---

House of Commons (Participation) Bill

My hon. Friend raises an interesting and important point, which was unfortunately brushed over by Opposition Members as an argument that did not hold water because Members were raising issues that might never happen. However, when making constitutional legislation we have to think about the things that might come up during the passage of Bills to the statute book and the outcome described by my hon. Friend could indeed come to pass. The hon. Member for North Dorset tries to protect Mr. Speaker through provisions on the presentation of certificates to Parliament and the making of other rulings; clause 1 would ensure that there would be no recourse to Messrs. Solicitor and Barrister or the courts to overturn the Speaker’s rulings. Nevertheless, the situation described by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) could arise during the course of a Bill. Furthermore, the Speaker himself might consider that the original arrangements had not been determined correctly and should be rectified, in which case any previous proceedings on the Bill would be nullified for the rest of its passage. Merely in terms of that narrow reading of the hon. Gentleman’s Bill, it would seem unwise for the House to proceed with it. There has been wider speculation in the Chamber today about the reason why the Bill was introduced. For decades there have been anomalies in the way the House votes on its business. They have attracted periodic but not enormous attention, and there has been some support from the Opposition for their continuation. I am thinking in particular of the continued participation of Northern Ireland Members in votes in this place on business that did not concern Northern Ireland while Stormont was sitting on a devolved basis. Why is a change being proposed now? I was interested to learn that a commission for democracy has been set up through Conservative party channels, to decide, among other things, on issues covered by the Bill. Indeed, it has been suggested that a measure such as the Bill may be considered by the commission, so if the House’s deliberations today serve only one purpose, it will be to tell the commission, ““Don’t do it—think about something else””. Although we are talking about a real issue, it will not be resolved by addressing the detailed way in which we make our decisions with an attempt to solve the West Lothian question through the device of setting up two classes of Members of Parliament. That is at the heart of the wider issue raised by the Bill. Devolution to the Scottish Parliament of powers to make legislation and raise taxes and devolution to a lesser extent to Wales came about as the result of Acts of Parliament here. As has been said this morning, it is possible, although highly unlikely, that a similar Act of Parliament could undo that process. Therefore, although it is true that there is an anomaly in terms of the way in which votes may be said to take place on a daily basis in the House on legislation that affects parts of the UK, but not other parts, it is also true that Members are in the House on the basis that they have an overall concern about all legislation that relates to the UK, because of the way in which the legislation devolved from an Act of Parliament passed and contributed to by all Members of Parliaments in the UK when devolution first took place. It has been emphasised that the logic of the Bill is not that it resolves that anomaly, but that it leads on to a resolution by other means: the setting up of an English Parliament, which, presumably, would have the same legislative features as perhaps a Welsh Parliament, the Scottish Parliament or the Northern Ireland Assembly. In those circumstances, as hon. Members have also pointed out, there could well be a certain outcome, because one particular part of that federation would have an overwhelming preponderance of the votes. I am afraid that the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald) failed to understand the importance of that point, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Ms Smith). If the federal Parliament were to vote on the money supply for the UK as a whole and devolve that into national Parliament components, and a national Parliament that had 80 per cent. of the votes for the federal Parliament as a whole then considered the matter, the likelihood of the entire decision-making process of that federal Parliament effectively being run by the one Parliament that had 80 per cent. of the votes in terms of the decision making on finances in the first place, would be high. The net result of a federal system would be that, in effect, there would be less power and devolution for the components than there is at the moment. That outcome would look quite perverse in terms of the ambitions of those who sought to push through that federal arrangement in the first place. The other important point at the heart of the debate is that the Bill seeks to resolve a question about the extent to which there is symmetry in the way in which the affairs of the House work. My right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) pointed out earlier than the constitution of the United Kingdom has never easily bumped along on the basis of attempts to secure exact symmetry at any one stage. In many ways, the UK constitution is involved in a process of continual becoming. As a position is reached, further changes are made. As has been pointed out, the West Lothian question is not an issue that arose at the time when the then Member for West Lothian mentioned it; it has a much longer pedigree than that. If one looks at the question of asymmetric devolution, not just in the UK, but in various parts of the world, one realises that not only is it not a relatively recent phenomenon in this country, but a common phenomenon in many countries across the world, and particularly in Europe. Let us think about the UK’s constitutional position. We have discussed the question of the Scottish Parliament, which has its own parliamentary processes and the ability to introduce legislation and vary tax. There are also representatives elected to the UK Parliament—not the same representatives, but representatives who are voted for by the same electorate. Wales has no tax-raising power and no primary legislative capacity but it has representatives in the UK Parliament deriving from the same electorate who elect the representatives of its own Assembly. Jersey has its own Parliament and does not have representatives in the UK Parliament, yet the UK Government are responsible for a number of things as far as Jersey is concerned. Jersey is not an independent country, but it does not have the same status as Scotland and Wales. That is a further and long-standing part of asymmetric devolution in the UK. Indeed, a number of Jersey’s residents would claim that the UK is devolved from Jersey, in so far as Jersey is the last part of the Norman possessions that remained in the hands of the King of Normandy, who became the UK King after 1066. Jersey and Guernsey do not have the same constitutional status, nor does the Isle of Man. It has its own, ancient Parliament, and it, too, does not have representatives in the UK Parliament.