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House of Commons (Participation) Bill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for filling me in on sections of the recent history of devolution in Spain. He is quite right that Catalunya is undoubtedly a nation. It has its own history, culture and language, yet it sits in the unified constitution of Spain. In the past, it has elected nationalist Governments, although it is now governed by representatives of the Spanish Socialist party, which is clearly a good thing. However, under a constitution involving asymmetrical devolution, the state of Spain has not broken up, and nor have there been riots about the relative role of Catalunyans in the Spanish Parliament or any significant interference with the devolved process. A further important point about Spain is that following what one might call the initial anomalous devolution, all the other regions in Spain achieved states of devolution—autonomia—that approximated to, but did not quite equate to, those in Galicia, Euskadi and Catalunya. That means that Spain has both a unitary and a highly devolved structure of government. The change to the constitutional settlement has, to an extent—precisely as my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen described—amended the constitution to deal with new issues as they arise. I consider that the wider consequence of our debate is the suggestion that we should set our face against attempts to implement tinkering administrative solutions to the question of devolution in this country that relate to the way in which our Parliament deals with anomalies that have been part of the British constitution for hundreds of years, one way or another. Instead, we should consider how the devolution of power and authority to not an English Parliament, but the English regions, might proceed. I share the view of several hon. Members that although the question of devolution to the English regions is resting, it has certainly not gone away. If we are ever to come up with a solution to either Fermat’s last theorem or the West Lothian question—