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

My Lords, I greatly enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, whom I have known for a number of years. I enjoyed even more the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Adams of Craigielea. I am not sure that I will come in to listen to her when she is being controversial. The first thing that strikes me—my noble friend Lord Howarth touched on it in his closing remarks—is whether this is a suitable Bill to be put forward as a Private Member’s Bill in this House. It has a certain constitutional veneer about it, but it is intended to limit the legitimate power of Members of another House. I know that it is proper within the rules and all that sort of thing, but I do not think that it is appropriate and it should not be done. It is not really a constitutional Bill. It is a wholly political Bill. I say that because, from my knowledge of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, he is political from the top of his shining head to the tip of his toe. He never does anything that is not political nor has he ever done, nor is he failing to do so today. He can see a situation—this has been mentioned before, but speaking so late in the debate I am bound to be repetitive; I apologise for that but I shall go on anyway—in which one party, probably his, has a majority in England and another party, possibly mine or possibly the Lib Dems—who can tell—has a majority in the UK, and this would cause certain problems. He is trying to resolve them by a sort of dodge. I think back to 1964 when I was a Whip in the other place. We had enough trouble then and we would have had much more if this Bill had been in operation. How could a government with a majority of four, as it was—sometimes it was only two—have survived in a situation such as this? It is quite out of the question. Such a situation is bound to arise sometime in the future. As has been said, this is not a new question. It was raised by Gladstone and others. But what I find most interesting is this. When the Irish problem was partially solved in the early 1920s, this question was totally ignored because although it is theoretically a difficult constitutional matter, it is not much of a difficulty at all. During the period of Stormont rule—indeed, during the period when the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and I were both Members of the other place for a short time in the 1960s—he and I were unable to vote on Northern Ireland questions. If I remember rightly, we were not even allowed to refer to them, however obliquely. At the same time, the Northern Ireland Members, most of whom were Unionists—or old-type Unionists, I should say—were able to vote on English questions. That is exactly the situation that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, finds undesirable today. There is a difference between then and now—and the difference is at the base of the urge to introduce this legislation. It is the fact that the Ulster Unionists were in effect what you might call the Conservative Party in exile. Most of the Northern Irish Members were Unionists in those days, and they could be relied on to support the Conservative government. That is not the case with the political balance in Scotland and Wales, and that is the real nub of the matter—that is where this legislation originates. The question was solved by ignoring it—and that worked quite happily. There was not one whimper of criticism from the likes of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, about that situation then, when it was to his advantage. The boot is now perhaps on the other foot. I shall refer to another anomaly. It has been said that our constitution and the working of it is anomalous. That is true; but that is part of our diversity, to use a vogue word of the present day. If we can have diversity in other parts of our social life, we can have it in our constitutional affairs as well. But as my noble friend Lord Foulkes said, Scotland has suffered under the hammer of the English majority in this Parliament not for a short time since devolution but for the biggest part of 300 years. Mention has been made of the poll tax and local government legislation, which was forced through against Scottish rule by English majorities. That was the constitutional settlement, and it was accepted but resented. In another case that I remember well, from the early 1990s, when the Conservatives were on this side of the House and I was on that side, they brought in a Criminal Justice Bill that applied to the United Kingdom and so applied to Scotland. But of course it was significant because the Scottish part of that Bill was totally opposed by the entire Scottish establishment, whether it was political or legal or the press. All were opposed to it. I remember how the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, sitting on the Back Bench, just where the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, is sitting now, produced a speech of such controlled indignation that not even my noble friend Lady Adams could have equalled it. He was incandescent. A powerful argument was made, explaining how inapplicable this Bill was to Scotland and how it was opposed by all elements of Scottish opinion. None the less, it was steamrollered through on the back of English votes. There is a question about the House of Lords, as well, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Laird. Both the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and I sat in the other place as Scotchmen for English seats, and both of us have lived in England for a very long time—he for 30 years and I in London for 50 years. So we are unusual. We have to think, as we sit in the House of Lords, whether we are Scotchmen or whether we have remnants from our English constituencies and our English domicile. So far as I am concerned, I know the answer. I would have no difficulty in solving it. But it is a problem: how could we have a situation where Scots in the Commons could not vote on something, whereas Scots in this House were permitted to do so? That is not even sensible. The noble Lord, Lord Laird, was right yet again when he talked about the solution—if there is one. To be frank, I do not think we need a solution, though I will come to my suggestions on how to deal with it in a moment. If the English are really as worked up about this matter as we are told, there should be a demand in England for an English Parliament as there was in Scotland, and that demand should come from below. We should not have a device that tries to make an English Parliament by changing the rules here. Maybe a federation is the proper solution, but I leave that to the English. It is up to them; if they want it, they can have it. If not, they will have to do without it. I listened to what my noble friend Lord Judd said about a Royal Commission. I quite like the idea. But since the old anomaly worked for nearly 300 years, why not let the new anomaly work for another 300 years and have the Royal Commission then?