English Votes for English Laws

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I know the Leader of the House is enjoying delivering us from EVEL but, yet again, we have another debate and another attempt by the Government to disavow the work of their predecessors. This afternoon the 0.7% aid target was unceremoniously dumped, and now this evening another element of David Cameron’s legacy is overthrown.

What was it about the EVEL Standing Orders proposed by David Cameron, introduced by Chris Grayling and overseen by John Bercow that made the Johnson regime so keen to get rid of them, I wonder? As my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) said, they were introduced to strengthen the Union and they are now being abolished to strengthen the Union. We have Schrödinger’s Standing Orders, strengthening the Union by existing and not existing at the same time, although the Union does not feel desperately strong to me right now.

Maybe it is more like the Schleswig-Holstein question: anyone who understood EVEL has either died, gone mad or forgotten what it was all about, although there were a few folk around here who had a sense of how it worked. We should recognise that and express our thanks to them for their support in navigating the system: Sir David Natzler, Sir Roy Stone, Ian Davis and many of the Clerks who supported the team of Deputy Speakers as they convened and unconvened the Legislative Grand Committee—not that any of them, least of all you, Madam Deputy Speaker, are dead, mad or forgetful, I hasten to add.

There is also Daniel Gover and the team at the Constitution Unit who literally wrote the book, or at least several scholarly articles, on EVEL. Maybe they will now get to write the history book, too. My hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart)—my right hon. Friend, as he should be—is going down extremely well with his many fans in Scotland’s online community with his contributions to the English Parliament.

Tonight, Scottish MPs and all their constituents will rest easy in their beds, in the knowledge that never again will their right to debate and vote on matters affecting Kew gardens, the Non-Domestic Rating (Nursery Grounds) Bill or the Neighbourhood Planning Bill be denied. On all those issues and more, parity of esteem has been restored between Tory MPs from Scotland and their colleagues from the red wall in the north of England—but of course in the SNP we have already exercised a self-denying ordinance on such issues anyway. We did so tonight with the covid regulations, and that was kind of the point: it should be up to us to decide what is relevant to our constituents, not a process, procedure or rule invented by the Government.

What is more insidious and more dangerous is that we might be losing English votes for English laws, but we are increasingly experiencing Tory votes for Scottish laws. Perhaps the Government are abolishing legislative consent motions in the English Parliament because they so routinely ignore legislative consent motions from the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd Cymru. I say to hon. Members on the Government Benches: don’t think we can’t see what you’re up to.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire has said, we have an answer to the West Lothian question and we will be happy to put that proposition to the people of Scotland as soon as the opportunity allows. The answer is independence—and it is coming down the road.