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House of Commons (Participation) Bill

We could talk about Sark and Alderney, but we do not have time to do so today. There are further anomalies, such as Gibraltar. Its population is represented in the UK parliamentary system, in as much as it takes part in Euro elections. It elects a Member who would otherwise take his or her seat in the European Parliament solely representing a part of the UK mainland. All those different arrangements in the UK can be matched up with others, such as those in the French overseas territories. Those territories have representatives in the French Parliament. There is asymmetric devolution in Denmark, because Greenland has members in the Danish Parliament but it is not a member of the EU; it has members in a sovereign Parliament within the EU, who make decisions relating to the EU. Jersey is not a member of the EU either, but the UK undertakes a number of responsibilities for it and the UK is a member of the EU. There is an idea that the Bill can bring about an easy solution to the West Lothian question of asymmetrical devolution, but it merely nibbles at the foothills of the asymmetry of how this country is governed and has been governed for a long time. The Bill proposes to secure an administrative solution for the business of this House. Even if that solution were remotely to work, it would not address the wider question of asymmetric devolution within the UK in general. Asymmetric devolution is far more common than people think, and it is how many countries deal with the issues of how their constitutions work. Let us consider the interesting example of Spain. There was initially asymmetric devolution within the three linguistic regions of Spain—Euskadi, Galicia and Catalunya—which for a while stood anomalously within the Spanish constitution. The constitution states that there shall be particular forms of devolution in Spain, while also stating that Spain is a unitary and indivisible state.