Crossofstgeorge Debate

[Hotspur]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/11/30/do3001.xml&sSheet=/opinion/2005/11/30/ixopinion.htm


A Tory answer to the West Lothian Question
By Simon Heffer
(Filed: 30/11/2005)

Last week, I had a stimulating lunch with one of the straightest men I know in politics. For over a quarter of a century, he sat for what he made into a safe Labour seat in Scotland. He now adorns - and for once that word is not intended ironically - the House of Lords.

His commitment to public service since the 1970s has been exemplary, and he is one of those increasingly rare Labour politicians to have followed a vocation rather than simply to have sought a way of living off the taxpayer.

At one point the conversation turned to what Mr Tam Dalyell many years ago called "the West Lothian Question". This, you may recall, dealt with a potential unfairness to English voters if a devolved assembly were set up in Scotland. The Scots would determine, in their own parliament in Edinburgh, important issues affecting them. However, when those same issues - notably health, education, transport, environment and local government - were debated in the United Kingdom parliament at Westminster, Scottish MPs could speak and vote in debates on them, even if they affected only the English, and even though the English were now excluded from deliberations on these questions as they affected Scotland. When Mr Dalyell raised this point it was but a distant possibility. Now it is fact.

I asked my friend whether he could defend such an offence to English democracy as this. I felt I detected a slight embarrassment when he protested, accurately, that the Parliament at Westminster remains one serving the whole of the United Kingdom; and he pointed out that for the best part of 300 years the Scots had had to put up with the English majority imposing its will on them.

However, that, as I countered, was then the deal. Let us not forget, indeed, that the Act of Union of 1707 was not merely sought by the Scots, being at that point a nation almost bankrupted by the disastrous attempts to colonise parts of Central America in the 1690s, but that they had received vast amounts of extra money, and extra seats in Parliament, as a sweetener from the English. Now, there is a new deal. Only certain national strategic issues, such as defence, foreign affairs and most economic matters, are now handled in Scotland's interest in the United Kingdom parliament. All others are handled locally. The number of seats in Scotland was reduced before the last election from 72 to 59 to give the same level of representation as England. However, certain glaring inequalities remain.

These points are worth considering now for more or less immediate reasons. Yesterday, the House of Commons gave the second reading to a new Health Bill. One of its provisions is to ban smoking in public places in England. The Government, in accordance with the advice of the Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, had earlier sought a total ban. However, following an intervention from a Scot, Dr John Reid, whose own constituents will not be affected by this legislation unless they happen to come to England on holiday or in search of work, the proposal was changed. The Bill now proposes to allow smoking in bars where no food is served.

As Sir Liam has pointed out, this is an absurdity. The idea of the legislation (and I make no comment here on its philosophical bearings) was to protect those drinking in or working in such places: and however stupid Dr Reid might be, even he must be aware that any risk from passive smoking must be the same whether someone is present in the room eating a ham sandwich or not.

More than 50 Labour MPs have signed a motion deploring this partial ban. Later on in the parliamentary process, when this measure is specifically considered, it could well be defeated. To avoid this, Labour may well grant a free vote on the question, though that in itself would be a sign of defeat. The Labour Party won 355 seats at the last election. To carry any vote in the Commons it might need as many as 324 MPs to support it, there being 646 seats in the House. Forty of Labour's MPs are Scottish. If they, and the 19 Scottish MPs from other parties, did not vote on matters that only affect other parts of the kingdom, then Labour would be left with 315 MPs out of a total vote of 585. It would still be a majority, but one theoretically wiped out by only 22 rebels abstaining, or 11 voting the other way.

This explains the defensiveness of even fair-minded Scottish Labour politicians on this subject. On certain issues that affect only the rest of the kingdom but not Scotland, Labour will be in serious trouble even with the support of its obedient Scottish MPs. Without them, some measures wouldn't have a prayer of reaching the statute book. In the last parliament, where it had a far larger majority - 170 compared with 67 today - Labour won votes on foundation hospitals and top-up fees only by using Scottish MPs to support measures irrelevant to their constituents. Never mind how angry this made Tories: it outraged Labour rebels, who saw themselves as defending their traditional principles, not the least of which was representative democracy. What lies ahead on controversial measures such as the restoration by another name of grant-maintained schools, or on market-led reforms in the NHS in England, ought to be giving the Labour whips' office nightmares.

It should not surprise anyone that one of the most fervent advocates of Scottish MPs being allowed to vote on matters that do not concern them is Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and, as far as we know, the next Prime Minister. Whereas decent men are somewhat embarrassed by this state of affairs, and stupid ones claim that the whole constitution would unravel if the present arrangements were unpicked, Mr Brown, as befits one of his titanic arrogance, is far more complacent. He simply acts as though nothing worthy of comment were amiss. And, if forced to concede that the English might have a point about being so discriminated against, his attitude can broadly be summed up as this: "We're in charge, you can like it or lump it, and quite frankly, in the interests of getting our own way in parliament, we'll carry on doing this for as long as we can get away with it." (If I am wrong about that - and my précis of his view is based on several private conversations with him over the years - then I am sure he will quickly put the record straight.) Mr Brown, of course, has seen the writing on the wall. If he is Prime Minister in the next parliament with an even smaller majority, he may depend entirely on the unconstitutional votes of his fellow Scots in order to govern at all.

Let us not be coy. What Labour is doing with Scottish votes on English laws is, plainly and simply, revenge for Thatcherism. When part of a truly United Kingdom, Scotland had to endure what it saw as an English philosophy being imposed upon it through what old Unionists call the Imperial Parliament. That balance is now redressed. However, it serves Labour's political purpose now, and for the foreseeable future, to behave in this improper fashion, and to conclude that the English, into the bargain, perhaps have not yet been punished enough.

Whoever becomes leader of the Tory party next week must start to oppose this standing offence against the English. It is bad enough that we subsidise by around £10 billion a year a Scottish economy over whose expenditure we have virtually no say; but the insult is compounded when Scottish MPs can alter the will of English ones on purely English matters. I don't approve of a smoking ban: but I would rather have one in total imposed by my own elected representatives than avoid one with the aid of people who have no moral or constitutional right now to vote on the subject. A brave Tory party would offer the Scots a vote on independence, to bring home to them the full consequences of the devolutionary and separatist path on which they have now embarked. After all, in these post-imperial times no one should be forced to stay even in a partial union. And whether Scotland finally goes its own way or not, the Conservative Party must now stand up for democracy, and commit itself unreservedly to a parliament at Westminster that permits only English votes on English laws.
_________________
Lord Hugh Cecil 1918



"the truth is that colouring federalism with nationalism is like painting a rat red: it kills the animal.

Federalism and Nationalism are contradictory and mutually Fatal".

[Aslan]

What's new? The English Question is still being asked and every spineless British politican refuses to grasp the nettle. Whats new?

[Northumbrian]

And may I sugget a parliament at Westminster that allows only Scottish votes on Scottish laws, and Welsh votes on Welsh laws?

Equality all round.

[HomeRuleforEngland]

[Phoenix]

[Aslan]

Eerrrr? YES was that a trick question?

[Phoenix]

[Hotspur]

English votes on English laws will prolong the agony, but it will lead to complete English Independence. I always envisaged a UK of the Nations
England Wales Northern Ireland and Scotland. but when the latter are excluded from English affairs and positions of importance, the celtic whinge will be cranked right up and accusations of English arrogance etc.
Then there will be complaints from us about non English peers in the Lords
interfering in our affairs until it gets to much and they all pack their tartan baggage and call it a day.
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Lord Hugh Cecil 1918



"the truth is that colouring federalism with nationalism is like painting a rat red: it kills the animal.

Federalism and Nationalism are contradictory and mutually Fatal".

[Phoenix]

No need for any fuss and bother at all.
They will be gone like pigeons at the first shot, if the Barnett formula is scrapped.
The residual clearing up may take a bit of time though.
_________________
Survival of the fittest. We have to fight for our own people and our own ideals.
You may disagree, both Darwin and I may be wrong; if we are not, your descendants will probably never know it.

[Lance Dragon]

At least the English will get back their oil
_________________
RBS - Robbed by Scots
The deadliest enemies of the English are the British
Better a "Sour Little Englander" than a Poisonous Wee J ock.

[AEngliscman]

[isca]

Heffer asserts that his confidant is:

[Phoenix]

I think that the point missed here is that the English majority enriched Scotland whilst the minute they got power they started to impoverish and try to destroy us.

Just wait till next time round.
_________________
Survival of the fittest. We have to fight for our own people and our own ideals.
You may disagree, both Darwin and I may be wrong; if we are not, your descendants will probably never know it.