Devolution (Scotland Referendum)

Debate between Wayne David and Sadiq Khan

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sadiq Khan]

With the greatest respect, the best way for the hon. Gentleman’s party to resolve the West Lothian question is to win more seats in Scotland. That is the issue. Win more seats in Wales! He has failed to grasp the crisis in this country.

On some levels, we have to accept that the situation I described earlier is part and parcel of how Parliament has evolved and works, but on other levels we need to look at what can be done to accommodate the new, changing make-up of the country and I shall shortly come on to how we address this. Although we may acknowledge that there is an issue to resolve, that does not for one minute mean that we agree with the process that the Government have proposed for finding a resolution. Nor do we necessarily agree with some of the proposed solutions being floated. There can be no rushed, cobbled-together solutions and certainly no self-serving and partisan fixes.

When the Government were not scared of UKIP, they agreed with us. The coalition agreement published in May 2010 stated that they would

“establish a commission to consider the ‘West Lothian question’”.

The McKay commission report was published in March last year, when everyone knew there would be a referendum in Scotland in September 2014 and all the mainstream Westminster parties were developing their own plans to give greater devolution to Scotland. Did the Government respond to the McKay commission by setting up a Cabinet Committee led by the Leader of the House? Did they then make a veiled threat to have a vote in the House of Commons by a certain deadline? No. The response from the Government last year was:

“Given the significance of the recommendations for both England and the UK as a whole, it is right to take the time required for a thorough and rigorous assessment.”

We could not agree more. What we need to guard against is a situation that could lead to two tiers of MPs.

We also need to be honest about how few Bills that are debated in this House are truly for England only, or for England and Wales only. Some estimates suggest that in 2012-13 there was only one England-only Bill. The House of Commons Library is rightly reluctant to put an exact figure on it, given how complex a job that is. It is not as simple a categorisation as some might think because even when the clauses in a Bill are just relevant to England and Wales, there can sometimes still be financial ramifications for the rest of the UK. Votes on individual clauses in Bills decided by whether MPs were English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish would lead to an almighty mess in the way this place works—something akin to a legislative hokey-cokey.

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is right. There are enormous conceptual problems with the idea of English votes for English laws, but there is another huge problem: we cannot talk about the issue as though it is confined to this place; we have to talk about the other place, too.

[Sadiq Khan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. What is remarkable is the speed with which the Leader of the House has been willing to form a Sub-Committee and chair it to look at the issue of “English votes, English laws”, yet one of our Parliaments is unelected and fully appointed, and 85% of those in the other place are from London and the south-east. There is no sense of urgency in relation to that issue from the Leader of the House of Commons.

We do not want inadvertently to create a system that might contribute to the arguments of those who favour breaking up the UK. There is a good reason why the Scottish Nats are in favour of English votes for English laws. They want two classes of MPs because they want to break up the UK.

I give way to the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), who has been very patient.