English Votes for English Laws

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and we should be very proud of all that the Hanoverians did in this country, not least providing us with a royal household that served with great distinction.

We have had great success as a United Kingdom across the globe, and after our EU exit, we can work together to do more to increase prosperity across the whole country. Members need look no further than the Subsidy Control Bill or the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 for examples of us making good use of competencies taken back from Europe. In that context, the tiresome and ineffectual EVEL process seems less of a priority, particularly given the ease with which Governments can make changes to Standing Orders of this kind to suit them—a point that will not be lost on those of us elected in 2010 or before, who are now spending time trying to unpick the poorly thought through constitutional changes made by previous Administrations. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 is already on its way to the knacker’s yard.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House for giving way, because he has made reference a number of times now to powers that are being repatriated subsequent to our departure from the European Union. Does he not accept that when it comes to matters such as agricultural payments and fisheries management, we now have the highly unsatisfactory situation where the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for example, acts as a UK and an English Ministry? Does he not think that that makes the case for devolution within England?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

There is a case for devolution within England, and that is part of the Government’s approach—there are the mayoralties in London, in Manchester and so on—but no, we are also a United Kingdom. It is important that we operate as a United Kingdom and ensure that powers are used where they will be most effective, and it is natural that most, though not all, powers that came back from the European Union should be used at United Kingdom level.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Leader of the House is being generous with his time. Surely the logic of his position is that if it is unsatisfactory for this House to be at the same time a UK and an English Parliament, the same thing must apply to the Executive.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I do not think that is quite what I am saying. I am saying that this Parliament is the Parliament for the United Kingdom and is therefore able to take a broad swathe of decisions. It also takes decisions that affect only England, and it has votes from people from outside England affecting them. The Ministers are United Kingdom Ministers who, like this House, also make decisions for England, but they are held accountable by Members from across the whole of the United Kingdom, and I think that that is a perfectly rational constitutional settlement, considering that 85% of the population of the whole of the United Kingdom live in England. They are not, however, necessarily English.

--- Later in debate ---

[Thangam Debbonaire]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I was expecting references to the West Lothian question. As the Leader of the House has said, we have different bits of devolution for different parts of the country. We have indeed a Labour metro Mayor of the West of England, who was elected quite properly by the people of the west of England. There are different elements of devolution across the entire country. That does not take away from the fact that in this place we should all be equal.

The then Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) totally failed to absorb the wise counsel from my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) on the subject of matters of interest involving the border between Wales and England. My right hon. Friend said:

“The Government like to tell us that English votes for English laws is a clearcut issue, but it is not—and we have heard today many reasons why it is not. Residents of Alyn and Deeside use healthcare services both sides of the border.”—[Official Report, 15 July 2015; Vol. 598, c. 993.]

My right hon. Friend has already referred to that and other issues today. I fail to understand why Ministers at that time did not understand what my hon. and right hon. Friends were saying. Now, wonderfully, they do, but why not at the time? We could have saved so much time and effort.

Also, what of the need to reform the constitution of this country? Does this procedure in any way add anything useful? Well, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey observed at the time:

“Labour Members consider that this issue should have been properly dealt with as part of a much wider process involving a constitutional convention to examine a range of issues in a more holistic way.”

That might have answered what the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) was asking. My hon. Friend continued:

“A genuine attempt should have been made to come to a cross-party agreement between the parties represented in this place, and with wider civil society.”

We could still try doing that. She continued:

“Proceeding in this consensual way, rather than in the blatantly partisan way the Government have chosen, would have hugely increased their chances of introducing a successful and sustainable change. No such attempt has been made.”—[Official Report, 15 July 2015; Vol. 598, c. 951.]

If only the Government had heeded her wise words.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, because, in Scotland in the 1990s, her party and mine were part of exactly that: a constitutional convention. However, I remind her in the House that that was not about a question of national identity, as the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) suggests. It was about better governance, and it was about bringing control of affairs back closer to the people. So the question of who speaks for England is not the appropriate question. The question should be: who should be speaking for the various parts of England?

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I am thrilled to be called to speak now, Madam Deputy Speaker.

May I start by setting something straight? There is an answer to the West Lothian question. Tam Dalyell and I actually came up with two answers some 17 years ago. One, Madam Deputy Speaker, as you know, is the Harthill services, and the second is salt and sauce. I will leave it to the House to determine which one is the correct answer.

What an utter humiliation this is for the Government. A flagship policy of the 2015 manifesto will soon be nothing more than a footnote in future constitutional history books, and, remember, it is just another Tory policy disaster. God knows what they were thinking about when they introduced this some six years ago. They were consumed with the notion that we, the unkempt Caledonian hordes, were somehow stopping them securing the democratic outcomes that they desired—us, the 59 Scots MPs out of 650 MPs, needed to be constrained and curtailed. EVEL was just about the worst solution to a problem that did not even exist.

Never before has a procedure come to this House that has divided the membership of this House into two different and distinct classes. Not only did it do that, it did it by nationality and by geography. It is a procedure that barely anyone understands, that is a burden to the management and administration of the business of this House, that is entirely unnecessary, and that produces almost unprecedented resentment. Something that it will be remembered for more than anything else is what it has done for the cause of English devolved governance. This was the first serious attempt to create some sort of forum for English democracy. We actually agree with them. They do deserve their English Parliament. They should always get the outcomes that they want and deserve. We have even got a neat, practical and elegant solution to that, but, of course, they will not even start to look at that. There are myriad solutions to resolving this within the precious Union. The thing is that they could not be bothered doing the work. They could not be bothered rolling up their sleeves and designing a Parliament of their own. They decided instead to come here and to use the national UK Parliament of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for this doomed experiment. Imagine a quasi-English Parliament squatting here in the national Parliament. What an absolute and utter disgrace.

[Mr Carmichael]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Pete Wishart]

I do not have time to give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

It satisfied absolutely no one. All it did was infuriate Scotland. Instead of securing the near federalism that was promised, Scotland instead saw its MPs become second-class Members in the Parliament that they had just been invited to lead. There were signs in the Division Lobby saying, “England only.” They would have been better saying, “Scots out.” That is what the Government did with this procedure.

The Government knew it would never work. From the first moment when they suggested this nonsense, we have told them again and again that it was madness and that, at some point, they would be here—as they are this evening—to withdraw it. Now under pressure from the SNP, EVEL is to be abandoned. This is a spectacular victory for the Scottish National party, and I congratulate all my hon. Friends on bringing down this nonsense. This is one victory that we have secured this week in the United Kingdom and, by God, we are going to celebrate like it is 1966. Believe me, we will be banging on about this for the next 55 years and we will enjoy every minute of it.

There is a part of me that will miss the entertainment of it all and the laughs that it gave us. It was designed to quell this tartan menace, but I ended up making the most contributions in the Legislative Grand Committee. With 57 contributions, not only was I the most committed and dedicated Member of the English Parliament but I beat all the English Members combined two times over.