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House of Commons (Participation) Bill

It certainly does. I will not speak for the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr. MacNeil) as he takes a different view from me on these matters. I support the Union—that is one difference I have with the hon. Gentleman. I believe that the Union has served this country well. What worries me is that some people—I do not include the hon. Member for North Dorset among them—might exploit a genuine concern within English constituencies, either by accident, recklessness or malicious intent, to undermine the Union. That is a real threat if we proceed along the lines of having an English Parliament, and I believe that the proposal we are discussing moves us towards the creation of an English Parliament within this United Kingdom Parliament. That concerns me. Why am I so against an English Parliament? If we have an English Parliament representing 80 per cent. of the population of the United Kingdom and 80 per cent. of its material assets—or more if we consider the wealth of the south-east—it will inevitably become not only a rival to the UK Parliament but the real Government of a large part of the country. It is impossible to have a Government drawn from this Parliament and also a separate Government running 80 per cent. of the country and to believe that that will not provide for a constitutional deadlock—exactly the sort of deadlock that was described, wrongly in my opinion, in the debates that we had about the other place. I should add that, from the point of view of my constituency, I feel that an English Parliament would do my constituents less good than a UK Parliament. I represent a rural west country seat and more of the constituencies that share the characteristics of my seat are to be found in rural Wales and rural Scotland than would be represented in an English Parliament that would be dominated by the urban and suburban interests of the urbanised areas of England. Therefore, if I want community of interest in respect of my constituency, that is more prevalent in a UK Parliament than it would be in an English Parliament. Having said that I am a supporter of the Union and therefore cannot countenance an English Parliament, the second principle that governs my opposition is that Members of this Parliament are equal and must remain equal. They must not be categorised and put into some sort of national ghetto that does not allow them properly to participate in the workings of this sovereign Parliament. It worries me that that might be the effect of the proposals of the hon. Member for North Dorset. Thirdly, I am not convinced that we should regulate what we do in this House by statute. We shall return to that matter in the context of House of Lords reform. To what extent can we regulate the affairs of Parliament by statute, or can that be better done by code and our rules of conduct? The moment we start regulating by statute—which is the intention of the proposals—we cross an important constitutional dividing line, because if some Standing Orders are to be dealt with by statute, why should that not be the case for all Standing Orders? At present, we have a marvellously fuzzy constitutional settlement in which very little is written down. A constituent of mine asked me recently what was the legal basis for Parliament. That is in fact quite a difficult question to answer. Is it founded on the fact that we have passed an Act?