constituencies has vexed many minds much more learned than mine for well over a century.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Why on earth would Mr Speaker be asked to adjudicate on whether something applied somewhere or did not?

[Harriett Baldwin]

That is an extremely important question. Mr Speaker has the ability, under Standing Order No. 97, to certify whether a particular piece of legislation applies only to Scotland. He already has the powers, and it will be extremely interesting today, during the debate on this legislation, to discuss whether those powers ought to be extended to further parts of the United Kingdom.

The West Lothian question has vexed constitutional experts since the time of Gladstone, who first perceived the difficulties when Irish Home Rule was being discussed. At various times in the last century, the topic has been raised in the Chamber and in the other place, but it has always been parked in the car park for questions that are too difficult to resolve under our unwritten constitution.

However, the following question is often raised with me by residents of my constituency, which I like to think represents the heart of middle England. How can it be right for it to be possible for potentially decisive pieces of legislation to be voted on in this place by, and carried by a majority of, Members of Parliament who are not legislating on behalf of their own constituents? That is not a question that we can carry on parking in that car park for ever. It is my intention with this Bill to edge the West Lothian question slightly closer to the car park exit.

The Conservative party manifesto, on which I stood, said:

“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.”

Of course, the Conservative party did not win an overall majority, but in the coalition programme for government, the section on political reform states:

“We will establish a commission to consider the ‘West Lothian question’.”

On 26 October last year, I asked the Deputy Prime Minister in this Chamber when the commission would be established, and I was told that it would be established by the end of 2010. However, it became apparent on the final sitting day of 2010 that the commission had not been established, and I again put the question to my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb), the Minister on duty, who said that

“the Government will make an announcement on the commission in the new year. I am happy to confirm that we do indeed mean 2011. That is very much part of our programme for next year.”—[Official Report, 21 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 1338.]

If nothing else, given the fragile life chances of private Members’ Bills, I am pleased to use today’s debate to encourage the Government to advance their own business.

Over the last decade, devolution to Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, which I wholeheartedly support, has meant that more and more legislation coming before the House affects different constituent parts of the United Kingdom in different ways. For example, at the moment the Health and Social Care Bill will apply essentially to England.

[Chris Bryant]

Essentially, but not exclusively.

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point about how difficult it is these days to identify which parts of the United Kingdom Bills will apply to, a problem that this Bill is intended to address. The hon. Gentleman will clearly support it.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that there will be a referendum on further powers for the Welsh Assembly in just a few weeks. If Wales votes in favour of those powers in the 20 areas of competence that the referendum covers, will that create a west Walean question?

[Harriett Baldwin]

My hon. Friend asks an important question, pointing out that devolution is an ongoing process. Indeed, the referendum in Wales on 3 March and the Scotland Bill will potentially change the decision-making process in this Chamber, so it is all the more important that the Bill is carried today.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the hon. Lady tell us whether she voted on the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which contains many provisions that will apply solely to Wales?

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Gentleman is making extremely important points about how legislation currently before the House can mix up different issues and have different impacts on different parts of the United Kingdom. My Bill would make things clearer, with the result that parliamentary draftsmen would automatically start to make it clearer and much more distinct which parts of the United Kingdom Bills apply to. In addition, the Bill would allow legislation to continue to apply to different parts of the United Kingdom—all it says is, “Let’s state that on the face of the Bill.” Why should we not do that?

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing this Bill. She describes the issue as complex. Does she understand why it is so complex that the Government have not even been able to set up a commission to look into it? Surely, that should not be beyond the capability of the Deputy Prime Minister. Has she been able to find out why that has not been done?

[Harriett Baldwin]

My hon. Friend asks a somewhat cheeky question. I am sympathetic to the fact that the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper)—a constituency neighbour of mine—has had a rather busy last couple of weeks. I am giving him a little slack because of that, but I agree that it is important to keep pressing for the establishment of the commission.

The legislation on tuition fees will affect university students from England. It will create the awkward situation of Welsh and English students paying different fees to attend the same university. The Scotland Bill, which I mentioned earlier, will enhance the powers of the Scottish Executive in many instances, including their ability to vary tax rates. Therefore, Parliament and this truly reforming Government need to find a way to scrutinise legislation in such a way that Members, who have the best interests of their own constituents in mind, can play a greater role in the legislative process. This is an issue that we duck at our peril.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing her Bill. I am sure that she, like me, receives letters weekly from her constituents asking, “When are you going to get on with the issue? It is just not fair for English constituents, taxpayers, ratepayers and voters.”

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank my hon. Friend for adding those supportive words from her constituents. I am sure that many hon. Members have had the issue raised with them from time to time.

As I mentioned, the question has been looked at by many heads wiser than mine over the years, and I have benefited from extensive analysis from history of what has not worked. Therefore, I have avoided in the Bill any sense that I want to create two categories of MP at Westminster, which is where the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter)—the House of Commons (Participation) Bill—ran into difficulty in the previous Parliament. Parliamentary privilege, which is MPs’ ability to speak out or vote on any issue, is at the heart of our Parliament.

I am a passionate supporter of the Union, and do not want to undermine it in any way with the Bill. My grandmother, of whom I have fond memories, was called Flora McLean McLeod Morison. She was born in Dunbar to a general practitioner who came from the Isle of Mull, so I am a flesh-and-blood embodiment of the Union myself. It is because I believe that not resolving this question would cause long-term harm to the Union that I urge the Government to support the Bill.

What I found most helpful in preparing the Bill was the Conservative party’s democracy taskforce, chaired by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), who prepared a pamphlet called “Answering the Question”. The Leader of the House, who was in the Chamber earlier, and my hon. Friends the Members for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) and for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) were also on the taskforce, so we are talking about some impressive brainpower. The taskforce’s report looked at five main options for addressing the West Lothian question.

The first option is the one that the previous Government took for the last decade, which essentially was to do nothing. That approach was best summarised by Lord Irvine’s argument—that the best way to answer the West Lothian question was to stop asking it.

[Chris Bryant]

I think I saw a little partisanness sweep across the hon. Lady’s eyes. To say that it is only the Government of the last 10 years who have done nothing about the issue is to ignore the last seven centuries, when no Government did anything about it.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I fully accept that the issue has been out there and unsolved for at least 100 years. However, I think that it was a deliberate strategy by the previous Government, as evidenced by Lord Irvine’s statement. The do-nothing approach risks causing the same English alienation that Scottish devolution was designed to address for Scotland.

A second approach to address the issue is through under-representation at Westminster for the parts of the UK that have their own Parliament, which is often known as the Stormont solution. During most of the 20th century there was a Northern Ireland Parliament at Stormont, and Northern Ireland sent only 11 Members of Parliament to Westminster when its population would have justified 17. That is another possible approach, but I do not think it is the right one. Also, it is completely at odds with the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, which brings a welcome equalisation of constituency sizes.

A third option that people have mentioned is an English Parliament. There is a campaign group for this solution, but that approach leads to a plethora of questions. Would it require separate elections or a separate building? Would we have a First Minister for England? What if the First Minister for England was different from the Prime Minister? That solution would also be extremely expensive, and I do not think that the mood in the country is in favour of an additional layer of politicians. That approach could also lead to the formal break-up of the United Kingdom, so I have completely rejected it. A fourth approach, which, to be fair to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), was the one initially taken by the previous Government, is devolution to regional government, giving the English regions more constitutional power. However, that was rejected decisively in the 2004 referendum in the north-east.

A fifth option, which has been on the table for some time, is something called English votes for English laws. Unfortunately, however, that would create two categories of MPs, leaving the Executive powerless to win votes on important public service issues. That was the approach taken by my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset in his private Member’s Bill, and was also the approach outlined in the 2001 and 2005 Conservative manifestos.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that at least that solution would appear to be fair? Many voters in this country would see it as the fair solution: if a particular piece of legislation did not affect their area, Members should not be able to vote on it.

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[Harriett Baldwin]

That approach is one of those things that looks fair at first sight, but the more one looks at it, the more problems with it one perceives. For example, what if the Government of the day could not carry the Budget? The Finance Bill is something that the Government have to be able to carry, but if the make-up or majority in the English Parliament was different from that in the overall, national Parliament, how would we solve such conundrums? That is why I have not taken that approach in my Bill.

The recommendation that I thought made the most sense was the one in the democracy taskforce publication, which proposed a lower-strength version of English votes for English laws. This proposal was that Bills be certified by the Speaker as English. They would pass through normal Commons processes as far as and including Second Reading, on which the whole House would vote. The Committee stage would be undertaken by English MPs in proportion to English party strengths. Report stage would be similarly voted on by English Members only, and Third Reading, when no amendments are possible, would again be voted on by the whole House. However, there are also problems with that approach, but it is those problems that my Bill seeks to solve.

The problem was best expressed by lain MacLean of Nuffield college in his 2005 paper, in which he said:

“It will be hard for the Speaker to define what is an English bill, at least to do so without controversy—the Speaker could be politicised”.

I would not want to put you in such an awkward position, Mr Speaker. Therefore, by requiring the Secretary of State to specify in draft legislation the territorial extent of a Bill, my expectation is that it would be much clearer in the drafting of Bills to which parts of the UK they applied. Indeed, the Clerk advises me that the Health and Social Care Bill, which was mentioned earlier and which, really, applies only to England, would be hard to certify as being an England-only Bill, because of the way in which it is drafted. What I hope my Bill would achieve, once it received Royal Assent, is gently to guide those drafting Her Majesty’s legislation to be clear enough in that drafting so that you, Mr Speaker, would have no problem certifying Bills. Indeed, you already have the power, under Standing Order No. 97, to certify Bills as having regard to Scotland only. In the past, before devolution, that Standing Order was used quite often, which shows that there is a precedent for such certification and that it would not be beyond the wit of those much wiser than me to come up with some improvements on that Standing Order.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for indulging me. I wonder whether she would be willing to listen to my perhaps more simple solution to the West Lothian question, which is indeed a boil that needs lancing. If we got rid of Members of the Scottish Parliament and Members of the Welsh Assembly, and instead merely had elected MPs, then all MPs from across Great Britain could meet in this place on Mondays and Tuesdays to attend to British affairs, and then on Wednesdays, and perhaps Thursdays, they could return to the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly, or to Northern Ireland, leaving English MPs to attend to English matters in this place. Surely that would save the taxpayer a great deal of money and, by getting rid of so many politicians, be very popular in the country.

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[Harriett Baldwin]

That is certainly an original approach, and one that, I must confess, I had not heard from any other source, so I very much appreciate my hon. Friend’s putting it on the record. I said at the beginning of my speech that I am very much in favour of devolution and allowing decisions that affect particular areas to be made at the lowest possible level of government. That is the theme of localisation, so although my hon. Friend has set out an original idea, I prefer what I have proposed in my Bill.

To return to my point about Standing Order No. 97, in its 1999 report on the procedural consequences of devolution, the Select Committee on Procedure said that

“the provision allowing the Speaker to certify Bills as relating exclusively to Scotland”

could be

“transferred to a new Standing Order and adapted so that the Speaker may certify that a bill relates exclusively to one of the constituent parts of the United Kingdom.”

Further to that, Standing Orders Nos. 102 and 106 allow legislation to be referred to a Welsh Grand Committee. However, we are now touching on issues that have gone far above my pay grade, although they are issues that would be there for the House to agree once my Bill had received Royal Assent.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I am not quite sure how we get from my hon. Friend’s Bill to the legislative programme that she is suggesting. Is the idea that this would be done exclusively through the Standing Orders of this House, and that we would therefore change the structures of the passing of legislation purely on our Standing Orders?

[Harriett Baldwin]

My Bill has deliberately shied away from being prescriptive in that area. Our constitution has a capacity to evolve and adapt to changing circumstances in a way that does not need to be written down in legislation, so my Bill stops at the point where the draft legislation outlines which parts of the United Kingdom it affects. It would then be for us, through House procedures, to look at the ways in which the new legislation would permit the House to treat different Bills in different ways.

I have touched on the purpose of the Bill, but there are other provisions that are worth highlighting. The Bill would establish a principle of legislative clarity, which would mean that citizens and Members of Parliament would have the right to see how proposed changes to the law would affect them or their constituents. There is also flexibility built into the Bill, so that if it is not possible for the Secretary of State to affirm that the draft legislation is compatible with those principles, the Government can still make a statement that they wish to proceed anyway. I am sure that no one in the Chamber could possibly object to this new level of transparency in our legislation.

The Bill also calls for a separate statement—a financial memorandum—on the financial implications of legislation on the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Again, this is designed to be helpful to you, Mr Speaker, by making any financial effects of legislation—for example, via the Barnett formula—clear and unambiguous. It is often argued that, because of the Barnett formula, it is impossible to achieve granularity when it comes to the impact of legislation on England. The financial statement would therefore allow the question of whether that was the case to be transparent.

In bringing my remarks to a close, I simply point out that the Bill is both minor and entirely unobjectionable. In fact, it is so innocuous that I am sure all hon. Members in the Chamber today will support not only its aims but its intentions, and that they will all wave through its Second Reading. I am sure that the Government will have no issue with the intended consequences of the Bill, although they may have some drafting issues with the unintended consequences, on which I would welcome their input in Committee. This Bill is necessary to create a strong foundation on which the House can make progress on addressing the important issues of territorial extent, and I commend it to the House.

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[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

I return to my point that this should be seen as an evolving situation. We speak of devolution to the three other parts of the United Kingdom, but the devolution is different in each case. We have a power-sharing institutionalised system in Northern Ireland, which does not exist anywhere else. We have a Scottish Parliament that is an Executive with full legislative powers over devolved matters. Wales does not have a Parliament; it has an Assembly that does not yet have legislative powers. In each case, the arrangements will change, but they will change in response to experience and to what are perceived to be the political wishes of the people in the territories concerned. That is the history of the United Kingdom. We are blessed with an unwritten constitution that we can evolve and adapt over the generations in a way that goes no further than necessary but that responds to the aspirations of the peoples in the various parts of the kingdom in a sensible and coherent way.

I shall turn now to the consequences of those arrangements for voting in this Parliament. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire so eloquently said, a range of options has been proposed to deal with what has become known as the West Lothian question. Some of them are completely understandable, including the proposal that, if there is a Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish Parliament, there should be an English one. That sounds completely logical, but I was once warned that logic was the art of going wrong with confidence. It is, in fact, absurd to contemplate the co-existence of an English Parliament with this Palace of Westminster, for several reasons.

First of all, to state an emotional and political fact—I say this with some caution—the vast majority of people in England think that there is already an English Parliament and that it is called the House of Commons, largely because of the history of this place and its origins many centuries ago. When such an option is occasionally raised, we are not talking only about two Parliaments. In practice, there would have to be two Governments; there would have to be an English Government just as there is a Scottish Government. The idea that that is a sensible way of dealing with these matters is foolish. It would be a sledgehammer to crack an important but nevertheless modest nut—foolish, as I say.

The second option—one of the bad options—was attractive to many of my hon. Friends during the previous Parliament. It is the idea that Scottish Members—and, one assumes, Welsh and Northern Ireland Members either now or in due course—would be vetoed or prevented from voting on issues that applied only to England. I have always thought that that is a very dangerous and unwise approach. It would manifestly create two classes of Member of Parliament for the very first time since the Act of Union in 1707, and therefore I can only describe it as a nationalist solution to a Unionist problem. I have no doubt that it would be welcomed by the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales, because it would provide a constant opportunity for them to emphasise the increasing irrelevance of the Union, as they would see it, and to go much further than the vast majority of people throughout the United Kingdom would currently want. It is not sensible to contemplate having two classes of Member, although not because it could not work. Here I disagree with the hon. Member for Rhondda: it is not a matter of the technical problems, although I can come on to those in moment if he wants me to; rather, I believe that it would be hugely dangerous and, in any event, it is unnecessary.

If those options are unattractive, is there an alternative route to resolve these matters and to deal with the issue of fairness? We do not need a solution that is absolutely perfect in every constitutional respect that fits seamlessly into some web of other issues; we need something that resolves the problem and removes a sense of unfairness.

At one stage, I argued for having an English Grand Committee, to which English-only Bills would be sent. It could be a Committee of all English Members sitting in this Chamber, but only those on such a Committee would be able to vote, just as members of Select Committees are the only people able to vote on them. That would not, in itself, be constitutionally improper. I acknowledge, however, that that would be quite a complicated innovation, which would take a complex series of thoughts to resolve and could take years in practice to implement.

In any event, there is a much simpler alternative—one that has not thus far been mentioned—and I shall put it forward. I would strongly argue that the most simple and straightforward solution relates to when a Bill is certified by the Speaker, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire indicates, as applying only to England. Doing that, incidentally, is not difficult. Many Bills currently affect England and Scotland or England, Scotland and Wales, because there is no reason at the moment for the draftsmen not to draft them in that way, if it suits their drafting objectives. If the rules change and the draftsmen are required to restrict any Bill to that part of the kingdom to which it overwhelmingly applies, they can draft accordingly if instructed to do so.

Where a Bill applies only to England, the right way to resolve matters would be to say that before it can be approved on Second and Third Reading, it must achieve not only the majority of votes of the whole House but, subsumed within that, a majority of Members representing English constituencies. In other words, a double majority is required: a majority of the House as a whole and a majority of those representing English constituencies. If it does not meet that target, it cannot be deemed to have been approved on Second Reading. The attraction is that no hon. Member is prevented from speaking in the debate or from voting in the Division Lobby for or against the measure, but the question of whether an England-only Bill goes forward and is given a Second Reading will have been determined by the House to be dependent on a majority of Members from English constituencies voting for it.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for giving way and also for sharing his enormous wisdom on this topic with the House. Does he agree that the Scotland legislation of the 1970s included a provision made by the Lords for a 14-day waiting period, in which something like what he is describing would apply? What does he think of that particular approach?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

Yes, that is indeed one approach. We are always reminding ourselves that this country has a sovereign Parliament. The idea that a sovereign Parliament cannot determine that certain classes of legislation will not go through unless there is a double majority of the kind that I have described is absurd. Of course it can do that if it wishes; it is entirely within its power. It is simply a political judgment as to whether that is the right way forward.

I shall not speak for much longer, but I want to address one fundamental challenge that will be made—it has already been made—to any of the solutions that have been described. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Rhondda will raise this suggestion. It is constantly said that the problem with all these approaches is that if a Government were denied the use of all the votes of their supporters that would usually give them a majority, the whole business of government would become unworkable and the Government would be unable to get their programme through, which would create some sort of constitutional crisis. To be fair, that argument is not made only by Labour Members. Mr Vernon Bogdanor, for example, who we are often told is a great constitutional expert, has constantly opined that that is a fundamental flaw in any such approach. Although I can understand why the Labour party adopts that view, because there is a political interest in putting forward such an argument, I find it very difficult to understand why such a learned gentleman has come to this conclusion—and I hope that he reads this speech.

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[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I welcome the contribution of the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), who has not been in the House long and yet already has managed to grasp firmly with both hands the nettle of one of the more complicated constitutional matters that has faced the country, I would say, for considerably longer than she suggested. It achieved a name, and once something has a name it achieves greater prominence—because of Irish Home Rule. However, when we first started binding together the different bits of the Union, there were profound discussions about how many Members of Parliament of both Houses should be from each of the constituent parts. To all intents and purposes, that was a very similar debate.

I was with the hon. Lady for part of her contribution, but then she took us to the Welsh Grand Committee. Anyone who suggests that that is an answer to anything, I am afraid, has completely lost me. My experience of the Welsh grandstanding Committee is that, for the most part, it is not as useful as it might seem to those who do not have to attend it.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept, however, that the Bill stops well short of such Committees, and would be a simple and innocuous piece of legislation that he could wholeheartedly support?

[Chris Bryant]

Was it Socrates—I cannot remember—who said that a small book was always a bad book? Sometimes a simple and innocuous-looking piece of legislation can do the most pernicious damage. I will come on to whether I think it is innocuous later.

It is always great to hear the right hon. and learned—and gallant, and doubtless many other things besides—[Laughter.] Other words, which he might not like so much, are coming to mind now. It is always difficult not to think of the right hon. and learned Member for East Lothian—sorry, for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind)—as a Scottish MP, and I suppose that in many regards he still is, but he is a Scottish MP for an English seat. Several hon. Members think that I am an English Member for a Welsh seat, but I am thoroughly Welsh, and Jeremy Paxman had to apologise when he maintained, in his latest book, that I was not.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right to maintain that Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish Members of Parliament have no diminished role just because of devolution. In many debates, they bring a specific interest and point of view that adds to the whole equation. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), who has departed the scene, said that Wales and Scotland MPs must, by definition, have less casework, which is certainly not my experience. If anything, many constituents, in the process of trying to achieve redress for their individual concern, try to play the Assembly Member off against the Member of Parliament. As the Welsh Assembly also has regional Members, my experience is that those from other political parties who failed to be elected in constituencies end up trying to play a semi-constituency role. Often, that leads to a considerable enhancement of the amount of work done. I make no complaint about that, but I think that those who assume, from their English seat, that a Welsh Assembly and a Scottish Parliament result in Welsh and Scottish MPs having less casework, are wrong.

There are many different kinds of casework. There is casework such as a miners compensation scheme, with which thousands of people want help going through the legal process. Then there is casework such as, “I think it’s an absolute outrage that you ever thought of voting for this piece of legislation.” I get very little of the latter and a lot of the former. In different constituencies around the land, some Members have a lot of immigration cases. I have had only about three immigration cases during my time as a Member of Parliament. Casework varies between constituencies, and it is not appropriate to legislate directly in relation to that.

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[Chris Bryant]

I shall deal later with an issue that relates directly to the point of the Bill, and I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will then understand why I believe there is a problem. [Interruption.] He is now confused, but I hope that I shall be able to rescue him from his confusion in a moment or two.

As I said to the hon. Member for West Worcestershire, this is an age-old issue. There is a meretricious argument, which the hon. Lady steered away from today—although she dangled it in front of us a little bit—that it is patently absurd for Members whose constituents will not be affected by an individual piece of legislation to be able to vote on it. That is, at any rate, a paraphrase of something that she said. My response is “All that glisters is not gold.”

If we decide that Members can vote only on matters that affect their constituents directly—or even indirectly, I suppose—we end up with the question of who runs the country. At any one moment, on any one piece of legislation, there is uncertainty, and in the case of Finance Bills in particular there is a real problem. The issue is not just what the Government propose, but what Members can or cannot amend. Some money Bills have effect only in England, but the danger is that a money Bill could be amended in a way that caused it to have an implication elsewhere.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Can the hon. Gentleman give me an example of a money Bill that might affect only England? I am not sure that my research has identified one.

[Chris Bryant]

There are money Bills attached to many pieces of legislation. There will be money Bills in relation to the education Bill and the national health service Bill, for instance. However, I think that the hon. Lady is referring to Finance Bills. It is true that the vast majority of Finance Bills have implications throughout the United Kingdom, although obviously there will be modifications in relation to Scotland if the Scotland Bill is passed. Elements of a future Finance Bill would not apply in Scotland. Indeed, elements of a Finance Bill today already do not apply in Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales.

My second point is that it is phenomenally difficult to be clear about what constitutes the territorial extent not just of a particular piece of legislation, but of its transition through the House. It would seem on the face of it that, for instance, the Bill that became the Health Act 2006 was purely an England Bill. Most people would consider that to be the case. The Bill made provision in relation to smoke-free premises, the purpose being to ban smoking in public places in England. On 14 February 2006 the House debated new clause 5, which replaced the original clause 3. It provided that

“The appropriate national authority may make regulations providing for specified descriptions of premises, or specified areas within specified descriptions of premises, not to be smoke-free”.

It then listed a series of places that might be exempted. Subsection (5), for example, stated:

“If both a club premises certificate and a premises licence authorising the consumption of alcohol on the premises have effect in respect of any premises, those premises are to be treated for the purposes of this section as if only the premises licence had effect”.

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[Chris Bryant]

No, it is an argument against it. I remember clearly the rows that took place in both the Chamber and the Clerk’s Office about whether the way in which the amendments to a health Bill were being selected would mean that Wales was or was not covered. Because most Members wanted to remove the provision that would allow the Secretary of State to exempt private members’ clubs in England, they actually removed the provision that allowed an exemption for private members’ clubs in Wales. It may well be that the Welsh Assembly would have wanted to do that itself anyway, but it had no choice. It could not make such a provision. I can tell the hon. Lady that that row was quite vociferous.

My point is this: I do not think it is possible to be clear. The original legislation might be clear, but people might want to amend it, and why should they not be able to do so? If the parliamentary draftspeople say, “This Bill will cover only England”, the number of Bills going through the House will have to be doubled, if not trebled, because there will have to be a separate Wales Bill and a separate Scotland Bill.

[Harriett Baldwin]

With the greatest respect, surely in such circumstances it would be necessary only to say, “This Bill applies to all three areas.” My Bill provides for flexibility in order to avoid precisely the kind of row that the hon. Gentleman has described.

[Chris Bryant]

But who gets to decide the interpretation of what applies and what does not apply? That is the problem. A series of issues arises. A decision is made by parliamentary draftspeople, or Clerks, or the Speaker. That would bring them into the debate, which would be a mistake.

I want to give the reason why I think the Bill is being introduced. Although it is fascinating to know the territorial extent of any Bill or clause, the only purpose of knowing that must surely be, as the hon. Lady said, to ensure that Members of the House vote only on legislation that directly affects them. That is a misguided intention. In practice, that would mean that we ended up with more Bills, and Second and Third Readings and Committee stages. If we decide that English MPs can vote only on English legislation, who will vote on Welsh clauses? Just Welsh MPs? Would only Welsh MPs be able to attend the Committee to take the Bill through? I think that we have never had a Welsh Secretary of State for Wales under a Conservative Government, although I may be wrong. We would have to allow the Minister to sit on the Committee but they would not be able to vote on their own legislation, which seems patently absurd.

[Harriett Baldwin]

With respect, the hon. Gentleman is missing the whole point. Obviously, legislation will have different effects in different parts of the UK. That will be spelt out in the legislation. All the issues that he is raising are complete red herrings that the Bill would address.

[Chris Bryant]

No, I honestly think that the hon. Lady is completely naive in relation to this matter. She said at the beginning of her speech that she thought that it was a fundamental principle that MPs should be able to vote only on those things that affect their constituents. That is the only purpose of having such a provision in any legislation. If she introduces a piece of legislation or a Standing Order—I will come to parliamentary privilege in a moment—that would require MPs not to vote on a piece of legislation, or that would shame people into not voting on a piece of legislation, she will create a real problem. If we assert that only English MPs can take part in the proceedings on English legislation, table amendments, amend Bills, seek to speak and vote on that legislation—that is where her Bill is driving us—there will be a problem for English legislation, not least because large numbers of Scottish and Welsh MPs have been English Ministers dealing with largely English matters. There are and have been Scottish and Welsh Ministers in, for example, the Department of Health and the Department for Education who have largely dealt with matters that refer only to England.

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[Chris Bryant]

Although I am sure that you would not mind, Mr Speaker. It is not a libel. It is not like being called an English Member when you are not an English Member. [Hon. Members: “Oh.”] We lost badly in the rugby last week so we are still somewhat wounded on these matters.

I recognise that the hon. Member for West Worcestershire has dressed her Bill up so that it does not look like it is moving in that direction, but many Members might only support the Bill because they want it to move in that direction. As I said earlier, I understand that some people are concerned about the issue in the country. However, I cannot think of a single Parliament in the world, including Spain and many other countries—this is not the only argument that I would use in relation to this—where there is asymmetric devolution and MPs cannot vote on every piece of legislation that is brought before them. As the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington said, to go down that route is a nationalist argument—not as in British nationalist, but as in Welsh, Scottish or Irish nationalist—and will unpick the Union in the end. Therefore, if the hon. Member for West Worcestershire really believes in the Union, it is a bit difficult to advance that argument.

[Harriett Baldwin]

As I said earlier, it is because of that belief that it is important that we have clarity in our legislation about which parts of the UK it affects. Is the hon. Gentleman arguing that we have to just continue to park the issue and not address it, thus undermining the Union?

[Chris Bryant]

I would like to see the issue addressed in different ways—as it has been addressed in other countries. For example, the role of the second Chamber needs to be looked at. It has been embarrassing that the vast majority of people who have been appointed to the second Chamber in the past few years have been from London and the south-east of England. That is almost inevitable when we have an appointments system. I would prefer to move to an elected system, where we had more people representing the whole of the UK. It might be possible to devise a better answer to the West Lothian question through reform of the second Chamber on an elected basis.

However, as the hon. Lady has said, the whole business of parliamentary privilege comes into play. It has been a fundamental assumption from when the first commoners were allowed to attend parliamentary proceedings under Simon de Montfort in 1258 that grievances that they presented on behalf of the people should be able to be presented without any difference between one and the other Members.

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[Chris Bryant]

Well, not all 37 shires had representation, and they certainly did not have that as of right. I am perfectly happy to debate this at another time, but for now Mr Speaker has got that slightly fascinated but also slightly irritated face on.

It would be very dangerous to dismantle the fundamental principle of the equality of all Members of this House. That is why I think that, in the end, the direction of travel the hon. Member for West Worcestershire is moving in with this Bill is an unfortunate one.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Let me reiterate once again that none of the concerns the hon. Gentleman is raising apply to the Bill.

[Chris Bryant]

As I have said, legislation is about not just what it does, but the declaratory effect that it has. The hon. Lady referred to the intended consequences of her Bill, but it would also have unintended consequences. As her colleague, the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire, has already in effect told us, press releases will be sent out the moment the Bill comes into force condemning some Members for taking part in debates and votes on matters that the Bill declares as being for England only. I presume that there would also be condemnation of English MPs taking part in debates and votes on legislation that applies only to Wales. If we are going to reduce the number of Members of Parliament for Wales to 30, it will be difficult to take such legislation through effectively if there are not enough Back Benchers to be able to make proper informed decisions about the measures under discussion. The direction of travel the hon. Member for West Worcestershire is taking us down is unfortunate.

I also think there will be unfortunate direct consequences, in that the number of Bills will increase, which will make things more difficult for us, and the number of clauses will also increase. We will end up with worse legislation because, as the hon. Lady has said, draftsmen will be required to try to provide absolute clarity that measures apply specifically to England, for example, or to Wales alone.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend makes an important and valid point. The West Lothian question is serious, but the answer is not necessarily one that we have been given so far. Just because the question is right, it does not mean that an answer to it would necessarily work. My hon. Friend is correct to say that if the majority of English seats had been won by Conservatives but we had ended up with a rainbow coalition, it would have caused huge dissatisfaction and opposition within England, as well as a feeling that the Union was not working for England. I want the Union to succeed and prosper, so I want an answer to the West Lothian question to come forward which the English find fair and with which they are comfortable.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington was right to emphasise the issue of fairness, but such fairness needs to be met with constitutional propriety and effectiveness. We have heard a great deal about the fairness so far today, but not about a workable constitutional situation, and that will not do us any good because however much one dislikes the Opposition party being in government, it will be one day, and when it is in government, it must be able to get its programme of government through. The way to stop that programme of government is not to put down so many constitutional man traps that that Government cannot get their business through, but to defeat them at the ensuing general election and reverse the worst elements of what they have done. The Bill would lead to a system that would make it incredibly difficult for a Labour Government to get their English business through, but that is not an answer to the West Lothian question because it would simply mean that that Government would have to reverse the protections that had been introduced, and I would have the gravest concerns about such protections being established purely through Standing Orders of the House.

I know that this is not in the Bill, but its purpose is to establish the declaration so that Standing Orders can then be built either to put in place the double majority suggested by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, or to establish practice in Committee and on Report. Is it right for us to change the whole basis of legislation through Standing Orders? Standing Orders can rightly do many things concerning the hours that we sit and the way that business is timetabled, but they do not tend to change the fundamental way in which legislation is taken through the House.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving such an eloquent speech on some of the issues surrounding legislating on this subject. Does he accept that the Bill stops well short of giving any direction whatever as far as Standing Orders are concerned? It simply says that draft legislation will outline its impact and, in a side statement, its financial impact.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, but I was rather hoping she would not, because there is a desperate tendency on Fridays towards motherhood-and-apple-pie Bills that say nothing very much about anything in particular. If her Bill is that type of Bill, what on earth are we doing discussing it? If it just says that the Minister, out of the kindness of his heart, will say a few words about where an Act applies, it is completely and utterly pointless, and the House should not discuss things that are pointless. We do that on Fridays, and Madam Deputy Speaker is amazingly patient in listening to some of these discussions.

My hon. Friend’s Bill has to be an important stepping-stone in answering the West Lothian question, or it is nothing. I give her credit for having the courage to begin to address that question, rather than just detaining us here when we could be doing work in our constituency on a Friday. I hope that she will not try to hide behind the minutiae of the Bill instead of looking at the bigger picture, because that bigger picture is crucial.

My hon. Friend is right to put pressure on the Government to come up with a solution that can be debated in Government time. In that respect, the Bill is really noble, because the Government do have to think about the issue. It is unfair on the British—the English; I apologise for using those two words synonymously, as I know the English do a great deal.

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[Ian Paisley]

I appreciate that intervention. I got at least three forest trees of letters through my door from people passionately asking me to oppose or support the plan, depending on where the correspondence came from, even though it does not directly affect Northern Ireland. I exercised some caution. I recognised that although it did not directly affect Northern Ireland, I could attend the debate and listen to the arguments. However, I did not vote; I deliberately made a choice not to do so, because I believed that it was a matter for Members who were directly affected and whose constituency issues rested on it. The issues were addressed in the devolved Assembly. I had the right to vote, but I also had the choice of whether to exercise it.

If Members feel that they are missing out, they should look at the devolved Assemblies. What exactly are they doing? Last week, our Assembly in Northern Ireland, of which I am no longer a Member, was dealing with legislation for safety helmets for bicycle riders. A dog fouling Bill was also introduced. We are not missing a lot. We should not think that there is stuff going on in those regions that we should really be getting our teeth into and ask why Members there are getting it while we are not. We are not missing that much, and we should bear that in mind.

I turn to the substantial point that I have in mind. I am a Unionist, and a proud one, but my Unionism is as strong only as each component part of the Union. My Unionism is deleted if Scottish or Welsh Unionism is deleted or English Unionism is not strong. As a Member for Northern Ireland, I have a responsibility to encourage the Union and see that it is strengthened. The Union is as strong only as each of its component parts. If Northern Ireland or Scotland are made weaker by legislation such as this, Unionism is made weaker. We should tread very carefully.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for coming along to participate in the debate, because his perspective is valuable. Will anything in the Bill prevent him from voting on anything? The Bill could allow our unwritten constitution to evolve so that Members might indeed choose to abstain in the way that he describes.

[Ian Paisley]

The beauty of an unwritten constitution is flexibility. As Burke said, we are here to give to the people who elect us not just of our industry, but of our judgment. We are elected to make judgment calls, and we should have the sense to make those calls without that having to be written down, as the hon. Member for North East Somerset said, in a motherhood-and-apple pie way. That is what we seriously need to avoid.

I passionately believe that there is a real danger that if we create a two-tier Chamber, instead of having a wonderful House of Commons, we will have a House of little Englanders. That does not serve this nation or the interests of any member of it, whether they are in the Hebrides or Fermanagh. We need to recognise that.

We all pay the same taxes. If we want changes to taxation, the Magna Carta gives us rights to be represented in this House. We should passionately hold on to those. I appeal to my Conservative and Unionist friends to recognise that they should not play party politics with the constitution of this nation because they fear that the English will become bad Unionists in future. They need to be careful. They have a responsibility to lead the people of England into believing as passionately in the Union as I do. They can do that only by discouraging the view that we need another Parliament for the English. They and the House need to encourage the strength of Parliament and the development of powers here.

The hon. Member for North East Somerset said that he would like some mechanisms to be developed, but there are already such mechanisms, such as the British-Irish Council. The BIC is supposed to strengthen east-west relationships and bring the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly together with members of the Government of this United Kingdom, and indeed at times with members of the Government of the Republic of Ireland. Those mechanisms should be encouraged and worked on. If the House does not play its full role in the BIC, it should get up off its proverbial bottom and do so, and demonstrate why we, as Unionists, can be stronger not as individual components but as a whole.

I leave those points with the House. I cannot support the Bill.

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[Mr Harper]

I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. I detected that the House probably felt that that part of the debate had run its course.

My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) made a powerful speech in favour of the Union, but he cautioned about the reason why we should answer the West Lothian question. He noted that in last year’s general election, the Conservative party had a majority of seats in England and that if our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister had not led in such a bold fashion to put together this coalition, an alternative might well have caused a constitutional crisis. That suggests how important it is for the Government to deal with this issue now. It is better to deal with the question and provide a possible solution, however complex that may be, in an atmosphere of relative calm rather than to solve it hurriedly in an atmosphere of crisis. I hope that all those of a Unionist inclination—probably every Member in the House today—will agree that it is better to look at these matters sensibly and implement solutions calmly rather than wait for the crisis to happen, when significant pressure might come from English voters to solve the problem, making it more difficult to resolve it calmly and sensibly.

My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South referred to the opportunity cost of doing nothing, which might ultimately put the Union at risk. He ran through a number of what he called “perfect”—perhaps better described as “tidy”—solutions, but noted that there were good reasons to believe that they would not work. He suggested—I think it was the same conclusion as that put forward by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington—that there is no single tidy solution, but that a number of imperfect solutions could deal with the nub of the issue. I believe that a number of my hon. Friends reached the same conclusion.

My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) also rightly drew attention to the fact that there is no simple solution. He ran through a number of solutions and noted some concerns about them, including about the solution of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington, which my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset believed might face some difficult procedural problems. His key point was that people must think that any proposed solution is fair—fair to all parts of the United Kingdom. He also flagged up the potential risk of an election result in which a majority party in England was not the same as the Government at Westminster. He correctly put his finger on the fact that that would indeed constitute a risk to the Union. He argued in favour of a classic British fudge, suggesting that a party that did not have a majority in England but was in government at Westminster would need a self-denying ordinance. Perhaps some solutions could be put in place along those lines. All the issues show how complicated the problem is.

The Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire puts forward a number of solutions. There are two new duties on any Minister publishing legislation in draft. Clause 1 deals with the first duty, which is to

“ensure that the legal and financial effect of that legislation on each part of the United Kingdom is separately and clearly identified.”

The second duty, in clause 3, is to “make a statement” that the Bill is

“compatible with the principles of legislative territorial clarity, or”

if the Bill is not compatible with them, to make a similar statement where

“the government nonetheless wishes to proceed.”

This is my hon. Friend’s attempt, I think, to set out clearly in the Bill that the Government must make those judgments so that the Chair would not be drawn into controversy. The principles of legislative clarity are set out in clause 4, which states that

“every citizen of the United Kingdom has the right to see how proposed changes to the law will affect them”

and that hon. Members of this House

“have the right to see how proposed changes to the law will affect their constituents.”

I believe those are sensible principles, but I hope to persuade the House and my hon. Friend that her Bill is not necessarily the best way of advancing those objectives.

My hon. Friend has sensibly made the Bill apply only to draft legislation, to preserve the independence of Parliament from the courts, and to protect its exclusive cognisance. Had she attempted to set down in legislation how actual Bills were presented to the House, that might have opened up the opportunity for courts to involve themselves in our legislative procedures. She has avoided that danger, but the flipside is that her Bill will affect only draft legislation and, therefore, it will not affect every Bill brought to the House. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset highlighted an alternative, non-legislative solution, which is to deal with such matters in the Standing Orders of the House. He also noted the difficulties in that approach, such as not being able to entrench the provision.

By mirroring the provisions in section 19 of the Human Rights Act, which requires Ministers to make a statement of compatibility with the convention, the requirement under clause 3 of the Bill is carefully drafted so as not to fall foul of the exclusive cognisance principle. The duty is on Ministers, rather than being a legislative requirement. The flaw is that the Bill imposes requirements on Government that are already in place and with which the Government should comply. As has been noted, the Cabinet Office’s “Guide to Making Legislation” already provides that the territorial extent and application of legislation should be set out in a statement at the beginning of the explanatory notes, in whatever form of words is appropriate to the Bill. In addition, it provides that where a Bill makes different provision for the different nations of the United Kingdom, that should be outlined in the explanatory notes, setting out the territorial extent of each part of the Bill separately if necessary.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank the Minister for his perceptive comments about what I have tried to avoid in drafting the Bill. I am glad that he accepts that the principles of the Bill are sound, even if its wording might be modified by the Government in Committee, which I would welcome. The Bill moves civil service guidance on to a statutory footing, thus strengthening the whole process.

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that clarification. It comes back to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset that the Bill does nothing harmful, but nor does it take us much further forward. I start from the position, as do the Government, that we should not legislate for unnecessary matters that do not add anything.

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[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank all Members on both sides of the House for their excellent contributions today. The debate has been extremely interesting, and we have heard widespread support for the Bill’s intentions. We have also heard a range of objections, however, such as from the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), but I think his fears are unjustified; we are on his side here. By not talking about this, we would run into as many difficulties as we might through some of the solutions he fears. I urge him to support the Bill on Second Reading, as I think that if it progresses that will serve to get some of the issues out in the open, and not bury them, which I think would be worse for his case in the long term.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), put up a series of straw men—or ghouls and ghosties—that do not apply to the Bill. I therefore feel sure that he will support the Bill—[Interruption.] I may have misread his intentions, in which case I ask him to forgive me.

My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) made some supportive comments, but he also rightly raised concerns about some of the subsequent issues that this House might still have to grapple with. I am not, by any means, pretending that this Bill solves all those issues, but his description of it as “pointless” rankles. The very fact that we have had this excellent debate shows that it is not pointless. It would provide much greater clarity and put that on a statutory footing, and would prevent the Speaker from possibly being put in a difficult position.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I apologise if I implied that I thought the Bill was pointless. I was concerned that if it did not lead to anything else, it would be pointless, and therefore I thought it needed to go on to the subsequent events.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank my hon. Friend very much for that clarification. In an elegant speech, the Minister made similar points, saying that the Bill was good as far as it goes but that we need to go much further. I would have been much more sympathetic to his desire for me to withdraw the Bill today if he could have made some announcements or put some measures on the table that would give me confidence that his urgency on the issue was similar to that expressed by colleagues on our Benches. Having considered his kind invitation for me to withdraw the Bill, I have decided that I do not wish to do so and I ask that the Question be put.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.