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

My Lords, the point is that we still have a say in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. If you are going to limit the lower House, is it not then logical to limit the Members of the upper House? That is the next step. Take, for example, my very good friend the noble Lord, Lord Steinberg, of Belfast, whom I have known most of my life. He does not live in Northern Ireland—he is an excellent Tory Member of this House—but he is the noble Lord, Lord Steinberg, of Belfast. Is he to be classified as a Northern Ireland Peer and excluded from talking on English issues? The whole thing does not fit into the House of Lords well. What about the Northern Ireland Members? If, under the solution of the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, you still have no devolution in Northern Ireland, would it be only the Northern Ireland Members who could vote on activities in Northern Ireland? You could do that, but the government party does not even organise in Northern Ireland. There is a sub-government for Northern Ireland run by the DUP. It mightn’t be a bad thing, but that is what the solution would be, because it is the largest party in Northern Ireland. If they are the people who can vote on Northern Ireland activities, how could they be members of the Government? The Government would then be multiparty. How can you be a Cabinet Minister from, say, Scotland if you are not allowed to vote on issues in another area? That is not logical. The noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, asked a good question, and the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, managed to answer the wrong one. If the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom happened to be a Scot—although it seems slightly less likely after last night’s result, but not to worry—could he then not vote on English affairs? I am very conscious of the problem of the West Lothian question. Coming from Northern Ireland and being an Ulster Unionist, and having been the last person ever elected to the Stormont Parliament, I am in a good position to say that the Stormont Parliament worked and provided good legislation. As a unionist, however, it was a compromise too far for us. We should never have accepted that system of slight home rule—devolution—in 1921. That made us different from the rest of the Kingdom and we have suffered for it ever since. The problem is that you do not have different solutions for different areas: you have one solution. If we are going to go down the devolution route, this Parliament must become a federal Parliament, with a lot of similar Parliaments or Assemblies around the place. You cannot have different powers in different sections; first and second-class Members of Parliament; Members of the House of Lords who do not know where they are; or Cabinet members, including the Prime Minister, who are not even allowed to vote on issues affecting the largest part of the United Kingdom. The lesson of Northern Ireland must be learned. We were made different in 1921. As a unionist, I regret that we accepted that solution. Please do not get caught up in this type of devolution, which will cause intense problems in future. The West Lothian question will not go away. In 20 or 30 years’ time, however, somebody might come up with the solution that this will become a federal Parliament and there must be regional Parliaments. That is the only viable solution: that we are all equal.