Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman]

I stand corrected. I am sorry, I was seduced by the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald).

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

On the issues raised by the amendment, my hon. Friend said a minute ago that she suspected that the real motivation behind the Bill was not just to specify whether a Bill applied to England, Scotland or Northern Ireland only, but to lead to a situation where certain MPs could not vote on those Bills. If she has any doubt about that, the BBC reported yesterday that the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin)

“hoped that this would allow it to become accepted practice that Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs would not vote on England-only bills.”

If that is what she really wants, would it not be better to have a Bill to that effect for us to discuss and debate, rather than one that tries to introduce such a measure through the back door?

[Helen Goodman]

That is exactly right. This is a campaigning Bill; it is not a serious Bill. The hon. Lady cannot possibly expect the House to support this ill-conceived Bill, which would not even do what she wants.

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[Mark Lazarowicz]

This is a rather odd discussion, given that there is a certain lack of transparency about what is really happening today. The hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) has already suggested on the BBC that this is really about MPs from outside England not being able to vote on matters that are said to be English-only. We also know that the Government have proposed establishing a commission on the so-called West Lothian question. No doubt, at the end of the day, having listened to all the arguments, the hon. Lady will solemnly announce that she has been persuaded to withdraw her Bill and support the Government’s commission. I therefore feel that the debate has a somewhat unreal nature, as we should be debating the real concerns that Members from England might have about the way in which the business of the House is conducted. We have the Bill before us today, however, and I want to say something about the generality of the legislation and how one of the amendments would make it better. The Opposition’s duty must be to improve a Bill, especially when we think that it is a bad one.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman referred to the “so-called” West Lothian question. Does he not think that there is a real problem with the unfairness of Scottish Members of Parliament being able to vote on matters that affect my constituents but do not affect their own?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

There is certainly an issue, but whether it is as broad as the hon. Gentleman suggests is another question. Whether the entire constitutional nature of the House should be changed as a result of it is also a matter for debate. If there is a matter to be addressed, the only way to solve it, in my view, is to set up an English Parliament or assemblies in all the regions of England. This Bill is more damaging than its supporters realise. Under the guise of simply providing for certificates stating which parts of the UK will be affected by a Bill, it is trying to achieve by the back door the outcome that the hon. Gentleman supports. That is not the right way in which to debate this issue.

[Oliver Heald]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned the West Lothian question. Can it be right that a Scottish Member can vote on English matters when an English Member has no such reciprocal right? Can he answer that question?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I must stay in order while answering that question, Mr Deputy Speaker. I referred to the “so-called” West Lothian question because it is not simply about West Lothian; it applies also to west Belfast, west Cardiff and even west London, in that certain matters relating to Greater London have been devolved to the London assembly. I accept that the hon. Gentleman is asking a reasonable question, but the Bill does not provide an appropriate way of dealing with it.

The Bill, rather than creating constitutional symmetry that would apply beautifully to all parts of the UK, would seriously affect the way in which the House operates and the ability of all Members to participate in debates. This question deserves an answer. I represent a Scottish constituency, and I am interested in how these issues apply to the UK as a whole, but if Members in England really feel strongly about this, I would argue again that the answer involves another measure, rather than creating two kinds of Member in this House.

[Helen Goodman]

Does my hon. Friend agree that another technical defect—I hope the amendments made this clear, but perhaps they did not—is that the hon. Lady has not done with her own Bill what she is suggesting that Ministers should do with every Bill? There is no explanation of how her Bill would apply in each of the jurisdictions, or of what financial burdens it would create. She cannot do that for this tiny Bill, yet she intends to impose a massive bureaucratic burden, which is something that I thought the Government were opposed to.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I have sympathy with the hon. Member for West Worcestershire, given the difficulties involved in introducing a private Member’s Bill; I introduced three over the years, having been lucky enough to come up in the draw. We are obviously in a different position from Governments in the level of support available and the amount of information that we can put before the House. I do not want to criticise her too much, but it would have been helpful if she had provided a background paper to support the Bill, rather than simply relying on the material supplied by the House of Commons Library. I apologise if she did produce such a paper and I have not seen it.

In regard to amendment 6, there are a number of important issues about how the Bill would work. A great many pieces of legislation that pass through the House simply cannot be categorised as English-only, Scottish-only, Welsh-only or Northern Irish-only Bills. A large number of Bills overlap in various ways. Most Bills on transport affect transport in England but are likely to have knock-on effects on other parts of the UK. We debated the Health and Social Care Bill this week and although it primarily covers England and Wales, the provisions on abortion would have applied to the United Kingdom. Every measure that has spending implications will have consequential effects on every part of the UK because of the Barnett formula.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman knows that I do not vote on English-only legislation. It is relatively straightforward: we examine a Bill, assess it for the Scottish interest—no one is more keen than I on the Scottish interest—and if it predominantly and overwhelmingly concerns England, we do not vote on it.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I do not want to go over old intra-Scottish debates, but I recollect the hon. Gentleman and some of his colleagues voting on a Thames tunnel Bill. Its connection to Scotland seemed remote. However, let us leave that aside. I do not know whether he participated in the Olympics Bill—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We are drifting once again. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will not be tempted further and will stick to the amendments.

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[Mark Lazarowicz]

I confess that I was tempted to reply. I shall restrain my responses, even if the interventions are off the point.

[Pete Wishart]

We vote on issues that have a Scottish interest, and so should the hon. Gentleman, but there are many Bills in the current Session alone on which there has been no Scottish National party vote: the Academies Bill, the Education Bill, the Health and Social Care Bill, and the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill. If there is no predominant Scottish interest, we do not vote on it.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

There may have been no SNP vote on the Health and Social Care Bill, but the abortion counselling measures would have applied to Scotland. The hon. Gentleman is not being consistent.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

As a Welsh Conservative Member, I feel that the Bill gives us an important, legitimate opportunity to ask ourselves whether we can contribute to a debate when there are consequences, to consider those consequences and to decide whether we are imposing on English affairs or taking part in a discussion that will also affect Wales.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

That comment may support my position. Let us take the argument to the next stage: if the hon. Gentleman was asked not to vote on a Bill that had financial consequences, it would put him in a difficult position with his constituents if he chose to ignore those implications.

It is not simply that many Bills are more complex than they first seem in their implications for the UK as a whole; I am also concerned about the way in which the measure would fundamentally change the workings of the House.

[Oliver Heald]

Does the hon. Gentleman realise that we already have a procedure for certifying that a Bill is Scottish—

[Oliver Heald]

Yes. We did it for years. Those Bills created no real difficulty. My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire offers an additional opportunity through the draft Bill process for any cases on the margins. It is not a question of changing our procedures. We already have a procedure that deals with the matter for Scotland, so why not have one for England?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The hon. Gentleman knows that the procedure to which he refers does not in any sense imply that Members outside Scotland cannot vote on the final stages of measures. The Bill is very much the thin end of the wedge and would create two classes of Members of Parliament. That is my fundamental concern.

A Government could have a majority that depends on votes in Scotland, Wales or northern England—people assume that that would be a Labour Government, but politics change, and what happens in 10, 20, 30 or 40 years may not be what people expect from today’s politics. After all, some 60 years ago, the Conservative party had a majority of seats and votes in Scotland, so we must think of the long-term consequences. If a Government had a UK majority in the House that depended on votes outside England, Bills that applied “only to England”, on which Members outside England could not vote, would need to be supported by the Opposition. The Government would therefore not be the Government for large parts of the legislative programme. Opposition spokespeople would be the de facto Ministers for Education, Health and so on for England, and the real UK Ministers could not perform their roles because they would effectively not command a majority in the House. That would move us towards a position whereby there were two Governments in the House: a UK Government and a second Government formed by the shadow Front Bench for those “English-only” matters where there was no majority for that Government. We would reach that position if we followed the route of not allowing Members of Parliament outside England to vote on specific matters.

My position is clear. If there is genuine concern among people in England—I accept that there may well be—it should be addressed through proper devolution, and perhaps a proper English Parliament, not by trying to tinker with arrangements in this House in such a way as to undermine its working.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman was a strong advocate of Scottish devolution in the 1990s. One of the arguments of the pro-devolutionists was that, when there was a UK majority in the House but Scotland voted another way, there was a democratic deficit. If that was correct for Scotland, why does the same not apply to England?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

If I were to try to answer that question, I would go beyond the amendment. I might be able to address that point on Third Reading, if it is made again.

I am concerned that the Bill might lead to the creation of two Governments in the House. It is liable to lead to genuine disagreement, tension and political division between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. I do not want that to happen. I strongly support a Scottish Parliament and devolution elsewhere in the UK, but I want us to remain together as one UK. That is why there is a fundamental flaw in the concept of two classes of Member in the House. That was a preamble to considering amendment 6, which would at least improve the position.

[Pete Wishart]

May we please nail the notion of two classes of MP? There are two classes. All Whitehall Departments relate to Government Members on behalf of their constituents but only some relate to me and the hon. Gentleman on behalf of our constituents. Other matters are devolved to the Scottish Parliament and are the responsibility of Scottish Ministers. We should be relaxed about two classes of MP and just get on with it.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

There are probably more than 600 classes of MP, given that we all have different interests and concerns. However, the hon. Gentleman must accept that if a Government depended on a majority from outside England and could not win votes on English-only matters, they could not operate as a Government for specific issues and we would eventually have two Governments in the House. It is the inevitable consequence of the measure.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Those points do not need to be answered. We must get back to the amendments.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am sure that all Members on both sides of the House work as hard as they can for their constituents.

I have tried not to be diverted too much from the amendments, although, understandably, there have been a number of attempts to persuade me to deal with wider issues. Amendment 6 is at least an improvement on a bad provision, which not only implies that there will effectively be two Governments and two classes of MP, but does not make clear whether it applies only to primary legislation or, in addition, to secondary legislation, amendments to primary legislation and, indeed, private Members’ Bills. The amendment does at least try to make a bad Bill more consistent, and I hope that the House will support it. In fact, I hope that the entire Bill is thrown out on Third Reading, or following its passage through the House of Lords.

There is an important debate to be had on this issue. The amendments are intended to highlight some of the difficulties raised by the Bill, but I feel that if we are to have a debate on law-making in relation to MPs with constituencies outside England when it comes to decisions that apply only in England, we should debate that issue in its generality. Let us have a proper debate on whether there should be some matters on which MPs outside England should not vote, rather than cloaking that issue in discussions about a certificate. Let us deal with the real issue, rather than with what I consider to be a bogus issue and a diversion from the real concern that I accept is felt by some Members.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I am pleased to learn that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) does not propose to press her amendment. If I followed her argument correctly, amendments 8 and 14 would extend the effect of my Bill beyond what it was carefully drafted to do. I do not think that they are necessary, and I hope that we can move swiftly on to the next stage of the Bill.

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[Thomas Docherty]

I assure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, that there is no danger of my using up my Third Reading speech at this stage, but, if I heard you correctly at the time, you allowed an exchange to take place about the Bills listed by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire—and there were some nods of agreement on the opposite Benches—in whose passage the Scottish National party and others had decided not to participate. Those parties, however, did decide to participate in debates on Bills that Government Members—and, crucially, a Secretary of State—might consider not to apply to Scotland. The most obvious example was the tuition fees legislation. I will not repeat the arguments contained in it, but when it was going through the House of Commons in, I believe, December, not only the SNP but the Welsh and Irish nationalists and the Ulster Unionists took part in the debate. A Secretary of State who may not know that that will happen when he or she publishes a draft Bill for consultation will surely, once the presentation stage is reached, have a much clearer idea of whether his or her statement was accurate, and whether Scottish Members should be allowed to participate.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

That is a very good example of how the presentation stage could cause confusion. It is hard to see how the English tuition fees legislation would not have constituted England-only legislation had the definition in this Bill been adopted. It would surely have been outrageous if Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had not been able to vote on it.

[Thomas Docherty]

Indeed. That is one of the two most obvious examples in the current Parliament of the difference between the appearance of legislation in its draft form which has not yet been subjected to the consultation that is so critical and its appearance at the presentation stage, when it is recognised that Members from all parts of the United Kingdom should be able to vote on it. The other example is, as I say, the Scotland Bill. One would assume, given the title of that Bill, that Conservative Members would have taken no part in those proceedings, yet I am fairly certain that the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and I had a lively exchange on railways powers, which is a matter entirely for Westminster. That is where the power sits at the moment. The measure was about handing over a power. There is no better example of where there would be huge confusion than debates about the handing over of powers.

Another example we have been dealing with in recent weeks is police commissioners and the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill. Again, one might at draft stage say, “That is a matter for English and Welsh Members because powers on policing are covered by that.” However, it is possible, for example, that some territorial powers might have been granted.

Let me give an example in relation to future police powers. As the House will know, the Metropolitan police have responsibility for counter-terrorism and the commissioner of the week will be responsible for that. It is possible that we would have a police Bill that deals largely, for example, with the merging of police forces in England and/or Wales, but that has a chunk that deals with counter-terrorism and the powers of the Metropolitan police as they affect Scotland and perhaps Northern Ireland. That might get added somewhere between the consultation stage and the presentation stage. That is why the measure is flawed.

I would be grateful if the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) could answer one question, if she is not getting pastoral care from her Front-Bench colleagues, who I think are giving her some helpful advice. She talks about the Secretary of State providing statements. Will she clarify whether the measure would equally apply to private Members’ Bills and, if so, who would provide the statements on those? Would it be the hon. Lady in her current capacity, although I am sure that one day she will be a Secretary of State? Is the measure purely about Government Bills, or is it also about Bills that are dealt with on a Friday?

[Thomas Docherty]

That leads to another important point. I have huge sympathy with the arguments both ways and I will avoid getting drawn on another issue, but if that were not the position, the Government could, like in the 1960s, put a lot of contentious legislation—Jenkins did this in particular—in private Members' Bills that were effectively Government Bills. I know that there is always a temptation with newish Members to give them nice, easy private Members' Bills. If we take, for example, a ten-minute rule Bill, we get a dummy Bill that does not have any clauses. It is only at the presentation stage that there is some consultation. That is why it is important, given, if I understand it correctly, that the hon. Lady, with the Minister’s support, is saying that the Bill would equally apply—

[Mark Lazarowicz]

So one could have a situation where, shall we say, a UK-wide Government were against privatisation of the health service, but the majority of English MPs were in favour and voted it through, and then a private Member's Bill could be used to reverse the decision of a majority of English MPs. That does not sound like a helpful or consistent way of managing parliamentary business.

[Thomas Docherty]

I think, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you would call me to order if I were tempted down that path. I certainly will not get drawn on that, but I do not think that that is the case. The hon. Lady has made it clear that the provisions apply equally to private Members' Bills and ten-minute rule Bills. I have sympathy with the argument that it should apply to those, but if there is a reason why the procedure needs to take place at presentation stage, it is that effectively we do not have a draft consultation stage.

To give an example, I have a Bill scheduled for January and I know that the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and I will debate it on 20 January. It went through the ten-minute rule Bill procedure. There was not much consultation because it was a ten-minute rule Bill procedure; that was before the presentation stage. There certainly was not a draft Bill at any stage. That is where the hon. Lady, as well intentioned as her Bill is, has left a loophole in her provisions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) was talking about the Mersey tunnel. That is a good example. There are others to do with railway infrastructure projects. From the title of a Bill, one may believe initially that it affects the whole UK, because it is about financial compensation. However, by the time one gets to the guts of the Bill and it is presented, one finds that the reverse is true and that it is predominantly an English matter. For example, let us take the Bill that will, if it goes ahead, be required for High Speed Rail 2. I imagine that we will have a Bill that will cover the section from London to Birmingham. At the draft stage, it might be a predominantly UK matter, because of the financial elements, but by the time the Government bring it to the presentation stage, they will have added so much to it, understandably, that the statement given at the start will be significantly out of date. That is why it is so important that the amendments that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland have tabled and that the Speaker has selected—amendments 3, 6, 8 and 14—try to tighten the Bill.

I know that, when the Minister replies he will make a suggestion, and again I have sympathy for him. I am not sure whether it helps him when I say this, but I find him to be a very effective Minister who is on top of his brief, which helps when one’s boss is the Deputy Prime Minister, because someone should be. I am sure that the Minister will have constructed a reasoned and thoughtful argument. He is very good at getting off his brief and still being able to cope, which not every Minister can do. I suspect that he will advance the argument about the interference of the courts in the proceedings of the House. I suspect, if I were to stray into certain territories about the power of the courts versus this place or the other place, and discuss that, you, Mr Deputy Speaker, would rightly pull me sharply back into line.

May I say to the Minister, because I am not sure that I will get the chance to respond to his arguments afterwards, that I fear that the provisions are slightly 11th hour and I would be grateful if he spent a bit of time setting out in what ways he believes the courts would have the right to intervene significantly in this area, because I am yet to understand what it is he feels would lead to that situation? I am conscious that the Minister will require a bit of time to respond to the debate, and I hope that he will give way to us so we can have that exchange.

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[Mr Harper]

The Bill would apply only to draft legislation. In the past, not much legislation was presented in draft form. Some technical and controversial measures were, but many were not. That has been the case under all previous Administrations. The current Government have a good record, however, in that we publish an increasing amount of legislation in draft. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is encouraging ministerial colleagues to continue that trend and, for example, the Deputy Prime Minister and I published draft legislation in respect of a House of Lords Bill and draft clauses on individual electoral registration that have been consulted on by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

At the risk of doing even more damage to the Minister’s political career, may I say that his arguments against the Opposition amendments are persuasive and correct and I am therefore glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) has suggested she will not call for a Division? Given the scope of the issues addressed by the amendments, will he confirm that the commission the Government will set up will not do a rush job, but will be comprehensive and take all the time it needs to look in detail at all the issues? As the Minister rightly points out, these are not simple issues, and if there are going to be changes—I am not convinced about that—we must not have changes that do not stand the test of time.

[Mr Harper]

While we are discussing these amendments on Report, I will limit my remarks, or else I think Mr Deputy Speaker will call me out of order. The issues are indeed complex. There is a limited range of solutions, and they are well known, but we must make sure that we have thought through the consequences, particularly pertaining to how this House operates. That is why the Government will set up a commission to look into these issues. Perhaps on Third Reading, Mr Deputy Speaker will allow me to say a little more about that, and allow Members to ask questions about the written ministerial statement I tabled yesterday.

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[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman touches on another point: although this House has, through the devolution settlement, passed the power to legislate in certain areas to the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly, it is still possible for the House to legislate in those areas. The House has said that it will do that with the consent of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, which is exactly what happens. It is possible for this House to legislate in areas that are devolved if it goes through that consultative process and secures the agreement of the devolved legislatures.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Does that not highlight the problem with the reverse situation highlighted in the Bill? There is no way in which MPs for England could express their consent for Scottish MPs in this House voting on English-only measures, unless we had some kind of English-only Parliament. That shows, does it not, how we cannot have a situation in which MPs from outside England are in some way barred from voting on matters that are said to affect England only.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman is leaping into solution space, but he is right. I agreed with one thing he said in an exchange with my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), when he referred to the so-called West Lothian question. That was helpful as the West Lothian question is called that because it was raised by the then Member for West Lothian, but we are really talking about how we deal with legislating for England in a country that has devolution. That is not very catchy, and if any Members can think of a more catchy way of describing the West Lothian question that encapsulates its nature in a way that will resonate with people, they could perhaps suggest it to me.

Let me give one more straightforward example of an extent clause. It was in a Bill for which I was responsible, which is now an Act of Parliament: the well-supported Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. The Act applied for the most part throughout the United Kingdom, with a limited exception. Part of schedule 3 extended only to Great Britain and one part extended only to Northern Ireland as a result of the different electoral arrangements. It had a very short extent section but meant that Members were very clear about where it had effect.

I hope I have set out for the House why we do not support the amendments. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland has already said that she will not press them to a vote, but this has been a helpful debate to flesh out some of the concerns about this approach. She has done the House a service through her amendments, as has my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire by allowing the House to debate these important matters.

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[Harriett Baldwin]

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

Let me start my remarks by reassuring Opposition Members about a number of things that are not in the Bill and say that—surprise, surprise—both the BBC and The Guardian occasionally misreport things. I want to reassure everyone here that I am a whole-hearted supporter of the Union. I have referred before in the Chamber to the memory of my late, lamented grandmother, Flora McLean McLeod Morison, from the Isle of Skye, and I think that that will go a long way towards reassuring everybody what a strong supporter I am of the Union, being a physical embodiment of it myself.

I also want to reassure everybody that I support the trajectory that we have been on over the past 10 or 15 years in terms of devolution. I think that all decisions, as we are seeing with the Localism Bill, should be made at the lowest possible level in terms of the people whom they affect. That brings democracy close to the people who are affected by laws, so I am wholeheartedly in favour of devolution. I also want to reassure Opposition Members that there is nothing in my Bill that would create two classes of MP. That has been a characteristic of previous attempts by colleagues to resolve this question, but that situation is clearly not acceptable. We cannot have an answer that relies on two classes of MP at Westminster, and the Bill deliberately avoids anything along those lines.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the constructive way in which she is presenting her Bill, but if she does not want to create two classes of MP, what is the purpose of certifying legislation in this way? What would happen if a Bill were stated to be English only? Why is she saying this, if she is not expecting MPs in some way to be disbarred from taking part in discussions and voting on such issues? What is the purpose behind her Bill?

[Harriett Baldwin]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall be going into great detail on that point.

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[Harriett Baldwin]

I think the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), sets an absolutely marvellous example in all respects, as one would expect me to say. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, who represents the Scottish nationalists, will be delighted with the Scotland Bill that my right hon. Friend is helping to bring forward in this Parliament; he is being very uncharitable to my right hon. Friend.

This is an urgent problem that needs to be resolved in this Parliament. To make my point, I need refer colleagues and Opposition Members back only as far the last general election when, as we know, no party got an overall majority in this Parliament and there were negotiations between not only the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties but between the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats. At that time, there was talk of a rainbow coalition of parties that might come together at Westminster, and I remember the upsurge of resentment in the correspondence that I received as a representative of what I like to think of as the heart of England about how completely undemocratic it would be to have a situation in which English-only legislation came through the House relying for support on a majority of MPs from other parts of the United Kingdom.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Is not this getting to the heart of the issue, because the logic of what the hon. Lady is saying is that if that situation had developed, some MPs should not have been allowed to vote on England-only matters? This is not just about a certificate; she is going down the road of trying to bar MPs from outside England voting on such issues. That is very divisive to the whole nature of this House and the constitution.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the wording in the Bill: there is nothing in it that would prevent him from continuing to vote on English matters, should he so choose. However, if a piece of legislation came forward and he could be confident, as a result of this Bill, that the measures in it would have no effect whatever on his constituents, he might feel comfortable writing to his constituents and saying, “Having looked closely at this piece of legislation, I feel comfortable that I might abstain from voting on it.”

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[Harriett Baldwin]

I will not digress down that particular historical byway.

Let me get back to the Bill, which does three simple things.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way such a lot—this is a very important Bill for us all. Is her position really that if a Bill affects one part of the UK, it should not be supported if the majority of MPs from that part of the UK are not behind it?

[Harriett Baldwin]

My position is an English position. As a representative of an English constituency, I think that an increasingly large amount of the legislation that comes before the House affects England only and that if the House continues not to tackle this issue, it will increasingly become one that our constituents find extremely distressing.

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[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank my hon. Friend for that Welsh perspective and that support for the principles of the Bill.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Does not the issue of HS2 illustrate how impractical and divisive this attempt to divide the House would be, even if only in terms of indicating where a Bill applies? The legislation on HS2 may appear to affect only England, with trains going to Manchester and Liverpool, but the trains, hopefully, will go north to Scotland, and will also go to north Wales. In many areas it is not possible to make a simple division into Scotland-only and English-only Bills. It would divide the House and divide the way in which it operates.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I am not saying, am I, that a lot of legislation will have those characteristics, but some legislation will, and there will be more and more of it as we devolve more and more powers to other parts of the UK. So why not know about that when such legislation comes before the House? Indeed, as the hon. Gentleman points out with his example, there may well be knock-on consequences for other parts of the UK, in which case that would be very apparent to him.

I was mentioning some of the eminent minds that have informed the Bill. I also drew heavily on a piece of work that was done by the Conservative party in opposition. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) is now Secretary of State for Justice, but in those days he chaired the democracy taskforce. He prepared a committee that included my hon. Friends the Members for Chichester (Mr Tyrie) and for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) and none other than our distinguished Leader of the House. They came up with recommendations for dealing with the democratic deficit on this constitutional issue.

One suggestion was that Standing Orders might be used. Some of the examples given mentioned Standing Order No. 97, which was formerly used to deal with Scotland-only legislation. As I understand it, however, some of the academic reaction was that it might put the Speaker in a very awkward position, were he asked to certify that a piece of legislation applied to England only.

The Bill is designed to address that challenge for the Speaker, because we would certainly not want to politicise the Chair. Goodness me, this is so far above my pay grade that I feel I should not be trespassing on these areas at all, but the provision of more information in draft legislation would make it easier for the Speaker to use his powers or to allow the House to agree changes recommended by the Procedure Committee in 1999— I am sure the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) will allude to that in a moment—to alter some of the Standing Orders to allow certification of Bills as applying to other parts of the UK.

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[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful to have caught your eye on Third Reading, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I commend the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) on having her Bill reach this stage. I suspect that if her colleagues in the Government had expected it to get this far, they might have taken an interest in publishing the commission paper slightly earlier than yesterday afternoon, but as a mere Opposition MP, I cannot comment on the exact machinations that led the Deputy Prime Minister suddenly—yesterday afternoon, on the eve of this debate—to publish his West Lothian commission paper, which we will return to.

I am a sceptic, not about why the Bill was brought forward, or about the motivation of the hon. Member for West Worcestershire, but about the motivations of many of her colleagues, who are, frankly, in my view, just really bad losers. Since the mid-1950s, the vote of what is currently called the Conservative party in Scotland has collapsed. It is worth noting that if Mr Murdo Fraser MSP gets his way, there genuinely will be no Scottish Conservative politicians in Scotland. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and I were just reminiscing, because we served our parties, alongside Mr Fraser, in North Tayside, as it was then called, in 2001. Murdo has been consistent in his views about an effectively autonomous Scottish Conservative party.

The whole debate comes back to the fact that the Conservatives could not win a raffle in Scotland. As a result of the way in which their policies have gone down, and because they opposed devolution in 1997—and probably right through until about 2007 or 2008—they have lost the support of the Scottish people. Unfortunately for the Conservative party, which claims to be staunchly Unionist, and a staunch defender of the United Kingdom and its parliamentary system, it does not like the fact that one part of the United Kingdom consistently votes against it. It is worth noting the work of the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb)—I congratulate him on it—in helping to rebuild the Welsh Conservative party. [Interruption.] Sorry, there are two Welsh Conservative MPs here. As a Scottish MP, the concept of there being two Conservatives from a devolved Administration area is baffling. In fact, I think that there are eight now.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

My hon. Friend is being unfair; at least one of the hon. Gentlemen on the Conservative Benches has helped to revive two parties in Wales in his political activities. On the point about the Scottish Conservative party, is not the interesting point about the logic of the Bill of the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) that she appears to be saying that a measure should not really apply to a part of the UK if it does not have majority support in that part of the UK? What about the Budget, for example? Does that mean that the UK Budget would not apply in Scotland unless the majority of Scottish MPs decided it would, and would the same go in Wales and Northern Ireland?

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I suspect that Mr Fraser would like to have that debate. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire is a sensible man—on occasion he is a Dunfermline Athletic fan, and he played in a half-decent band, so he has occasional good judgment—but I disagree with him and Mr Fraser, because Scottish Conservatives, as such, now believe in full fiscal autonomy, it would appear. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) is absolutely right: under that proposal, there would be separate Budgets from the Chancellor for those measures that apply to Scotland only, and those that apply to the rest of the United Kingdom.

The hon. Member for West Worcestershire talked about her great desire, which I think is genuine, to have decisions made at the lowest level of government. I notice—I went out and checked—that in proceedings on the Scotland Bill, she voted not to devolve power over the railways to the Scottish Parliament; that did not quite seem to fit with her logic. I suspect that there are several other cases where Conservatives claim to believe in giving greater power to Scotland, but in proceedings on the Scotland Bill have voted against doing that. I am sure that that was simply an oversight on her part, and not an inconsistency in approach.

Lots of Bills that pass through this House, or begin up the other end of the Corridor, appear on the face of it to be England-only, or England-and-Wales-only, but have clauses inserted by the Government—or have Back Benchers on either side of the House, or our Front Benchers, attempt to insert a clause—that would apply to the whole United Kingdom. I shall give one simple example. The rules for election to the Scottish Parliament are set by this place. We determine the boundaries, and the age at which people can vote in those elections. That is clearly a matter that affects only Scotland. I cannot possibly see how that would be anything other than a matter for the Scottish people; I would be grateful if hon. Members could point out a flaw in that thinking. However, as that is part of the Scotland Bill, I think that the argument of the hon. Member for West Worcestershire would still be that she, an English MP, would vote on the Scotland Bill, and on each part and clause of it, because the Bill would have been categorised by the Secretary of State as a Bill that impacts on multiple territories. I regret to tell the hon. Lady that that inconsistency means that her Bill is not perfectly formed.

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[Thomas Docherty]

You are absolutely right, Mr Deputy Speaker. An issue that has not quite been covered in the Third Reading of the Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill is the question of what is in the minds of members of the Welsh Labour party. It is not for me to comment—that is one of the benefits of devolution—but it is valid to ask what would happen if a Secretary of State signed off a Bill but effectively said, “This is my Bill; I am not going to vote for it.” In December, as the Liberal Democrats raced through the 17 different positions that they tried to adopt on tuition fees, at one point there was a suggestion that the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills would not vote on his own legislation, which would have been completely absurd. Under the Bill—and this is an issue that the commission must address—we must consider what would happen if, as we have seen in the past, a Secretary of State introduces legislation in which they do not have any constituency interest within the four nations of the United Kingdom, never mind the question of how we define England.

I must challenge the hon. Member for West Worcestershire on what she said about understanding England. As hon. Members can tell from my accent, I did not have the privilege of a Scottish education. I was brought up in west Cumbria, and I can assure the hon. Lady that the people of west Cumbria do not believe that she understands their problems or what is best for them. I am pretty sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) would suggest that the Conservative party does not have a Scooby about the issues in the north-east of England. I am pretty sure, Mr Deputy Speaker—of course, you are entirely impartial—that other constituencies in the north of England would suggest that Conservatives do not understand them. Equally, I have heard Government Members suggest that the Labour party does not understand parts of their country. The notion that we have a single, homogenous England in all its pleasant greenness with a perfect political structure is wrong. Regrettably, that goes back to the argument about regional assemblies.

In the past few days, we have dealt with infrastructure projects. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and others have discussed the Olympics, and we have discussed Crossrail in the past. The Crossrail Bill contained many provisions that related purely to London and nearby railway lines, yet it underwent a contentious, long, laborious process. It took two years, I think, to introduce that Bill, with the support of Members from Worcestershire, Dunfermline, Berwick, Edinburgh and other areas. That was the right thing to do but, regrettably, under the Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill—and I suspect that this will be something that the commission will examine—such issues would not be dealt with. If there is a proposal to bulldoze large parts of London, the decision on whether that is right or wrong should, under the logic of the argument that the hon. Lady and other hon. Members have sought to generate, be made by London MPs.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

My recollection is that most members of the Committee that considered the Crossrail Bill were from Scotland. I think that we were being punished by the Whips for an earlier rebellion. The Crossrail issue may have been a concern for London MPs, but it was important for the entire UK, and not just because of the costs. People can fly to Heathrow or take a train to King’s Cross, where they may wish to travel on to France: those issues were integral to the Crossrail proposals, and are very much an illustration of why we cannot introduce measures that appear to be just English and then find that they go much wider than people may accept.

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a compelling argument. Indeed, as an ex-lawyer he does so much better than I ever could.

It is all about interpretation. Many people in London with strong feelings about the Crossrail Bill would have said that it had nothing to do with Members from other parts of the United Kingdom. It is, to some extent, in the eye of the beholder.

Turning to the suggestion of the hon. Member for West Worcestershire about the Secretary of State, she is a rational and reasonable individual and is a supporter of the Speaker, but it is possible that some of her colleagues are not so rational or have swivel eyes and are anti-Speaker. The measure is not designed to help the Speaker: it is about fixing the board for the game. Surely, it is in a Secretary of State’s interest, one way or the other, to determine for the benefit of their own party or of the coalition whether or not MPs of other nations should be allowed to vote.

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[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am delighted to be able to follow the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart), who has made some important points. If I did not do so earlier, I certainly add my congratulations to the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) on the way she has taken the Bill forward and tried to engage in debate on the issue. I do not for one minute underestimate or diminish the danger to the Union that could be posed by a feeling in England that the present arrangements, whereby MPs outside England can vote on these issues, are unfair to English constituents. I accept that that could undermine the strength of the Union, which I certainly would not want. However, I put it to the hon. Lady, the hon. Gentleman and other Members on the Government Benches—those who are still present—that the Bill’s proposals are equally damaging to the Union and to better governance of this place. They are very dangerous, which is why I have concerns about the Bill.

The complexity of Bills is at the heart of some of the objections to the proposals. With respect, I say to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) that that cannot just be laughed off as easily resolvable in most cases. Many pieces of legislation that appear to apply only to one part of the UK actually have implications for the rest of the UK. We have heard about high-speed rail and the health service, for example. Let us say a Bill to privatise the NHS in England were being debated in this place and the votes of Scottish MPs—even including Scottish National party MPs—were crucial. As such a Bill would clearly have possible consequences for Scotland at a future date, does the hon. Gentleman really think people would understand why we did not vote on it because it nominally applies only to England? We cannot simply write off such issues as easily addressable. Concern about Scottish MPs voting comes to a head in respect of controversial measures such as tuition fees. Such issues do not arise on only a few occasions; there are many Bills that have implications across the UK even though they affect only one part of it in direct legislative terms.

The Bill addresses certifying whether or not a Bill applies to England only. If that were all that this issue involved, it might not be so objectionable. However, the issue is not just certification; it is also voting on Bills. Do the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) and his like-minded colleagues who contributed to the debate really think that simply certifying a Bill as only applying to England but then having MPs from outside England voting on it would satisfy their constituents who have raised this issue? Their objection is not just to certification; it is also about those who vote on such Bills. I do not think this Bill will meet the concerns of those who feel they are being given an unfair deal by the post-devolution constitutional arrangements.

I therefore think the Bill would be the first stage on a short road to real pressure being applied on certain MPs not to vote on issues that only affected England. As the SNP is unlikely to form part of a coalition Government here in Westminster—although one never knows, as stranger things have happened—that might not be a problem for its Members.

[Tom Greatrex]

My hon. Friend is touching on an important point about the SNP position. In his contribution, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) suggested he would never dream of voting on English-only legislation. I had a slightly different recollection of his party’s position, however, and interestingly a check of the record reveals that on 26 April 2010 the First Minister and SNP leader, Alec Salmond, said he would, indeed, consider voting on English matters were his party to form part of a coalition.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

That proves a point.

If MPs representing constituencies outside England were barred from voting on issues affecting only England—the same position would, I assume, apply in respect of other parts of the UK as well—there might, effectively, be two Governments at Westminster. When I said that might be the case, some Government Members clearly thought I was painting an extreme picture, but the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South has more or less accepted the point. His position is that the consequence of the road down which this Bill wants to go is that a measure that applies to English-only areas could pass only if it had majority support not only from the House as a whole but among MPs in England.

In effect, that would mean that for government within England we would on many occasions end up with some kind of quasi-coalition. If a Government did not have a majority of MPs in England, they could not get their programme through. They would either have to have no programme at all or would have to depend on other parties to get a majority. That might require a new form of coalition Government—I am quite in favour of coalition-type approaches, proportional representation and the rest of it, much to the chagrin of some of my hon. Friends, but it certainly is a new road to be going down. That seems to me to be the obvious logical consequence of the position put forward by the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South.

Alternatively, if the UK Government party had a majority of seats in the UK but not in England and another had a majority of seats in England, the other party would be able to get its programme through for England on the “devolved issues” that apply to parts of the UK and we would therefore effectively have two Governments. That possibility is not that far-fetched—it is quite easy to see how different electoral arithmetic could have that result.

Any suggestion that that analysis is somehow far-fetched prompts an important question: let us say that we had a UK Labour Government who were against NHS privatisation—I am not trying to rehash earlier debates—and a Conservative Government in England who were in favour of some form of privatisation. If that Conservative party had a majority in England to force through its policies, would it not try to do so? Of course it would. It would try to represent what it thought were the best interests of the country. It is not at all inconceivable that we could end up effectively with two Governments in this House when it came to matters that applied only in England.

[Thomas Docherty]

I just want to make an observation. I have heard the remarks from Government Members about the growing sense of anger among some constituents. How much anger does my hon. Friend think there would be among the constituents of a party that was nominally in government but was unable to get its Bills through even though the Secretary of State and Prime Minister were from that party? How angry would people be then?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

They would be very angry, and would be entitled to be if they were supporters of a party that supported a UK-wide state and could not get its policies through.

The problem that not having Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish MPs voting on English-only matters raises is very real and I do not think that some Members have fully thought through its consequences. Once a Government with a majority in the House could not get through parts of their programme and if Opposition parties could get through parts of their programme, the consequences would go beyond the House of Commons and Parliament. The civil service and Departments would increasingly be put in a situation where civil servants would wonder who was in government if their Minister had executive authority over certain matters but could not guarantee getting policy through the House because Opposition parties could get theirs through. That would begin to cause some issues with how the Government’s systems operate.

Some might say that what I am saying is far-fetched, but once we go along this road the consequences can develop more quickly than some might think. That is why the proposals that are being put forward for effectively English votes only for English MPs have difficulties and dangers. They could cause the type of division, anger and animosity that would cause further tensions in the Union, which I want to maintain. I have no objections to the commission being set up by the Government on this issue, although I suspect that finding the answers to the questions will not be so easy.

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) mentioned Tam Dalyell, and of course his point in raising the West Lothian question was that he objected to devolution per se. He thought the alternatives were either a full-scale Union or the hon. Gentleman’s preferred solution. That shows how hard it is to answer this question.

We must ask whether the West Lothian question—as the Minister has pointed out, we should not call it that—is such a fundamental question that it must be addressed. If it must be addressed, is this the right way of addressing it? I suspect that the concerns underlying this matter are not really about voting but about money. There is a feeling of concern among some people in England that the financial arrangements between Scotland and the rest of the UK are somehow an unfair deal. There has been a lot of debate about this issue in the House and there is plenty of evidence that that is not the case—Scotland gets more in some respects, but then some parts of England get above the average while other parts of England get below the average. There are also all the issues about oil resources, taxation and so on to consider. Once we get into all that I suspect that the reality is that Scotland is not “subsidised” in the way that people suggest. A bit more transparency may address some of those issues, so that is something to welcome in the work that Treasury Ministers are doing. If spending, which I suspect is the real issue rather than voting, could be addressed, that would resolve some of the concerns.

On the voting issue, I wonder whether the problem is really so great that it requires this solution. The Union has never been a perfect, symmetrical arrangement. From 1603, and the Union of the Crowns, and from 1707 with the treaty of Union there have been lots of anomalies, which have come about primarily because there is one big member—England—and smaller members in the Union. People have tried to get perfect symmetry over the years but have not been able to achieve that. Do we really need that perfect symmetry if the cost is to be disruption of the kind that these measures would cause to the way that this place operates and to the government of the UK? If the issue is really so great that it requires a solution that is going to address it completely, the only answer will be something like an English Parliament or Assembly with devolution to England of those issues that are currently devolved to Scotland, Wales and so on. I suspect however that that would not solve many of the concerns of those hon. Members who want to address this issue. If the West Lothian question has to be answered, that is probably the only way. I certainly am not convinced that it can be met.

I am not closing my mind to any of the suggestions that might come from the commission that the Minister is going to set up, but I heartily endorse the view of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire that it should not be just an internal, Westminster parliamentary commission but that it should draw on expertise from all the devolved regions of the UK. It should draw on academic and political expertise. I accept that it should not be something that goes on for years and years, eventually disappearing into the long grass, but it needs to be done comprehensively and in the round. This issue may seem relatively minor in terms of how it can be addressed in parliamentary terms, but once we go down this road there is a real risk that we will undermine the fundamental nature of the House and the way that we govern, thereby causing further tension between different parts of the Union, which is the last thing that any of us who want to keep the Union alive want to happen.

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[Mr Leigh]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, because that point was the one grain of truth in his speech. It increasingly worries me, because I wonder whether we are wrongly politicising the problem. We all know that the Bill, like all private Members’ Bills, is fundamentally a campaigning Bill. We acknowledge our debt to my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), because she has achieved a huge amount through her campaign by actually getting a commission set up, even though it is entirely unnecessary.

I understand the point made by the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife. If I thought that the Bill, if enacted, would tie the hands of the House and politicise the process in such a way that a Conservative Education Secretary could determine that a Bill was exclusively English and therefore stop any Scottish Member voting on it, I would have my doubts. However, while my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire may tell me that her Bill is more ambitious than I believe, I can read only what it states:

“The Secretary of State must, when publishing draft legislation, ensure that the legal and financial effect of that legislation on each part of the United Kingdom is separately and clearly identified.”

The Bill does not say that the Secretary of State will decide whether a Bill is exclusively English; all that will happen is that there will be more knowledge. The Speaker would make his determination, but even after that, if my proposal were accepted, the Minister, in consultation with the other parties, could decide that a Bill—relating, say, to tuition fees—should be discussed on the Floor of the House. There is absolutely no problem or difficulty about it.

Hundreds of thousands of words have been talked about the West Lothian question—about how it will divide us, and about how there would be two classes of Member and all the rest of it. That is complete nonsense; we have always had several classes of Member. There have always been Ministers and Back Benchers. There has always been the Scottish Grand Committee, and nobody has said that it would lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. The Speaker issuing a certificate to say that a Bill is exclusively about English education will not break up the United Kingdom. It is so simple; why do the Government not do it?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I do not think that the Bill that put into effect the poll tax in Scotland went to the Scottish Grand Committee, but the hon. Gentleman was here then, and I was not, and I may be wrong in my understanding. For lots of entirely non-controversial Bills, an English Grand Committee would not be a problem, but when it comes to controversial Bills, a difficulty might arise, in that Bills might have a majority in England but not be able to carry a majority in the House. That would raise the issue of a Government not being able to operate in a coherent way unless they had a majority in England, as well as in the UK as a whole.

[Mr Leigh]

Between 1992 and 1997—and following the 1983 and even 1979 elections, when there were large Conservative majorities but a decreasing number of Scottish Tory MPs—I remember that there were huge debates about the poll tax and the rest of it, but I do not remember that there was any specific argument about the provisions of Standing Order No. 97. Of course, it would still be in the gift of any Government to say, “This is such a large issue”—the hon. Gentleman mentioned the poll tax—“that we want to consider the legislation on the Floor of the House,” but that does not mean that Standing Order No. 97 is wrong. It does not mean that anybody argued against it. It does not mean that a Standing Order No. 97 could not be created for England, so I do not understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making.

I suggest that there is a simple, clear, elegant solution. The Government may, by all means, set up the commission if they want to, but they have to get on with the issue now. They have to make some progress. My solution is there; they should get on with it. Although I have talked in House of Commons terms about Standing Orders and all the rest of it, which sounds fairly esoteric, there is a huge political issue, which the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has identified. It is that we have to make some concession to the English public, who are rightly outraged that so many issues that exclusively concern England are voted on by Scottish Members of Parliament, although those measures will not affect them.

I say to the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), who represents the Conservative constituency in Scotland, that he should not vote on English business, any more than I should vote on Scottish education. Indeed, I cannot vote on Scottish education. He should have a self-denying ordinance. I very much hope that when the Minister speaks, he will intimate that he will get on and solve the problem. He is the only one who can solve it, and he can do so within our Standing Orders.

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[Mr Harper]

That highlights the complexity of the issue. It is one reason why, as I have said, the Bill does not provide the solution, as it applies only to draft legislation. As the hon. Gentleman said in a previous debate, legislation can change significantly between its draft stage and its introduction. Indeed, sometimes that is the point of introducing draft legislation and consulting on it, as we want to listen to what people have to say. A legislative solution is not satisfactory to deal with the problem, because it would open up procedures in the House to the courts, which is something that I am sure hon. Members on both sides of the House do not want to do. The commission would need to examine that legislative process.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire alluded to the question whether there was a difference between the coalition partners. I can assure her that although the two coalition parties come at the issue from different angles—the Liberal Democrats have always preferred a federal solution—the policy being set out is in the coalition agreement, the statement that I issued is the collectively agreed position of the Government, and there is no difference of opinion on the issue. The parties want to make progress and move forward.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

To be clear, I think the agreement between the Minister's party and his absent friends is simply on the commission. I do not think they have any agreement on the solution, if I am right in my understanding.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman is right, but we want to solve the problem and we want to make sure the solution is workable. He may want to come back, but let me deal with some of the other aspects that I set out yesterday.

On the membership of the commission and the scope, we set out yesterday what it would and would not cover. Typically when the issue has been discussed, the West Lothian question has fallen into three components. One has been the representation of the different nations in the House. Another has been money—the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) touched on that—and the third has been the processes of the House.

On the representation of the different parts of the United Kingdom, we have dealt with that in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill, so every part of the United Kingdom will be equally represented in the House. On the money side, I think my hon. Friend mentioned that we would not be dealing with that. We have made it clear that there may be issues that need to be dealt with in relation to the Barnett formula, but the time to tackle those is when the deficit has been dealt with, not now. We have made it clear that the commission will not deal with those financial matters. They are significant and raise a range of questions, but the commission—much to the relief, I am sure, of those whom we will ask to serve on it—will not be tasked with that responsibility.

I heard clearly the views that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) set out about some of the questions that the commission might need to consider. I welcome any thoughts that other Members may have about the scope of the terms of reference. The hon. Gentleman identified an important one—the interaction and the agreement between Parliament and the devolved legislatures about whether the particular areas fall within the devolution settlements and if they do, whether those devolved legislatures are content for us to legislate here. I have noted that and will bear it in mind.

The commission will be set up by the Government, so the terms of reference will be set by Ministers. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald) made the point that the House operates in a consensual way and we do not want Standing Orders to turn into a battleground. We have said that there will be a full opportunity for the political parties represented in the House to have their say following the completion of the commission’s work. Clearly, that will have to take place anyway, because if we were going to legislate or change Standing Orders, there would have to be a debate and a vote in the House, but we want to make sure that when the commission has set out some workable solutions, we talk to parties in the House to move as far as is possible in a sensible way forward.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend puts his finger on exactly the point on which we wish to consult Mr Speaker and the parliamentary authorities. We want to make sure that the deliberations of the commission are informed by the way the House works, and that when it proposes possible solutions, they are workable and practical and will not have unforeseen consequences. We need to think through the consequences and have a properly informed debate so that Members know what they are supporting when we bring forward those solutions. That is exactly why we will have a short process of consultation with Mr Speaker.

I return briefly to the short exchange yesterday when the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) raised his point of order and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, were in the Chair. I returned to the Chamber but had not heard all of the point of order. I said that I would read it, as I have, and would respond to it. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, the Government will listen to Members’ thoughts about what should be encompassed within the terms of reference. Nevertheless, it is a commission that the Government are setting up to fulfil their own coalition agreement. I listened to what he said, though, and I am happy to listen to what other Members have to say. I hope that the hon. Member for Rhondda, who I am disappointed is not here to take part in this debate—[Interruption.] I see that other Members share that view. I hope that he will look at Hansard and feel that I have responded to and dealt with his point of order, although strictly speaking it was not a point of order—that was your ruling yesterday, Madam Deputy Speaker. None the less, I hope that he will feel that I have answered it properly. On those points, I also hope that I have satisfied my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire.

My hon. Friend asked how the commission’s recommendations will be enacted. To some extent, that will depend on its recommendations. Clearly, if it recommends a solution with a legislative basis, there will need to be a Bill and it would have to be dealt with in the usual way within government. However, it is entirely possible—perhaps even likely, given what I have said about the Bill—that because it relates to how the House operates, the solution would be a matter for the House and Standing Orders. That would clearly need a different set of solutions. However, given what I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South, I hope that I have made it clear that the Government want to solve this problem. The commission is the mechanism for laying out some workable solutions, and I hope that she will find that of comfort.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) talked about the 1990s and the process of devolution, and he said that it was not yet complete. One of the problems is that this was not thought through properly. The Labour Government thought through some parts of it, but did not think about how England would be governed in this devolved era. They did that partly because it was a difficult question and partly, I suspect, because some of their interests were different. The fact is, however, that devolution, which we support, has had consequences, and we just need to work through them and deal with them sensibly. Of course, I do not need to answer his other point, because my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire has adequately demonstrated to the House that our right hon. Friend the noble Lord Strathclyde is, indeed, Scottish and resides in Scotland. He defended him so well that I need not trouble the House on that point any further.

I have dealt with the points raised by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire. I want to deal with two points made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz). He is right that this is a complex matter, but I think that he confused or muddled up government and legislation. The Government cannot always assume that they will get their legislation through. They might well have a pretty decent chance of getting it through this House, although some of the legislation that I have been involved in has required a fair bit of persuasive work with my colleagues in the Conservative party, not just with Opposition members—[Interruption.] I hear agreement on that. In the other place, however, where the Government do not have a majority, it is not a foregone conclusion, and Ministers have to undertake a process of persuasion and consultation, and often have to make concessions. Even Governments with a majority in this place cannot take legislating for granted. Furthermore, aside from legislative issues, Ministers have many powers and executive responsibilities that do not involve legislation. I think that he was guilty of confusing those issues.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Of course I accept that the Government can never guarantee the passage of legislation through either House. Surely he must accept, though, that there could at least be potential difficulties if a Government with a majority in the House could not rely on a majority on a wide range of issues falling under this English-only provision. At the very least that has to be considered seriously by his commission.

[Mr Harper]

I accept that there is a problem; I just thought that the hon. Gentleman overstated it. There is an issue, though, and it is important that we look at how the House operates. We had a debate about different classes of MPs, and about a recognition of the Government and the Opposition. Clearly, if some of his concerns came to pass, we would need to consider whether they affected how the House operated, which is exactly why we need to ensure, as we said in the written statement, that the commission comprises people with constitutional, legal and parliamentary expertise—so that we think those consequences through.