English Votes for English Laws

Helen Whately Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I say candidly to my right hon. Friend that I do not know what hope there is. He and I served on the Scottish Grand Committee back in the early 2000s, when it met for the last time, and it was not a model of how to consider the issues under discussion.

The Government are trying to create a quasi-English Parliament within the confines of the unitary Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It seems to me that they just cannot be bothered to do the work. They cannot be bothered to go around their nation, consult and have a dialogue with the people, work with partners, build up the conversation and then have a referendum, as we did in Scotland.

I ask the Leader of the House to imagine what would happen if we did not have a Scottish Parliament and we wanted to do this. We would just say to English Members, “Get out of the way while we have our Scottish Parliament here!” It is almost laughable to suggest such a thing, but that is exactly what the Government want to do—they want to create a quasi-English Parliament in the confines of our unitary Parliament. That is not on. If they want an English Parliament, they should go and create it and then deliver it.

Conservative Members are saying that English votes for English laws was the most important issue on the doorstep but, at the same time, that there is no demand for an English Parliament, so what they want is several servings of the biggest cake in the world and to have that Parliament here by changing the rules of the House of Commons. It is not good enough to try to use our Parliament—the Parliament that belongs to every citizen in the United Kingdom—as their quasi-Parliament. I appeal to the Leader of the House to look at the issue.

It is fantastic that the proposal is about saving the Union, but the Government could not have designed better plans to drive Scotland out of the Union. Their sense of victory when they narrowly won the referendum will be short-lived if they continue to pursue this proposal.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman has given his strong views on foxhunting, but he has still not explained why he thinks it would have been appropriate for Scottish MPs to vote on the proposed amendments.

[Pete Wishart]

We did not vote on them, because the Tories withdrew them. I do not think I could have been clearer about why we intended to vote on foxhunting. We could not have got any more interest in it from Scotland—we were absolutely flooded with requests, not just from our constituents but from English constituents.