Yes, I am, because it is untenable to have a separate vote by English MPs on English income tax, if the consequence, should the vote go a certain way, were to undermine the UK Budget.
English votes for English laws is, however, entirely tenable, and we now need to act. I agree fundamentally with the McKay commission where it states:
“Decisions at the United Kingdom level having a separate and distinct effect for a component part of the United Kingdom should normally be taken only with the consent of a majority of the elected representatives for that part of the United Kingdom.”
However, that ought not to exclude the views of other Members, whether they be my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Sir George Young), my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) or anyone else. We can do it in Parliament by making provision, through a Grand Committee or a legislative consent motion, for English MPs, or English and Welsh MPs together, to give explicit consent to legislation that applies separately and distinctly to England, or England and Wales.
That should not exclude the central proposition, however, that all laws made by the UK Parliament should be made by all Members of the House of Commons. Anything else would undermine the character of the Union Parliament, which is the basis on which our Union is constructed—the Crown in the Union Parliament as a whole. We can make it happen. It would be a proportionate response to the undeniable demand of my constituents, and constituents across England, that their elected representatives determine what laws are made in England, without the perverse and unacceptable anomaly—as they see it—of Scottish MPs voting on laws in England that do not apply to their own country. We can make this happen, but we need to make it happen now.
5.3 pm