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10.51 am
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst): The debate has inevitably been sprinkled with metaphors and analogies. My hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) referred to the goose and the gander and the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) made some rather obscure motion picture references which even I, as something of a movie buff, did not follow.
I had intended to use a canine metaphor about the tail wagging the dog and I then planned to mention the English bulldog, which hon. Members will know does not have a tail. However, I decided that I might move into dangerous territory, so I dropped that idea. It might be useful instead to consider how we have reached this stage. For as long as we can remember, there has been within the United Kingdom a pampered and privileged minority that has received every possible political advantage and yet has proved to be ungrateful. I refer, of course, to the people of Scotland.
The Scots have Cabinet representation through the Secretary of State, a bureaucracy in Edinburgh that caters to their every need and over-representation in the House of Commons. To cap it all--and driven by the aforementioned privileges--the Scots have received money transfers from England that have sustained greater levels of expenditure in key areas such as health and
education than in England. As my hon. Friend eloquently pointed out, the irony is that, until fairly recently, the English were prepared to accept that in a spirit of generosity and magnanimity.
It is a small political miracle that, until now, the English were prepared to accept that privileged and cosseted group within the United Kingdom. However, the Government have made a fatal mistake. Goaded by the imagined threat posed by the Scottish National party, Labour has been driven down the road of what is now called devolution. A series of novel political institutions are being created which may feed the apparently insatiable demand north of the border for more and more political privilege while, at the same time, raising questions about the relationship between England and Scotland which had not been mentioned hitherto. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving us the opportunity to debate today the issue of an English Parliament--a subject that we did not need to discuss until now.
The blame--if blame there is to be--lies squarely with the Labour party and the Labour Government. Make no mistake about that. I have no quarrel with the Scottish National party. It has adopted a perfectly honourable position which it has pursued for a long time and for which it seeks political legitimacy. My argument is with the Labour party which, in a craven manner, has decided to respond to the perceived Scottish National party threat in Scotland by endangering the entire structure and nature of the United Kingdom. Sadly, we must face that fact.
We can no longer tolerate the position whereby the English are expected to sit by quietly while their neighbours in the United Kingdom are repeatedly asked what they want. In one of his few memorable phrases, the hon. Member for Test referred to the "culture and aspirations" of the Scots and the Welsh and the fact that they must be recognised and facilitated. He was attempting to justify the referendums in Scotland and Wales in which the people of those areas were asked, "Do you want more political power and privilege at no cost?" We know that most people in their right minds would, if asked that question, say, "Yes, I would rather like that. I would very much like more control over my own affairs with someone else paying." We got the predictable answer from Scotland and the same answer only just came out of Wales--some of us wonder whether that was the real answer, but we shall hear more about it in the next few weeks.
A key element of the Bill--which I hope the House will support overwhelmingly--is that no one has asked the English what they want. Will the hon. Gentleman try to tell me that the English do not have a culture, an identity, a sense of nation or aspirations? Those feelings might have been muted until they were goaded into being by the actions of the Labour Government. If, as was said earlier, the thousand years of English history have given us an English identity, culture and aspirations, why have we not asked the English what they want? It is very odd that the referendum process may be applied to other parts of the United Kingdom but not to that part which has a rich history and which is paying for the privileges in other parts of the United Kingdom. We are in the anomalous and rather dangerous position of having sought the views of everyone except the paymasters.
That is the first reason why the referendum suggested by my hon. Friend is not just essential but a matter of fairness. If I believed in the concept of natural justice--I do not,
because I have never heard it explained satisfactorily--I might apply that term to the situation, but I think that "fairness" is easier to understand.
Secondly, we have yet to receive an answer to the West Lothian question. I believe that it is a dereliction of their duty as the custodian of our constitution--at least for the time being--that the Government have failed utterly to recognise the importance of the West Lothian question and the feelings that it will arouse increasingly among people in England. That has not happened yet because the realities have not been brought home. However, I assure the House that the matter is raised with me in Bromley and Chislehurst. When the issue is in the public mind--occasionally these matters bob up and are talked about in the House and in the media--people ask me, "Is it right that under the Government's proposals Scottish Members of Parliament will be able to dictate to us in England what is happening yet we shall have no say in what happens in Scotland?" I say, "Yes, that would appear to be the case."
Mr. Swayne:
My right hon. Friend will understand that the West Lothian question is not new. In theory, it existed under the arrangements for Stormont, when there were fewer Members for Northern Ireland in this place than there are now. Is it not largely a question of degree? Might not the anomaly that we have lived with in the past be dealt with by significantly reducing the number of Scottish Members at Westminster rather than having an English Parliament?
Mr. Forth:
My hon. Friend makes a typically constructive and helpful suggestion. I doubt, however, whether it would do the trick. I think that we are dealing with a matter more of principle than of numbers. Even if there were a much reduced number of Scottish Members, who had no role in their own domestic affairs but came down to England gratuitously to interfere in the determination of English matters in this Westminster Parliament--that is, if we did not have the Parliament that my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay is suggesting--the same resentment would potentially exist. I think that that would be the position if only a handful of Scottish Members came south.
I suppose that none of us--perhaps not even yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker--can give a satisfactory answer to our increasingly aggrieved constituents. When they ask us, as elected Members, "Will this be the case, and what is the answer?" we cannot give them an answer as things stand. I cannot imagine what the answer might be.
As I have said, it is a matter of fairness. There must be a proper political response to an important question. If it is not answered, it has within it the potential to increase the present level of resentment and the unhappiness that will be felt in England as we see new political institutions blooming and burgeoning at great expense--basically, at the expense of the English--north of the border and, to a lesser extent, in Wales.
Mr. Dalyell:
The so-called West Lothian question, as it was dubbed by Enoch Powell, not by me, in 1977, goes back, in my case, to reading Morley's life of Gladstone. It was the classic Irish problem. There is now--I think that the term was coined by Alan Cochrane, the commentator--the BTWLQ. "B" stands for bugger. That is not a satisfactory answer.
Mr. Forth:
I defer to the hon. Gentleman's long and distinguished history in thinking about these matters and
One solution--it is attractive to me for a number of reasons--is being offered by my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay, and that is to pursue the logic that certainly exists. The logic runs that if we are to have new late-20th-century, millennium-type warmness towards self-determination, which now seems to be up and running, that is fine. Let us do that. Let us acknowledge that the Scots and the Welsh have a view of matters. Let us pursue that to its logical conclusion. That means that we must ask the other constituent parts of the United Kingdom what they feel about autonomy and controlling their own affairs politically.
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