Ministers raise practicalities in devolution row

BANNING Scottish MPs from voting on laws which only affect England would be “notoriously difficult” to make work, the Government has been warned as it bids to tackle the so-called West Lothian Question.

Early sparring over a referendum on Scottish independence has brought fresh urgency to tackling the issue with a recent poll showing that 79 per cent of voters in England believe that Scottish MPs should be barred from voting on English-only laws.

The Government yesterday revealed that an expert panel looking into the “consequences of devolution” for the House of Commons will begin work next month, examining whether MPs in Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish seats should vote on laws affecting only England.

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Nick Pearce, director of think tank IPPR, said the West Lothian Question, first raised by Tam Dalyell during the 1970s, has become a “more urgent question to address” and said it was “difficult to see how the status quo will remain tenable in the future” – but warned there are no simple answers.

“English Votes on English Laws, which would bar Scottish MPs from voting on English matters, sounds like a seductively simple solution to the West Lothian anomaly, but as Gladstone discovered during the Irish Home Rule debates of the nineteenth century, it is notoriously difficult to make work in practice,” he said, highlighting difficulties in defining an “England-only” Bill and the prospect of a government which has a majority of UK seats but not of English ones.

“The other solution is an English Parliament. Its proponents argue such a body would bring symmetrical balance to the Union. Yet the reality might be that an English Parliament could generate instability, since, given the dominance of England, it would create a fundamentally lopsided federation.

“How would a Westminster Parliament work when the bulk of its business for 85 per cent of the population was decanted to a subsidiary parliament?”

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The commission set up by the Government will be chaired by former Clerk of the House of Commons Sir William McKay. He will be joined by outgoing head of the Parliamentary Counsel legal team, Sir Stephen Laws, and one of his predecessors, Sir Geoffrey Bowman.

Devolved areas will be represented by ex-UK Ambassador to the United Nations Sir Emyr Jones Parry, who is chairman of the All Wales Convention, Professor Charlie Jeffery, of the Edinburgh University Academy of Government, and Professor Yvonne Galligan, of Queen’s University Belfast.

The panel will begin work next month and will call experts to give oral or written evidence, with a final report and recommendations due to be completed by the end of the next parliamentary session.

Constitutional Reform Minister Mark Harper said its remit would be confined to how the Commons deals, in the wake of devolution, with legislation that does not affect every part of the UK. It will not consider relative funding – a source of anger for Yorkshire MPs given £1,500 more is spent on every Scot over every English person – or the balance between English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs in the House of Commons, which was covered by legislation earlier last year.

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Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan criticised the lack of any serving or retired MPs on the commission and complained that Labour was not consulted.

He said: “We are opposed to creating a simple hierarchy of members of Parliament based simply on what parts of the UK they represent. Each MP has a duty not only to their own constituents but also to the UK as a whole.”

Examining the issue at the same time as a referendum on Scottish independence was being debated would require “sensible handling”, he added.

Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards said the Commission’s terms of reference ruled out the best solution – a separate English Parliament as well as an Assembly for Cornwall and changes to the funding system to remove the financial effect on Wales of Commons votes.