Parliament (Participation of Members of the House of Commons) Bill [HL]

My Lords, they would have absolutely no influence on it at all. It is absolute absurdity. Another example is roads. I resent the fact that the present Secretary of State for Transport is a Scot, because he is making decisions on roads in East Sussex, where I live, which I think are lunatic and wrong; but there we have it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr Darling made a huge faux pas by going to Dunfermline at the beginning of the by-election and saying that there would be no increase in the Firth of Forth tolls. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Alistair Darling have no control over the tolls on the Firth of Forth bridge. That is a matter for the Scottish Parliament. Many Members of that Parliament are very offended that the Chancellor and Mr Darling went up there and said that. In fact, I think they contributed to last night’s defeat, because the people of Dunfermline were saying clearly, ““We want to run our own affairs, we do not want to be bullied by Ministers coming from Westminster, particularly the Chancellor””. The Chancellor is responsible for the loss of Dunfermline. I gather, in the repositioning of Gordon Brown, he will take a greater interest in constitutional matters. I hope he starts by figuring out what he has done so far. The Government recognised that the case for English votes for English laws is unanswerable, so they decided that their answer was to have English regional assemblies. They asked their Deputy Prime Minister to fly the kite, and we all watched it thud to the ground. My proposals in the Bill are designed to resolve this matter. I seek to give the Speaker powers, or rather confirm powers that the Speaker already has, to certify the territorial extent of a Bill. He has that power and he has exercised it in regard to Scottish Bills. He would designate groups of MPs—English MPs, Scottish MPs, Welsh MPs and Northern Ireland MPs—allowing them to vote only on such Bills, parts of Bills and statutory instruments. That is the nub of my proposals. There are many objections to them and I should like to deal with some of them. The first objection is technical—can you separate out bits of Bills? The answer is that clearly you can; it is done in much legislation. In this Bill, I have given considerable power of discretion to the Speaker to decide on these matters. The Speaker can take advice from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, if he wishes. For the Government to say that it is not possible to define Bills, parts of Bills and statutory instruments is not an acceptable argument. I know that my noble friend Lord MacGregor has spoken and written about that and, no doubt, will refer to it later. The second argument is that my proposal creates two classes of MPs. Well, there are already two types of MPs. When I was in the House of Commons before devolution, we were all equal. We could vote on absolutely everything that we wanted to and we had the right to do so. Devolution changes everything. For example, English MPs in the House of Commons can vote on English roads, English hospitals and English schools, whereas Scottish MPs cannot vote on Scottish roads and so on. Two classes of MPs already exist, so the argument that you would create inequality between them does not stand up. Do not think for a moment that this is just a Conservative point of view. Many people on both sides of the House of Commons share it. In the debate in January on the Government of Wales Bill, the Father of the House, Alan Williams, who is a well respected Labour MP for Swansea, said the following:"““I abstained on tuition charges because I felt that I should not vote on them, but we have an anomalous situation whereby Scottish and Welsh Members, who are not answerable to English constituencies, will vote to impose on them measures that will not apply in Scotland or Wales. That affronts my concept of the democratic accountability that I thought existed in our country””.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/1/06; col. 55.]" It is not only Alan Williams. Peter Kilfoyle, a well known supporter of the Government, said:"““It seems a perverse form of democracy when members representing Scottish or Welsh seats decide on matters which, in their case, are devolved to the Welsh Assembly or the Scottish Parliament.""““Those members would rightly take umbrage at interference by the British Parliament in such devolved areas. I take exception to any member who wants it both ways””." And it is not only him, but someone from the mainstream of the Labour Party, Tony Wright, the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee. Speaking at a meeting with the Prime Minister and heads of other committees, to a resounding chorus of ““Hear, hear””—or so it says in the Scotsman, so it must be true—he said that his"““middle England constituents resented Scottish MPs having power over their affairs””." That support for my Bill extends not only to the Labour Party, but to the Liberal Party. Simon Hughes has made it clear that he supports this measure. An article in Times Online this week stated:"““Campbell would stop Scots MPs voting””." The Government have to address this question very seriously indeed. They can no longer shelter under the answer given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who is in a place—not his former place—in the Chamber. He said of the West Lothian question that the best thing to do about it was not to ask it. That was just about tenable in 1998 and 1999, but not now, because we have had the experience of seeing what happens. While you can turn a blind eye if you are a daring and imaginative commander in war, if you are dealing with a constitutional matter, turning a blind eye is an excuse for torpor and friction. This matter has to be addressed. The third objection that I have heard many times is that the Scots and sometimes the Welsh will say, ““Well, in the Thatcher years you imposed a whole lot on us that we objected to fundamentally””. I see the Lord Chancellor nodding. I am glad, because the noble and learned Lord has the capacity of occasionally stumbling upon the truth. Then he picks himself up as if nothing had happened. Of course, we did what we did because it was a unitary Parliament. But devolution, I say to the Lord Chancellor, changes everything. Once you establish in a unitary kingdom a federal unit with power to make laws—absolute power—with only a theoretical control from Westminster, you change everything. We have to address that problem. The fourth argument is that the Westminster Parliament is supreme—the noble and learned Lord is nodding again. The argument is that the Westminster Parliament can vote on anything, and that is in the Bill that the noble and learned Lord introduced to the House. In theory, that is right, but its Members can legislate in Scotland only if they get the approval of the Scottish Parliament through a Sewel Motion. Theoretically they are able to legislate on, say, road speeds in Scotland but, if they did not get a Sewel Motion, there would be a major constitutional crisis because the Scottish Parliament would say, ““That is for us to decide, not Westminster””. The sovereignty of Parliament is at best a dormant sovereignty. The point that the House should grasp is that, once sovereignty is devolved, it is not a devolution but a division and sharing of sovereignty. That is what happens and that has been consolidated by the experience of the past six years. The last argument is so trivial that I shall barely touch on it. It is that, because measures before Parliament affect the constituents of Scottish Members of Parliament, they should have a say on them. In the debates on tuition, some Scottish Members of Parliament said, ““We’ve got constituents who go to English universities and therefore we are involved and want to have a say on it””. That is a totally absurd argument. Let us suppose that their constituents went to Trinity College, Dublin. Those MPs would not ask for a seat in the Irish Parliament, would they? The same would apply if their constituents went to the Sorbonne. Of course that would not be the case. One might as well say, ““I’m a Scottish Member of Parliament. I may fall ill in England and so I want a say on how hospital trusts are run””. It is an absolutely ridiculous and absurd argument. I come back to the point that devolution changes everything. It is not static or final but is moving further and further on as we speak. The Procedure Committee in the Parliament of 1997 to 2001, which had a majority of Labour members, argued for a proposal very similar to my own. The government of the day totally rejected it, although it was supported by a Labour majority. The clear principle is that there should be English votes for English laws. I am a Unionist. I believe that the United Kingdom has been an enormous success. It is neither a nation nor a country; it was a political creation in the middle of the 18th century and it has served the peoples of our countries well and it has served the world well. But I do not believe that it would hold together if there were manifest inequalities and unfairness between the constituent parts. Again, I quote Gladstone:"““The concession of local self-government is not the way to sap or impair but the way to strengthen and consolidate unity””." I support that totally. I married a Scot; all my children went to a Scottish university, as did their mother; I even go on holiday to Scotland—I do not know Sharm el-Sheik. I am aware of the Scottish dimension. I believe that the only way in which we will hold our United Kingdom together is by recognising that we should have English votes for English laws. Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Baker of Dorking.)