---

House of Commons (Participation) Bill

The hon. Members who are present are clearly fabulous, but there could have been a greater number of them. I expected to see many more Members on the Conservative Benches, given that the measures in the Bill were Conservative policy at the last election. Clearly, devolution will involve further changes before we get the balance right; as other hon. Members have eloquently said, it will continually evolve, and so it should. The Bill looks at the issue from the wrong end of the telescope. It concentrates on a small anomaly that does not have a huge impact on the constitution, and it entirely misses the bigger picture, which is the unfinished business of devolution for England, and the need to ensure that power is closer to the people, rather than centralised in Westminster. Some people have questioned the motivation behind the Bill. Obviously, I accept that the hon. Member for North Dorset has a genuine concern about the current settlement, but it has been pointed out that the subject is wound up with issues of party political advantage, particularly given that the Conservatives did not think that there was a problem at all in the 1960s, when the boot was on the other foot, as was mentioned earlier in respect of the situation in Northern Ireland. Now, they are in a very different position, particularly electorally in Scotland. Their own shadow Secretary of State for Scotland said, in a recent well-publicised memo, that"““There are more obvious problems than solutions emanating from Scotland from a party point of view.””" I would argue that the Conservatives are increasingly an English party and, furthermore, a party of south-east England. I am surprised that the hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) is not in the Chamber for today’s debate. I know initially he had a diary clash because of the Scottish Conservative party conference, but that is clearly no longer an issue, because according to senior Tories in Scotland, he was certain to get booed, so he has no excuse for not being here. The Conservatives are picking and choosing the anomalies that they want to correct. The current Labour Government were elected on 35 per cent. of the vote, yet more than 55 per cent. of Members are Labour, so the issue of the Government mandate is a much more serious anomaly, but the Conservatives are far less keen to change our warped electoral system. In fact, as was pointed out by the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), if the issue of electoral reform were addressed, the saliency of the issue would be considerably reduced, because parties would be better and more fairly represented. The Bill will cause more problems than it solves. The issue of Scottish votes deciding English legislation has been raised, but in reality there have been very occasions on which Scottish votes have had that impact. In the 2001 to 2005 Parliament, such votes made a tangible difference to only two Bills—the Health and Social Care Bill and the Higher Education Bill, both of which have already been mentioned. So far in this Parliament, which began in 2005, no legislation that has not related directly to Scotland has been passed just on the votes of Scottish MPs. I would argue that if we considered the frequency with which the issue comes up, we would see that it is not a common problem. The problems that the Bill creates are far greater than the problems that it claims to try to solve.