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Home Affairs and Justice

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman must excuse me, as I have to make some progress. While we in Government are making a series of proposals designed to strengthen the United Kingdom, the Conservative party—or at least part of it—is now advocating a policy of English votes for English laws, which would have the effect of wrenching it apart. The phrase English votes for English laws sounds beguilingly simple, but a more than cursory analysis reveals it to be completely unworkable. More than that, it would fatally undermine the Westminster Parliament and unravel the Union. I apologise for the language, Mr. Speaker, but it is very important that I quote what the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) has said about such a proposal. A former Foreign Secretary and member of previous Conservative Administrations, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said in the Financial Times earlier this year that it would be a ““constitutional abortion””. I happen to agree. He is absolutely right. If I may, I shall detain the House with a bit of history that is absolutely germane to what we are facing today. It was precisely his concerns about the unworkability of so-called English votes for English laws that led Gladstone, who had proposed a similar plan during the course of the second Home Rule Bill in 1893, to withdraw that plan at the final moment. Chief among the many flaws was the impossibility of discriminating between what Gladstone described as the Irish and the imperial issues. When he finally gave up, he said that it"““passed the wit of man to frame any distinct, thorough-going, universal severance between the one class of subjects and the other””." We saw the Leader of the Opposition's wit yesterday, but we were left in grave doubt about his wisdom. I recommend that he listen to Gladstone—