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

My Lords, in moving the Second Reading of the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, has given us a history lesson. It was a somewhat incomplete and, if I may say so, somewhat partial history lesson, but we will leave that for the moment. The noble Lord argues that the Bill helps to secure a more stable and equitable devolution settlement. Let us get this bit of history of the Conservative Party and devolution straight. The Conservative Party opposed devolution in government from 1979 to 1997; it opposed devolution in the 1997 general election; it opposed devolution in the 1997 referendum; and it opposed devolution in Parliament—to the extent that the Scotland Bill still holds the record for taking up most time in this House since 1997. That is the history with which the party opposite comes to this issue. We know where it comes from. The noble Lord himself brings certain characteristics to this debate. One of them is indefatigability. He is also the master of the unintended consequence. As a Minister, he indefatigably sought out problems that others might not have seen and came forward with novel legislative solutions. He sought out the problem of domestic rates. He came forward with the novel legislative solution of the poll tax, the unintended consequence being the eventual downfall of his own leader. Now he identifies the problem of Welsh and Scottish representation at Westminster and comes forward with the novel legislative solution of this Bill—the unintended consequence being a very real threat to the Union, and that is what concerns me. As someone who was born in London, brought up in Yorkshire, got his first job in Swansea, lived most of his adult life in the north-east of Scotland, and, along the way, was a graduate of an English, a Welsh and a Scottish university, I am a passionate defender of the Union. I am equally passionate in my view that the Union succeeds because it encourages and recognises diversity. That diversity strengthens the Union but it means that everything does not fit together in a formulaic uniformity. There are what may be seen as anomalies—they possibly are—and they have to be faced and perhaps accepted. In attempting to answer the so-called West Lothian question, the Conservative Party has a choice and that choice is simple. It must decide whether it is the party of the Union or the party of England. If it goes down the road indicated by this Bill, it will impose a totally unworkable structure on the House of Commons. That will spring not from the arguments advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, but from the fact that we will have the strange situation of a government who have the full confidence of the House of Commons but who are structurally unable to secure large parts of their legislative programme. That will be extremely difficult to convey to the electorate. More important is the question of two-tier membership of the House of Commons. Introducing that would shatter the unifying role that the House of Commons plays in the political life of the United Kingdom. That depends on all Members of the House of Commons being equal, no matter from which part of the United Kingdom they are elected. There must be no second-class Members of the House of Commons. The truth of the matter is that this is an opportunistic Bill. Quite simply, would we be discussing the Bill today if the present-day Conservative Party were flourishing in Wales and Scotland and if it had a majority of the votes in Scotland, as it had in 1955? The answer is no. The Bill is a confession of failure. It is not the Union that has failed the Conservative Party; it is the Conservative Party that is about to fail the Union. The West Lothian question is not new to British politics, as the noble Lord indicated, although I do not think that he went thoroughly down the route on which he started in his analysis. For decades, we had what I suppose could be called the West Antrim question—or, perhaps more accurately, the North Antrim question. Of course, it was never really asked—certainly not by the Conservative Party. As far back as the 1920s the Government of Ireland Act established a form of devolution for Scotland. Ulster MPs were full Members of the House of Commons, and the Conservative Party, to my knowledge, never raised the question that Ulster MPs should be second-class Members. Why not? It would be churlish to suggest that for most of that period the Ulster Unionist Party was a close ally of the Conservative Party. What about the West Lothian question? If it is an issue—and I remain far from convinced that it is a burning issue among the people of the United Kingdom—then there are different ways of handling it. The strongest unionist position is to recognise it as an anomaly, but an anomaly that is well worth accepting if it secures the future of the Union. Alternatively, it is possible to argue that we should replicate something similar to the situation established by the Government of Ireland Act. There is, however, a qualitatively different set of solutions which is similar to the one proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Baker. There is the idea that English legislation should require a double majority—a majority of all Members of the House of Commons and a majority of English Members of the House of Commons. Then, there is the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, which clearly relies on establishing a two-tier system of membership. I believe that those two so-called solutions will be seen for what they are—a desperate attempt by the party opposite to come up with some self-serving constitutional wheeze to secure its position in the House of Commons in the face of its failure to secure the support of the people of Wales and Scotland. The choice for the party opposite is clear. It can be a narrow party of England—it can follow a policy of vindictive and reckless constitutional change in an attempt to secure its short-term interests—or it can behave like a true unionist party, true to its own roots, and accept the challenge of winning the support of the electorate in Wales, Scotland and England. It cannot be both.