English Votes for English Laws

Lord Tyler Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pretty pathetic self-regulated House that cannot even allocate appropriate time to such an important issue as this. I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Butler, that there is every difference in the world between giving English MPs a voice and giving them a veto. That was, of course, what the McKay commission, to which I gave evidence, identified at the very outset. I simply do not understand why this Government have ignored the advice of the McKay commission.

I endorse absolutely the suggestion that this is an appropriate issue for a Joint Committee of both Houses because it clearly affects the process by which all of us examine legislation at both ends of the building. That would be the traditional way forward, and I hope that the Leader of the House will give us an assurance that that will be looked at seriously.

In the mean time, I suggest that this issue has much wider implications for our constitution. I have constantly heard from the other side of the House suggestions that we have been far too ad hoc and piecemeal when looking at issues of this sort. Surely this is the time for the Government to commit themselves to a convention. But we must have some agreement about the purpose of a convention because the Scottish convention, at the outset, already had a clear remit, with agreement from all participants. That is one of the reasons why the Scottish nationalists and Conservatives did not agree to that convention. We should, at the outset, have agreement on what we should be doing.

There are considerable constitutional implications to the proposed veto, to which my noble and learned friend, with his experience of Scottish devolution, will refer in a moment. This is not a minor issue for one end of this building.