English Votes for English Laws

Debate between Pete Wishart and Alex Salmond

Wednesday 15th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I invite the hon. Gentleman to look at the explanation of what will happen as shown in the wonderful graphic displayed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon. This is great, isn’t it? It is like the line-up to the battle of Bannockburn—all we need is William Wallace in the middle to go over the edge. It is just ridiculous. I think it was the Conservative Chair of the Procedure Committee who identified that there are another four stages to parliamentary Bills in all this—God knows how we will get through a parliamentary Session with all the extra work that will have to be done.

We are excluded from two sections of the procedure and then we are back in and out. I am having difficulty understanding. I know that my right hon. Friend is better at looking at these things than I am, and he may be able to come to terms with this smorgasbord of traffic lights. The illustration shows that the second-class Members on the SNP Benches will not be able to participate in the extra Grand Committee stage for England. I do not know whether the Serjeant at Arms is going to get his little sword out and stop us coming in. I am not sure how will we be barred from participating. If we were to intervene or to try to say anything, would we be named or thrown out? These are some of the absurdities that are part of this dog’s breakfast of a proposal.

[Alex Salmond]

From experience, I can assure my hon. Friend that the Chair of a Committee does not have the power to name or throw out any Member.

[Pete Wishart]

I still do not know how any of this will be enforced.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

We are going to do that. The plan to water down foxhunting legislation in England has given us an opportunity to examine our approach and perhaps tighten it up. The hon. Gentleman is right: we should be doing that. I actually did not know that we have more lax laws than England. We are going to do all we can to ensure that they are tightened.

[Alex Salmond]

I am sorry to continue our earlier debate, but the Leader of the House said a moment ago that all Members are allowed to turn up to every Committee. That is not the case: the Scottish Grand Committee is restricted to Scottish Members of the House. It has not met for more than 10 years; none the less, that is the case. If the Leader of the House does not even know and has not mastered all these procedures, what hope is there for this total dog’s breakfast?

[Pete Wishart]

I say candidly to my right hon. Friend that I do not know what hope there is. He and I served on the Scottish Grand Committee back in the early 2000s, when it met for the last time, and it was not a model of how to consider the issues under discussion.

The Government are trying to create a quasi-English Parliament within the confines of the unitary Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It seems to me that they just cannot be bothered to do the work. They cannot be bothered to go around their nation, consult and have a dialogue with the people, work with partners, build up the conversation and then have a referendum, as we did in Scotland.

I ask the Leader of the House to imagine what would happen if we did not have a Scottish Parliament and we wanted to do this. We would just say to English Members, “Get out of the way while we have our Scottish Parliament here!” It is almost laughable to suggest such a thing, but that is exactly what the Government want to do—they want to create a quasi-English Parliament in the confines of our unitary Parliament. That is not on. If they want an English Parliament, they should go and create it and then deliver it.

Conservative Members are saying that English votes for English laws was the most important issue on the doorstep but, at the same time, that there is no demand for an English Parliament, so what they want is several servings of the biggest cake in the world and to have that Parliament here by changing the rules of the House of Commons. It is not good enough to try to use our Parliament—the Parliament that belongs to every citizen in the United Kingdom—as their quasi-Parliament. I appeal to the Leader of the House to look at the issue.

It is fantastic that the proposal is about saving the Union, but the Government could not have designed better plans to drive Scotland out of the Union. Their sense of victory when they narrowly won the referendum will be short-lived if they continue to pursue this proposal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

Yes, 2003.

[Alex Salmond]

My hon. Friend, who knows about all these things and has served on almost as many Grand Committees as I have, is undoubtedly correct. That Grand Committee has changed its complexion a number of times, and when it became Scottish Members only, members were not allowed to vote to stop or veto legislation; they could consider legislation on Second Reading and then the legislation came to the full House. In effect, it was roughly what the McKay commission recommended as the answer, although there is actually no answer to the West Lothian question.

My old friend Tam Dalyell posed the West Lothian question precisely because he believed from his study of constitutional history that the only answers to it were either Unionism, which he supported, or independence for Scotland, which I supported. Tam Dalyell did not, and still does not as far as I know, believe there is an answer to the question he proposed, nor, as he would be the first to say, was he the first person to raise that question.

The question was raised in the 19th century. Gladstone considered a similar proposal. I was going to say that it was exactly the same proposal, but the proposal Gladstone considered was much more sensible than the one before us today. None the less, he rejected it, and did so on two grounds. He thought it would be difficult to have a situation where Members of Parliament were going in and out of various votes depending on how they were defined, and he thought it would be too much for the Chair to bear—“for the shoulders of any one man to bear”, if I remember the quote correctly—for the Speaker to have to certify which votes were which and which hon. Members were allowed to vote on which Committees. They say there is nothing new under the sun. All this has been considered before and there is actually a reason why William Gladstone did not come up with this dog’s breakfast before us today.

English Votes on English Laws

Debate between Pete Wishart and Alex Salmond

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman is tempting me; I have to say that sounds quite an attractive offer and proposition, if Scottish Ministers and the Scottish Parliament could have a veto and suggest something does have significant Barnett consequentials.

[Alex Salmond]

To continue this dialogue, can the Leader of the House confirm that were such an amendment to be tabled by the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) or any other hon. Member, we could vote on it next week? Was that a nod or a shake of the head by the Leader of the House, or a gesture suggesting “I don’t know”?

[Pete Wishart]

My right hon. Friend did a good job there, and almost teased out a response from the Leader of the House suggesting we would have an opportunity to vote on these very important amendments—because we do intend to table such amendments. We want to try to improve this measure, because what we have at the moment is an absolute and utter disgrace and shambles.