English Votes for English Laws — House of Commons, 2015-07-15
Topic: Government Operations
William Nigel Paul Cash (Conservative, Centre-right): First, I want to deal with one or two absurd concepts that have been put forward, and I am going to speak quite bluntly in this debate because I think an enormous amount of fog has been generated and people are swirling around inside the fog without facing up to the realities of what we are talking about The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and others—including Nicola Sturgeon only yesterday—have repeatedly said, "We don’t want two classes of Members of Parliament and two classes of citizens." That is complete and total rubbish. There is no such thing as two classes of Members of Parliament. A devolution Act was passed in 1998, in which I took a very active part, and it contained a whole series of devolved functions, some of which have not even been mentioned in this debate because everyone just talks about health and education. There is a whole list of those functions, and then there are the reserved matters This is an over-simplified debate. The UK Parliament with the agreement—not the connivance, but the agreement—of Scottish Members of Parliament who were in this House, who were Labour Members at the time, came to an arrangement that was part of an Act passed by the United Kingdom Parliament as part of the United Kingdom Union, and it did not create two classes. It has got within it two separate functions. Any extended powers under the deal made at the time of the Scottish referendum will extend them by agreement. I personally think some of them go way beyond what was necessary, but that is another story. It is clear, however, that when somebody goes into an MSP’s surgery in Edinburgh in relation to a matter that has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament, they expect to get answers and action in respect of those devolved functions. They certainly do not expect the same in respect of what are clearly English matters, however, and vice versa As I said to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, the Scottish people would be outraged if we went up to Scotland and camped outside the Parliament there and said, "We insist that we come along and legislate on matters that have been devolved to Scotland." They would think that was an outrage and I would agree with them, but that is exactly what SNP Members are attempting to do with respect to us. We in the United Kingdom have an absolute right, as a result of an Act of the United Kingdom Parliament to which Scottish MPs at the time were not complicit but were in complete agreement, that there would be devolved functions. The SNP simply cannot have its cake and eat it There is another factor. We are paying for a lot of this—let us be blunt about it. [Interruption.] Oh yes we are. The Barnett formula, which many of us will go along with—[Interruption.] Listen to me carefully: the Barnett formula, which many of us—I am not saying everybody—will go along with, is why, as things currently stand, every single person in Scotland gets £1,600 more than people in England and Wales. Even Lord Barnett—who, sadly, died the other day—said the whole thing needed to be completely revised.