Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is very comforting at one level to hear the words of the hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie), but by their deeds shall ye know them, and the deeds of the Scottish National party since the referendum have made their view very clear.
I was suggesting to Government Members that the tolerance of England, which is by far the largest constituent part of the United Kingdom, has been central to the United Kingdom’s success. A number of references have been made to the unfairness of Scottish Members of Parliament and others from other parts of the United Kingdom voting on English-only matters. First, there is the question of what constitutes an English-only issue. Research has suggested that very few pieces of legislation are English-only. More widely, however, the unfairness to which Members refer reflects the asymmetry of the United Kingdom, and the different sizes of its constituent nations.
Members—Scots, and, I am sure, our Welsh and Northern Irish colleagues too—often grumble about unfairness, usually when they have been at the receiving end of another defeat at football or rugby by England. They grumble about the unfairness of England’s being so much larger as a nation. However, if we are to have the continuation of the United Kingdom, a recognition of the reality of asymmetry must be enshrined in any decisions that we make about the constitution.
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