Standing Orders (Public Business)

Ian C. Lucas Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I will give way twice more and then I will sit down.

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for the conversations we have had on this matter. Why is he quite prepared to exclude Members from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland from the English Grand Committee but he will not exclude English Members from the Welsh, Northern Irish and Scots Grand Committees?

[Chris Grayling]

I am not excluding the hon. Gentleman from the English Grand Committee. He will be able to speak in that Committee and to vote on Bills. I am simply leaving the English with a requirement to give their consent before something can happen. Where we legislate in this House for a variety of issues affecting Wales, we require a legislative consent motion from the Welsh Assembly Government. That is no different from this House seeking a legislative consent motion from the English in order to proceed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

I thank the Chairman of the Procedure Committee, on which I was privileged to serve, for preparing the report.

I want to make two points. I think the Leader of the House has heard enough from me, and I am grateful to him for his patience in listening to me. First, I intervened on him to ask why MPs from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland would be excluded from the English Grand Committee set up under these proposals, but there would be no exclusion for English MPs from the Welsh Grand Committee, the Scottish Grand Committee and the Northern Ireland Grand Committee. He gave me no answer. The reason for that is that MPs in this House are being treated differently, a point made with superb eloquence by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman).

If the Leader of the House really believes in the Union, and if he really believes in the equality of Members of Parliament in this place—I do passionately, which is why I feel strongly about this, and I hope he will forgive me for my short-temperedness at some stages in this process—then will he please see that he is giving an enormous gift to those who wish to split up the United Kingdom? I believe passionately in devolution. It is right and proper that we decentralise more within England and devolve to Wales and Scotland, but this is not the way to do it. It has been a fractious, bad-tempered and foul debate today, one that I have not enjoyed listening to, and this is just the start of the process. But the process does not address the needs of my constituents.

My second point is that I represent the constituency of Wrexham in north-east Wales, which is on the border. In my constituency—I will give one example, but I could provide the House with more—NHS services are designed to be supplied from hospitals in England, for example in Gobowen, Liverpool, Manchester and Chester. On the boards of those foundation hospitals are people who represent and are elected from the population of north Wales. The proposals will give me a second-class say on the future of those hospitals.

[Mr MacNeil]

There is a secondary issue with health. The UK always sets its health budgets for the needs of England. If Wales has a greater need, there will be no extra money sent to Wales, with consequentials going elsewhere. They are always set for England. We therefore must have a voice on this issue.

[Ian C. Lucas]

I will leave the Barnett consequential argument to others because time is very limited, but clearly it was one that was heard very often in the Procedure Committee.

My constituents, who get their services from specialist hospitals in England, need to have representation through me, speaking on their behalf, in connection with those hospitals. If the proposals go through and the England Grand Committee excludes me from speaking on their behalf, my constituents will not have a voice in this Parliament. To my knowledge, this process is unprecedented. The Leader of the House knows I will not have the opportunity to move amendments in that Committee in connection with the future of, for example, those hospitals. That is the situation. I have spoken to my constituents and they believe very strongly that that is wrong.

[Kevin Brennan]

My hon. Friend has studied this very closely. Can he answer the point I was trying to make earlier? How can it possibly be envisaged that this will not interfere with the Prime Minister’s ability to make a Crown appointment of a Minister, when any Minister from a Welsh constituency, for example, who is appointed a Minister to a Department would be unable to participate in the Committee stage of a Bill he was promoting in Parliament? Is that not a nonsense?

[Ian C. Lucas]

It is a nonsense, and it is unprecedented. It will mean that an individual from outside England cannot be a Minister and move amendments in Committee on what is defined as an England-only Bill. If that is not creating two different classes of Member, I do not know what is.

This is the third version of amended Standing Orders—it came out last week after the Procedure Committee reported—and it is extremely complex. I have tabled two amendments to illustrate my two points, although I have not read them out because they would have taken up my entire four-minute allocation of time. None the less, the Standing Orders are horrifically complex and dangerous, and they go to the heart of the Union.

[Dr Philippa Whitford]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian C. Lucas]

I only have 58 seconds left, so I cannot, I am afraid.

These changes, which go to the heart of the Union, will probably go through today with the support of Conservative MPs from England, but I think they will rue this day, because they are giving an enormous gift to Welsh and Scottish nationalists. This will foster their grievances and build resentment. It is ill judged and wrong, and I will oppose it till my dying day. If the party opposite really is the Conservative and Unionist party, it should not support this dreadful set of Standing Orders.