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

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords, particularly the Lord Chancellor, for their contributions to this debate. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Adams of Craigielea. We have heard lots of Scottish accents during this debate, but I thought that hers was by far the most attractive, although I do not think that one should make comments like that these days. She also made a great deal of sense. I thought for a moment that she was going to support me, because she said, ““I am a democrat””. She campaigned for Scottish devolution, which, as I understand it in a simple way, is Scottish votes for Scottish laws. There is only a short step from that to English votes for English laws. The noble Lord, Lord Sewel, was the first speaker. We enjoy a remarkable identity in one respect: we have both done things and our names have been added to things which have lived beyond our ministerial life. For me, it is ““Baker days””. For the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, it is the ““Sewel motion””; that is, a ““sticking plaster”” to deal with sovereignty. It gave the Scottish Parliament the power to approve any Bill which Westminster passed that affected Scotland. Unless it has that Sewel motion and that authority, Westminster cannot pass the Bill. The noble Lord did not touch on the supremacy of sovereignty in his winding-up comments. But the supremacy of Westminster by devolution is not just devolved—it is shared and divided. Scotland has now an independent Parliament that is capable of legislating for itself. As the noble Lord, Lord Elder, said, in theory, Westminster can legislate on everything because it is in the Act. But that is a dormant supremacy. It cannot be exercised without the approval of the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh Assembly will go the same way, which is a fundamental change. The poll tax and what happened in the Thatcher years have often been quoted during the debate. Evolution changes absolutely everything—it really does—and the noble Lord was part of the author of this, which he should recognise. For the Lord Chancellor to come up with no solution, but to have a stubborn blindness to the problems that I have put, is amazing. In a rather sad revelation, the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, said that he thought that there was no solution to the West Lothian question. I was reminded when he was speaking of the famous Schleswig-Holstein question, which puzzled people in the middle of the nineteenth century. Palmerston said that it was so complicated that only three people know the answer: ““One is Prince Albert and he is dead. The second is a Foreign Office official who is mad. And the third is me, and I have forgotten the answer””. But there is an answer to the West Lothian question. The noble Lord, Lord Laird, made a frank speech, which was a wonderful rewinding of history. He did not want Stormont, the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. All that the noble Lord, Lord Laird, wants is the old United Kingdom as it existed, which is a wonderfully romantic view, but I have to say that it would be impractical.