Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

Michael Ellis Excerpts

Friday 11th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), my constituency neighbour, on introducing this private Member’s Bill. She has been in the House of Commons for only a brief time, but has already secured a place in the ballot for private Members’ Bills significantly higher than I ever achieved—I never got into the top 20—and significantly higher than many other hon. Members. I am grateful to her for introducing a measure that has engaged Members on both sides of the House in a thoughtful way.

The West Lothian question is the backdrop to my hon. Friend’s Bill. Of course, calling the problem the West Lothian question makes it sound somewhat obscure to most voters. We had a go at rechristening it the English question, but that never seemed to work, so I shall use the old nomenclature. My hon. Friend wants to tackle the question, and she and I have discussed it, after which she has looked at her proposals and improved them. I am not sure that the Bill is exactly as the Government would wish, so at the end of my remarks, particularly because of the complexities involved, I shall test the opinion of the House. However, if the Bill goes into Committee, I look forward to working with her constructively to improve it.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House raised a number of issues. It is worth going into the background and being clear about what we are talking about when we talk about legislation that affects different parts of the UK. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) picked up something that my hon. Friend said when she talked about legislation that affects different parts of the United Kingdom. He referred to parts of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill—I am sure that Members are waiting with bated breath to debate it again next week—that affect Wales. There is a distinction between legislation that affects different parts of the country and legislation under which decisions are reserved to Westminster and are properly not taken by the devolved Assemblies, which are different things. This House can legislate for things where the decisions are reserved here, as the hon. Gentleman said.

For example, there are electoral matters which, although decisions on them may affect only Wales, are reserved to the Secretary of State. In those cases, one could perfectly happily conclude that it was quite right and proper for every Member of this House to vote on such decisions, even though they affected only Wales. There are also cases where it has been decided that decisions should be devolved—in this case to the Welsh Assembly—and that this House should not legislate on them. Members may well want to make a distinction in those cases, because they might not think it proper for the whole House to vote on the equivalent decisions that affected only England. The argument would be that in Wales, for example, it is Welsh Assembly Members who are taking those decisions, whereas in England, Welsh MPs should not be making the same decisions for English constituents when they do not play that role in their own constituencies. It is the asymmetry in these debates that causes some disquiet in England. It is not so much the fact that, in this example, Welsh MPs would be voting on issues that affected only England; it is the fact that English MPs have no say on the same issues in Wales.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire ran through a number of potential solutions. She also noted—as did a number of other Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg)—that one solution to the English question posited by the previous Government was to introduce some kind of regional devolution. She noted that this solution had been rejected decisively in the north-east. Indeed, the neighbouring constituencies that the two of us represent highlight that very well. There is a lot in common between Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire, yet we are both in different Government office regions and different regions for the European Parliament. We have neighbouring constituencies, yet there is quite a significant dividing line between some of the ways in which we represent our constituents. How we would divide up England would therefore not be a straightforward matter, as the previous Government found, and as any future Government would also find.

In setting out the intention behind her Bill, my hon. Friend was keen to avoid any danger that the Speaker would be drawn into controversy. It is fair to say that Mr Speaker is not known for courting controversy of any kind, and I am sure that he would very much welcome her intention to ensure that he did not inadvertently get drawn into any.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) made an interesting suggestion, which will have been noted, for effectively abolishing Members of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Ireland Assembly, and instead having just Members of Parliament with different roles. That is an idea, but given where we start from, I am not sure that it is achievable. It may have been a good solution in the pre-devolution era, but given that those devolution settlements were set up and approved by the people in referendums, I am not sure that it is possible.

My right hon. and learned, and eternally youthful Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) proffered his East Lothian answer to the West Lothian question. He drew attention to the fact—this is a critical point—that, with the three devolution settlements, a large number of Members of Parliament now represent parts of the United Kingdom with a devolved Parliament or Assembly. That is an important issue that this House needs to deal with. He put forward a solution involving, effectively, a requirement for a double majority on the Second and Third Readings of Bills, and it would certainly be worth while for the commission that the Government will set up to consider that.

My right hon. and learned Friend also referred to the concerns raised by Vernon Bogdanor, who, as the hon. Member for Rhondda pointed out, is my old politics tutor. Professor Bogdanor taught politics not only to me but to the Prime Minister. I am not sure what the Prime Minister would say about this, but I know that the professor and I have both come to the conclusion that neither of us has managed to persuade the other of anything much that we believe. He and I had a debate on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, and, when I was giving evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, I drew attention to the concerns that he had raised. I subsequently received a communication from him that broadly confirmed that I have still not managed to persuade him of anything. I did not persuade him of much in my essays at university and he did not persuade me of his views.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

What grade did you get?

[Mr Harper]

That is an interesting question. This is one of the key differences—not the only one—between me and the Prime Minister. He got a first, but I only got a 2:1, which probably explains why he is the Prime Minister and I am just the Minister for Political and Constitutional Reform.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington made several good points. Despite the attempts by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) to put my right hon. and learned Friend’s name forward to serve on the commission that we will set up, I noted carefully that he declined the opportunity, saying that he would be happy to give evidence to it.