Scottish Secretary says English devolution ‘is the unfinished business’

The Scottish MP claimed it was an “anomaly” of the constitution that he was able to vote on matters that do not directly affect him. He said that federalism would be the “logical conclusion” but that it was a decision for the English people to make.

He claimed more needs to be done to decide whether it was time to give English MPs sole power over English law.

He said: “English devolution is the unfinished business. It’s the unstarted business of the British constitutional reform that we’ve seen since we set up the Scottish parliament in 1997.

“At that point I take a step back because we had a 20 year debate before we were able to decide what we wanted in Scotland.

“Coming on now for 17 years after it was first set up in an act of parliament, we’ve still not finished the process of devolution because there will be more tax raising powers coming to the Scottish parliament and that’s a very necessary thing to rebalance the political debate in Scotland because at the moment all we talk about in Scotland is how you spend the money, you never talk about how you raise it.”

“The logic of the position would be that if the English sort out their constitutional position, and it is for the English to decide how they want to do that - do you want an English parliament, do you want English regional assemblies, that’s a debate you have to have in England, then yes I don’t want to vote on things that are not directly affecting me.

“That’s an anomaly created by the constitutional position we have.