Governance of Britain

The answer to the second question is yes. I gave advance information about the contents of the document ““The Governance of Britain””, although not of these documents, to the First Ministers and colleagues in Northern Ireland on 3 July. We are actively seeking the views of the devolved Administrations—the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly. There is no question about that. Earlier this week, I spelt out to the House of Lords Constitution Committee why we are not in favour of a citizens convention to determine such matters. There is no direct parallel with the convention that did important work in Scotland and the parallel consultations in Wales. The Scottish convention was necessary because at the time there was no Scottish Parliament. There had to be some legitimated but necessarily informal body to do the job that would otherwise be done by the Parliament; the situation was similar in respect of the arrangements for Wales. We have a people's convention; it is called the British House of Commons. It is vital that any key decisions on our constitutional arrangements be made here. I do not believe that we should subcontract decisions to a parallel Parliament. However, the decisions that in the end we have a responsibility to make should be far better informed by vigorous debate and pressure from outside—from British citizens.