Scottish Representation in the Union — House of Commons, 2015-02-04
Topic: Mixed Topics
James Gordon Brown (Labour, Centre-left): I asked for this debate on the constitution this evening because in the run-up to the election, when other issues—the national health service, the economy, national security and defence—will clearly be pre-eminent considerations, it is doubtful whether there is any other way over the next two months that this House can give detailed consideration to a set of constitutional challenges that, if not thought through or if mishandled, will in time threaten the very existence of the United Kingdom I am not here as an advocate of the status quo. I start by recognising that this House of Commons is England’s Parliament as well as the United Kingdom’s and that we should agree a Commons Committee reform that allows for detailed debate on English-only measures by only English Members. With reform of the Lords, reform of regional and local government, reform of the voting system and reform of the Commons itself also part of the queue of complex, interrelated and interconnected constitutional issues that are in need of democratic resolution, I believe that some kind of convention of the people or, if that is rejected, a Speaker’s Conference, which you might chair, Mr Speaker, is now the best way of ascertaining whether the United Kingdom can finally move from what is a 19th-century constitution to a modern, 21st-century one If the Union is to survive, it will have to be built on the interdependence of our four nations, and it will have to guarantee equality of status within the United Kingdom. My argument tonight is that with the announcement of English votes for English laws, which means nothing other than restricting the right of Scottish Members to vote in this House, the Government are deliberately driving a wedge between Scotland and England and, in so doing, they have asked the wrong question, and they are now getting the wrong answer However, at the very time that we should be attempting to unify and reconcile the four nations of the United Kingdom, building on the fact that the Scottish National party wants to be part of the UK currency, and on the fact that the nationalists’ economic case for independence has fallen as a result of the halving of oil prices, the Government have summarily rejected one of the central recommendations of the Smith commission, which they set up, which was: "MPs representing constituencies across the whole of the UK will continue to decide the UK’s Budget, including Income Tax." The Conservative party has got this wrong, because it presumes, as Members now on the Government Benches have always said, that the fundamental anomaly in the British constitution is that Scottish MPs can vote on English-only laws, whereas English MPs cannot vote on Scottish-only laws. In retaliation for what they see as Scots pursuing a Scottish interest, they wish to pursue and enshrine an English interest above a common UK interest that could bind us together But what is called the West Lothian question is, in truth, only a symptom of the problems we have to deal with. The central anomaly, and the real asymmetry from which all else follows, is the basic, and indeed unchangeable, imbalance in the size of the four nations. England represents 84% of the UK population, Scotland represents 8%, Wales represents 5% and Northern Ireland represents 3%. England sends 533 Members to this House, compared with 59 from Scotland, 40 from Wales and 18 from Northern Ireland—117 in total against 533. It is obvious that when we start from such a profound imbalance and asymmetry—such a huge inequality in population and voting shares—fairness of outcome cannot easily be secured by a blanket uniformity that treats the minorities exactly the same as the majority. It follows that the rules needed to respect and reassure the minorities, who might always be outvoted, have to be different from those needed to uphold the majority The challenge is not unique to Britain. The United States, Australia, Spain, Switzerland, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Nigeria and many other countries have had to find ways of managing the gross inequalities in the size of their constituent parts without undermining their unity. As the price of keeping the United States together, California accepts that it has just two Members of the US Senate to represent its 38 million citizens, while Wyoming has the same number to represent just 500,000 citizens—one Senator for 250,000 people in one part of the country, and one Senator for 19 million in another Similarly, the price New South Wales pays for Australian unity is having one Senator for every 580,000 people, in contrast to Tasmania’s one Senator for every 40,000. Fair treatment for minorities and national unity are achieved in the Spanish Senate, the Swiss Council of States, the South African National Council of Provinces and the Brazilian, Nigerian and Mexican Senates not by the crude and blanket uniformity that is characterised by English votes for English laws, but by special arrangements that recognise that minority rights have to be respected and upheld so that the provinces, states or nations can be held together in one Union With the Leader of the House’s announcement that he would exclude Scottish representatives from voting on what he now calls consent motions, including annual consent motions on tax issues arising from the Budget, he is breaking with the old-established practice of other countries, breaking with our own constitutional history, and breaking with all sensible advice in creating what the Government now boast is the English veto, making ours the first and only Parliament in the world where two classes of representatives will exist and where some representatives are clearly more equal than others By the Government’s own insistence on devolving all income tax to the Scottish Parliament and then using that as a pretext for banning Scottish MPs from voting on income tax here, there will be a constant national refrain that there are now first-class and second-class MPs: the English who rule and the Scots there on sufferance. I have to ask—