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The hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Morgan), among others, accused Conservative Members of seeking to delay matters on the ground that we do not like the Bill. Our motivation is different.
We cherish the Union and wish to preserve it. I appreciate that that distances us from the hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale, but our support for the Union causes us to insist on a satisfactory answer to the famous question posed by the hon. Member for Linlithgow. The absence of an answer constitutes a fault line of exceptional potential peril for the Union.
I savour the old joke that whenever the British answer the Irish question, the Irish change the question, but the hon. Member for Linlithgow has never needed to change the question because no one has ever provided an answer. My right hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) pressed for a review so that the consequences of its not being answered could be addressed. In the history of the Union, a delay of a year would be but a hiccup.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk drew attention to the virtual absence of English Labour Members throughout the debate. I do not know their views on the Union, but it is surprising that they are universally without views on the West Lothian question.
I close by reminding the House of Chesterton's poem, "The Secret People":
Mr. Robathan:
It is a great pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) who, as always, made an erudite speech. I agree with it entirely. I shall not reiterate the points made in excellent speeches from the Conservative Benches and shall be brief to allow my hon. Friends to speak.
Sadly, the Secretary of State is not in the Chamber. I, too, pay him a compliment: we shall miss him when he departs the House, because he has great command and acerbic wit. After 18 years in opposition, I am surprised that he is prepared to go off to Edinburgh because it appears from the latest opinion polls that he may be about to resume his position in opposition.
New clause 1 represents the crux of the Bill and the crux of the matter. The Bill rests on the West Lothian question, which we should perhaps call the Linlithgow question because boundary changes have intervened. It is about the relationship between England and Scotland and the relationship between English Members and Scottish Members. I am a passionate Unionist. I am British and have always described myself as British. I regret that we shall have devolution, but it will happen. If the Bill is passed unamended, I regret that English nationalism, which I shall not support, will grow as night follows day.
We must consider the relationship between the two countries. For every five voters in my constituency of Blaby--indeed, for every five voters throughout England--Scottish Members represent but four Scots. We all know that that is not fair and no one would defend it. It is apparently to be addressed and amended by the boundary commission, but not before the next election--not until after 2003.
I would object if someone said that four white votes would be worth as much as five black votes, as would every other Member of Parliament, so how has this come about? English Members acquiesced in the
over-representation of Scotland because they believed in the Union, but all that is changing and we should alter the relationship whereby Scotland is over-represented in the House. The Scots wish to be doubly privileged, with over-representation and with their own Parliament. However, the main point is the West Lothian, or Linlithgow, question.
I assure Labour Members that my constituents care about this issue. They do not want Scots MPs to determine their laws if Scotland has its own Parliament and I, as their Member of Parliament, have no say on Scottish domestic matters. Why should Scottish representatives determine English domestic matters? The Secretary of State said that we should not be telling people about this question. We have a responsibility to ensure that our constituents understand this matter. It is as if the Secretary of State were saying in 1938, "The Prime Minister says that it is peace in our time, so don't you dare say that there are faults in this agreement." It is incumbent on MPs to point out the faults in legislation.
If the Bill is unamended, it will lead to resentment and jealousy. No Union can prosper in such an atmosphere. In families, friendships and marriages, people fall out over money, and that is even more likely to happen between nations in such unequal and anomalous circumstances. The Barnett formula can no longer be sustained. The Scots should not demand devolution and extra money, yet that is what they are demanding: they want to have their cake and eat it. That is unacceptable.
Scotland will get much from devolution, but will give up nothing. It will have its own powerful Parliament, its own MPs and devolved powers. It cannot logically have over-representation, control over English matters and more money. We should re-examine the relationship in the Bill, as the new clause allows, or it will have dire consequences for the Union and for its peoples.
Those are my fears. I believe passionately in the Union, but England has rights, too. This is not just about Scotland: it is about England and Scotland. I accept that Scottish devolution will happen, but I urge the Government to ensure that inequalities and iniquities are removed to provide a solid foundation. I do not want an English Parliament, but I fear that that may be the logical consequence of the Bill.
The English are not easily moved by constitutional principles, but there is enough to disturb them in the small print of the Bill and in what has been omitted altogether. The Bill's success and that of the Union hinges on the good will of the people of England, which demands that the Bill be amended. The English do not resent the Scots. Many Scots are active in my constituency association, but I find it strange that the Scots resent the English. [Interruption.] I notice that an Englishman who represents a Scottish constituency is laughing, but I know that the Scots resent the English: their attitude is almost racist. The Bill reflects the small-minded, petty, almost racist attitude of Scottish Nationalist supporters. [Interruption.] If hon. Members do not think that their attitudes are small-minded they should go to Scotland. I find it mean and small-minded when people are served in pubs and are told, "Here you are, you Englishman."
Mrs. Laing:
It is much worse than that.
Mr. Robathan:
My Scottish colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing), says that it
Mr. Leigh:
It has been a long wait, but I hope to say something distinctive from what has been said so far and thereby not be too wearing for my colleagues.
It has become almost a fashion in this debate for us to bare our souls and say that we were in favour of devolution all along. I am afraid that I was not in favour of it, and I was wrong. We tried to defy gravity in Scotland and we paid the price. The Conservative party is now sensibly coming to terms with that and accepts that devolution is inevitable. However, it raises serious problems, which we are honestly trying to address. My views on devolution are irrelevant, because we must deal with these problems.
In this debate, we have made the mistake of trying to answer the unanswerable. I refer to the question posed by the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell)--although, in fact, it is not his question; it is the old Irish question, which was debated extensively over a number of weeks nearly a hundred years ago when Gladstone tried to introduce his Irish home rule Bill. Exactly the same arguments were discussed then. It is actually the Irish question, but it is, of course, an unanswerable question: that is why those debates were so lengthy and so difficult.
Mr. Dalyell:
I flatter myself that, when I first posed the question, I did so in terms of Morley's life of Gladstone.
Mr. Leigh:
It is typical of the hon. Gentleman's modesty that he does not claim credit for the important constitutional question that we are now debating. My hon. Friends, however, have--sensibly--posed that question, and have described the anomalies that will arise. I will not refer to them again, because they are well known and have been debated extensively. The solutions, however, have not been so widely debated, and I now want to convince the House that they are completely, or at least fairly, unworkable.
The first so-called solution is simply to reduce the number of Scottish Members of Parliament. As Enoch Powell famously observed during the debates of the 1970s, that is not a solution at all, although it may lessen the gravity of the problem. The Government are managing to reduce the number of Scottish Members of Parliament to a proportion similar to that in England, but the problem remains.
The second so-called solution is the federal solution, which exists in various guises. One is, in my view, inadequate: the creation of regional assemblies in various parts of the kingdom. There may well be a call for a northern regional assembly, but there is no such call in areas such as the east midlands or the south-east of England. That solution is also inadequate because such regional assemblies will have no law-making powers.
The third so-called solution is, perhaps, the worst of the lot. I refer to the in-and-out solution--which, again, was canvassed extensively more than a hundred years ago.
Contrary to what many of my hon. Friends have said, it would be utterly unworkable in a Cabinet system. As I said earlier, the government of the United Kingdom must be based on the totality of Members of Parliament. We cannot allow someone to run a Government and not manage to take business through Parliament because some of his supporters are not allowed to vote in the Lobbies. That system would be unworkable, and it will never operate.
"Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget,
I hope that we never have cause to speak.
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet."
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