English Votes for English Laws — House of Commons, 2015-07-15
Topic: Mixed Topics
David George Hanson (Labour, Centre-left): I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin). She might not know this, but like her I wanted to be in "Coronation Street". Of the three other people on my drama course at university, one ended up presenting "Blue Peter", one has won an Oscar and one wrote "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"; and I ended up here. She can decide who was the most successful. She made a strong maiden speech, however, and I was pleased with her tribute to my colleague, Willie Bain, who served her constituency well. I am also pleased to follow the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach). I have lost her seat and she has lost mine, so I think we are equal. We border each other, however, and it is crucial to this debate how that border is affected and how I, as a Welsh Member, serve my constituents I have been very lucky; I have been here for 23 years, and every year I have walked through that door into this Chamber, I have done so as an equal Member of the House—equal to everybody elected to this House on a universal franchise after the people have put a cross by my name and my party’s name and thereby elected an MP who can speak on any issue before the House. I did that—dare I say it?—when the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) was Secretary of State for Wales and made decisions in this House affecting my constituents without a majority in the area I represented. I was here when Lord Hunt served as Secretary of State for Wales and made decisions in my area without his party having a majority in that area I have also served as a Northern Ireland Minister—this supports the arguments made by the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson)—as a Welsh Member in a UK House of Commons dealing with devolved issues in Northern Ireland when the Assembly was suspended. I did so as an equal Member because I happened to believe in the United Kingdom. When Members walk through that door into the Chamber, they do so as equal Members I object to the proposal because it strikes at the heart of this Parliament and a United Kingdom in this Parliament. It also strikes at the heart of what my constituents send me here to do. I think that I should decide what I say in the Chamber on behalf of the people who have elected me and that I should be accountable for that to those people, yet, under these proposals, I will be able to speak but not vote in Committee on crucial issues that affect my constituents. Why does that matter? It matters because the Government’s proposals will give a veto to English MPs on issues before the House. It will veto my being able to table amendments that I can vote on in this House, and it will veto my serving as a Minister dealing with UK matters on devolved issues. As was said earlier, that would have meant the likes of John Reid not being able to serve as Secretary of State for Health, having been chosen by a UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and elected to the United Kingdom Parliament to serve under a Prime Minister representing a seat in Scotland. He would have been unable to vote in a Committee of the whole House on matters that his Government had bought before the House. That creates a second-class tier of MP This matters in my constituency for reasons that the hon. Member for Eddisbury has mentioned. We are close to the border with England. By dint of previous Governments’ decisions, things that happen in England matter to my constituents. My constituency is served by Glan Clwyd hospital in north Wales and the Countess of Chester hospital in Chester, England. The latter currently services 66,514 out-patient attendances from constituents who have a Welsh postcode. It also services 14,185 finished admission episodes and 14,404 accident and emergency attendances by Welsh citizens, which are paid for by Welsh Assembly Government funding to that hospital. Under the Government’s proposals, if legislative proposals were made about that hospital, I could not table an amendment that I could vote on here. If I cannot do that, who can?