| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. David Maclean (Penrith and The Border): The situation is even worse than that. The matter is not just one of the Minister for Transport pontificating. She is presiding over a roads budget in England which the Government have drastically slashed. The M6 in the north of my constituency, just south of the Scottish border, is a good case in point--an important piece of road has not been built. At the same time, the right hon. Lady, as a
Scottish Member of Parliament, is benefiting from a Scottish roads budget that is 24 per cent. greater. That is a fundamental injustice.
Mr. Gray: My right hon. Friend makes a very sound point. The Prime Minister will shortly have an opportunity to correct that wrong. If he is to avoid the wrath of the English, he must consider in the reshuffle that is coming up whether it will be acceptable for Scottish Members of Parliament to remain as Ministers in England.
There is a slightly broader question, too. Why should Scottish Members of Parliament have such a disproportionate effect in the Cabinet? Around the Cabinet table, there are at the moment 22 Cabinet Ministers. Five of them represent Scottish seats and a further two happen to be Scots representing constituencies here in England. The Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for Defence, the Lord Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Social Security are all Scots who sit here in England and talk about English matters. The Scots amount to 9 per cent. of the United Kingdom's population, but are represented by 33 per cent. of the Cabinet. Why should that be?
While we were one nation, with one Parliament and one Government, that was of course acceptable. As a Scot who is proud to represent an English seat, I am only too delighted that my nation has had a disproportionate effect on running the world over the past 200 or 300 years. However, now that the Scots have gone their own way in Holyrood, how can we possibly justify the fact that 33 per cent. of the Cabinet that runs the United Kingdom are Scots, and the English are ignored?
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham):
In addition to the inequities that my hon. Friend has described, does he agree that Members of this House representing Scottish constituencies, who also serve in the Scottish Parliament and are therefore twin-trackers, should not be allowed to vote in this House so as to advantage their Scottish constituents and the cause of the Scottish Parliament, and in the process disadvantage the vast majority of constituencies represented in this House? Is that not palpably wrong?
Mr. Gray:
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point on the arithmetic of the number of Members of Parliament here and their prospective jobs. If he will forgive me, I shall reply to his point in a moment.
Before I lose sight of the way in which Scots run the United Kingdom, I for once want to quote Jeremy Paxman--not usually a friend of anything that the Conservative party says, although on this occasion what he said was quite sensible. He said:
My hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) mentioned the consequences for Back Benchers in this place. There are indeed consequences for Back Benchers' roles. At the moment, every Scottish Member of Parliament represents about 54,000 people,
and every English Member of Parliament represents about 69,000 people. I am particularly fortunate because I represent 77,000 people in North Wiltshire. I therefore represent about one and a half times as many people as Scots Members of Parliament do.
The Government realised that fact during the passage of the Scotland Act 1998, and wrote into the Act that as soon as time permits--I believe well into the next century, following the next boundary commission report--Scots Members of Parliament will move to parity with English Members. They will have to represent 69,000 people, and perhaps 77,000 people in one or two places, as we do. Why on earth should that be? What possible logic is there in a Scottish Member of Parliament who, due to the proportional representation system that has prevailed in Scotland, is helped out by two or three Members of the Scottish Parliament, doing the same job as I do single-handedly for my constituents in England?
I deal with education, health, the environment, transport and all such issues. I deal with every parliamentary issue on behalf of my 77,000 constituents, whereas there are four Members of Parliament for each Scottish constituency, and one deals only with foreign policy, defence and social security. What on earth will these guys in England do all day? Their constituency business will be divided among four people, and much of it will be dealt with in Edinburgh. They may have the Child Support Agency and one or two other constituency bits and pieces to address down here, but they will have nothing to do in most policy areas. How can they justify their time here?
What is more, how can they justify how much they are paid? How can I be paid £47,000 a year to represent 77,000 people on a range of policies, whereas, apparently, they will be paid £47,000 a year to do half or a quarter of my job? I say that slightly tongue in cheek because, of course, they will have the same outgoings as I do, and I would not want some of my friends who are Scottish Members of Parliament at the moment to cease buying my drinks in the bar. Nevertheless, the point behind my remarks is important. Scottish Members of Parliament may sit here, but they do not have a job to do.
Never mind parity, as the Scotland Act allows; what about reducing the number of Scottish Members of Parliament--the twin-trackers of whom my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham reminded us--perhaps even as far as the number of Members of the European Parliament who represent Scotland, which is currently eight? Perhaps we should generously allow 15 or 20 Scottish MPs to remain here to talk about UK issues, foreign policy and defence. Why should there be parity with the English? There should be significantly fewer constituencies. They wanted their own Parliament, and now that they have it, they must pay the price for it.
The only attempt that the Labour Government have made so far to address the English question has been to come up with the half-baked, half-hearted notion of English regional development agencies and regional assemblies to go with them. The Government hope that that will buy off the West Lothian question and be the magic answer to it. Of course, it is not for a host of reasons--although there are two primary ones.
There is absolutely no appetite in England for regional government. There is no such thing as the south-west of England. Swindon, towards the east of my constituency, is a great deal closer to Paris than it is to Penzance. Gloucester, which is also in the south-west, is closer to Glasgow than to Penzance. If anything, the south-west is Devon and Cornwall, but to include Bournemouth, Swindon and Gloucester in it is simply nonsense. The same of course applies to the south-east, for example. There is no such thing as the south-east; to try to suggest otherwise and that there will be a Parliament for it is nonsense.
There is no appetite for such government; the Government are merely trying to find some way of answering the unanswerable West Lothian question. Anyhow, no one has ever suggested that regional assemblies should have the right to make primary legislation, as the Scottish Parliament does. There is no link between the two forms of government; the proposed regional government is an attempt to fudge the issue.
Mr. Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury):
Such a proposal may be an attempt to fudge the issue, but is it not slightly more sinister? It is very convenient for there to be all these regions, given the Government's intention to create a federal Europe of regions.
Mr. Gray:
I wholly agree with my hon. Friend. I was alarmed the other day to see a European map of Britain on which Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were marked, but for England all it said was "Regions of the European Union". The word "England" was not mentioned at all. The truth that is known by all of us from England is that England has as strong an identity and place in the world as either Scotland or Wales, but that we have allowed ourselves to forget it.
It is perfectly healthy, and no form of English nationalism, to remind ourselves of that English identity. Perhaps we should consider moving the May bank holiday, for example, from its absurd position of 1 May, and hold it a week earlier, on 23 April, to celebrate St. George's day. Why not be proud of St. George and the dragon? St. George is as great a hero as St. Andrew or St. David. Shakespeare called England
"An Englishman can be defined as someone who lives on an island in the North Sea governed by Scots."
That may work for one Parliament, but the moment that there is a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly, as is now so, it is no longer acceptable. England, this morning, is beginning to turn.
"this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England".
The people of England have quietly watched the Scots and the Welsh go their own way, but now is the time for us to assert our English rights. Our English identity must be recognised, and the unbalanced English constitution must be righted. As G. K. Chesterton put it:
"Smile at us, pay us, pass us; but do not quite forget.
As Churchill said, when he was on the other side of the Chamber:
For we are the people of England, that never have spoken yet."
"There is a long-forgotten--nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is England."
Now is the time for the House to speak for England.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |