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6.30 pm
It is right to examine--I put this point in all seriousness to the Secretary of State--whether a satisfactory answer to the issue can be found before the Scottish Parliament goes ahead. It would be outrageous for it to do so on any other basis. That is why I strongly support the new clause. However, there are considerable difficulties in finding a solution in this House.
An English Grand Committee certainly would not add up because it would not have anything like the powers of a Scottish Parliament and would not deal with the issues about the two types of Members of Parliament. If one further examines how, apart from an English Grand Committee, this matter could be dealt with, there are many problems, including defining what legislation the body applies to and who decides. It would clearly be wrong, if there were any vote in the House on the matter, for Scottish Members to have a vote on it.
As I know only too well as a former Leader of the House, there would be formidable timetable problems in trying to have differences day by day in the way in which who could speak and vote would work out. There are the problems of the two types of Member of Parliament--those who would not be able to vote, speak or take part in many debates in the Chamber and those who rightly would. We shall have the problem of two types of Members of Parliament anyway, as has constantly been pointed out, but to try to find a solution to the West Lothian question in the House would make those problems much more difficult.
Above all, there is the problem of Government control. If, not in this Parliament, but, as the hon. Member for Linlithgow envisaged, in many situations in other Parliaments, Scottish Members of Parliament had the controlling vote, clearly, the Government of the day might
be able to command control over all the issues that are reserved to the House, but not the English issues that came to the Chamber. The Government could lose half their agenda, which is, of course, precisely what the Labour Government fear and why they will not go down that route. A fundamental problem has been unleashed by the Scottish Parliament.
Therefore, it is essential to try to find out whether we can find a solution. I wish the new clause well, but I suspect that we will be driven to the only sensible and logical conclusion--I say sensible and logical not because I want this conclusion, but because it has been forced on us by the Government's decision: it is the fourth option of an English Parliament to mirror the Scottish Parliament. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) for the Bill that she introduced on the matter.
I emphasise that I do not want an English Parliament. It is another layer of bureaucracy, but I am driven to that conclusion--and I have thought about this for 20 years--because, now that the Government have gone down this route, it is the only way in which to bring fairness to all English constituents and to ensure that we do not have the complete nonsense that we have all predicted for future Parliaments.
That is exactly what the Labour Government have unleashed. I warn them that, just as they are running into difficulties in Scotland, so they will run into difficulties on the issue of an English Parliament--which is feared by them; I do not think that they want that solution, and it is easy to see why--and sooner rather than later. That is why this is such an important debate and why it is a fundamental issue in the Bill.
Dr. Godman:
I promise to be brief.
My two criticisms of the new clause have been voiced already my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan): the timing of the review, which is to take place less than 12 months after we get things going, and the fact that it is confined to Scots Members. If we receive the result that all hon. Members must be hoping and praying for on 22 May in Northern Ireland, might we not be listening to Conservative Members arguing that we need to review the powers and functions of Members of Parliament from Northern Ireland, from Wales and from Scotland, and why not add to that English Members?
The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) argued a powerful case for stability that is based on constitutional legitimacy. He spoiled his advocacy by saying ad hominem that Scots Members treat this serious and remarkable legislative measure frivolously. Speaking as a federalist--I have been a federalist all my adult life--and as someone who has advocated all his adult life the need for electoral change and proportional representation, I assure him that I treat this matter with the seriousness and gravity that it warrants. I put him straight on that point.
Our constituents would not allow us to treat this matter frivolously. The setting up of the Scottish Parliament is of the greatest import to them and they know as well as any Tory Member not only that there are intended consequences of this legislation, but that there will be unintended consequences. That is inevitable with all sorts of legislation.
The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe seemed to agree that constitutional legitimacy is conferred on political institutions and legislatures by the approval of the electorate or of a majority of the electorate. I think that Max Weber argued that literally decades ago--that an institution is legitimate in so far as it receives the support of people; he was talking about mature parliamentary democracies.
What has happened in Scotland, certainly in my time in this place, is that that legitimacy, to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred in an honourable and fair-minded way, has come under serious question. It suffered severe diminution during 18 years of Conservative Administration because the Administrations of which he was a member refused to check the legitimacy of what they were doing with the Scottish electorate, and they paid the price.
As someone who has advocated proportional representation for many years, I say that it is unfortunate that 500,000 Scots voted for Conservative candidates in the last election, yet do not have a single Scots Conservative Member. With the system that we are going to introduce into the Parliament, there will be Conservative Members in Edinburgh; I hope but a few--I think that there will be a handful. Perhaps one will be the son of the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack). Therefore, the legitimacy to which the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe referred has largely gone in the eyes of many of my constituents.
In many Scottish constituencies, Labour Members are not concerned in general elections about the threat posed by Conservative candidates; the Scottish National party poses the greatest threat to us. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe paid a fine compliment to the Poujadists of the SNP by mentioning their political astuteness, and there may be something in that. I have in the past complimented them on their very honourable and rigorous adherence to peaceful and democratic change of a most dramatic nature.
I believe, like my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell)--although my view is not as bleak as his--that we in Scotland, and others elsewhere in the United Kingdom, are going down a constitutional road that forks, and that it will be one way or the other for us, especially for those of us in Scotland. In one direction lies independence and a separate Scottish state, as an independent member state of the European Union. In the other direction lies federalism.
We have spoken much about legitimacy in debates on the Bill. Despite the legitimate objections to federalism offered by my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, West (Mr. Canavan), I think that we shall eventually have a federal system in these islands that we share. We sit in a Parliament of a multinational state. I cannot say that the people of some of those nations--certainly not the people of Scotland--have been frustrated by this place or by our Executive of the past 18 years, because frustration is too mealy-mouthed a word. They have been gravely disenchanted, and now have a sense of alienation from our constitutional institutions.
It may well be that we have a serious problem in the West Lothian question. However, in the near future, are we to have a West Belfast question, or a Cardiff question?
Why is it that, when talking about subsidy junkets, some Opposition Members always refer to Scotland and not to Wales or Northern Ireland?
Ms Roseanna Cunningham (Perth):
Or London.
Dr. Godman:
Yes. I sometimes think that we should have devolved London, so that the rest of us might live happily ever after. However, it is too late for that.
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