Devolution (Scotland Referendum)

Mark Tami Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy]

I do not accept that for one second. The biggest threat to the integrity of the United Kingdom would have been for the yes campaign to win the Scottish referendum. I am saying not that the yes campaign was insincere but that I did not agree with it. On the following Friday morning, the Prime Minister effectively said, “Thank you very much, Scotland. You are now still part of the United Kingdom.” He then went on for the rest of that speech to talk about the West Lothian question, which struck me as extremely unusual. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) quite rightly referred to the fact that the Union itself is threatened by this constant sniping about the so-called great advantage enjoyed by Welsh, Northern Ireland or Scottish Members of Parliament. English Members make up 85% of this House of Commons. They can swamp all the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Members put together.

I know of no country that has a system in which there can be either first or second-class Members of the federal or central legislature. Spain, for example, has an asymmetric system of devolution, but Members representing the Basque country or Catalonia, which have highly developed systems of devolution, have the same rights as those representing other parts of Spain. The reality is that we cannot separate Members of Parliament from the mandate on which they were elected.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I represent a border constituency. Although health is devolved in Wales, our children’s hospital and our heart hospital are in the north-west of England. Neurosurgery for my constituents is done in the north-west of England. I have a view on behalf of the people I represent about what happens in the English health service.

[Paul Murphy]

Of course, and my hon. Friend should therefore be able to vote on matters affecting the hospitals in the English health service that most of his constituents go to.

I am fortunate enough to have seven general elections under my belt. I lost the first—quite rightly, too—which was for a seat in the west of England. Nevertheless, I would have been elected on the same mandate for the constituency of Wells in Somerset as I then was for my Welsh constituency in six successive general elections. I am a British Member of Parliament who happens to represent a Welsh constituency. I am therefore a Member of this United Kingdom Parliament in exactly the same way as any other Member representing one of the 650 seats.

I hope that the Leader of the House, when his Cabinet Committee meets to discuss these matters, will consider the constitutional mess there could be after a general election. When the leader of a party who has the potential to become Prime Minister goes to the palace, the Queen will ask, “Have you a majority and a mandate in the United Kingdom?”, and they will say, “Yes, Ma’am.” Then she will have to ask, “Have you a majority in England?”, because we would have a separate system in the House of Commons in order to deal with matters for which we have all been elected. I was elected on a mandate that included dealing with the English health service and education system, so long as it is a British Parliament that represents people in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I think that there is an enormous danger.

The Leader of the House said that the issue of English laws being dealt with by English MPs is simple, but it is not. We have been dealing with that for 30 or 40 years, even before devolution in 1998. The Leader of the House will remember, as an historian, that in the 1960s a former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, Peter Thorneycroft—he represented the Welsh seat of Monmouth—said clearly that there cannot be two classes of Members of Parliament. Some years later, in the ’70s, the Kilbrandon commission said that regardless of what legislative assemblies are set up, British Members of Parliament must all have the same duties, responsibilities and rights.