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Home Affairs and Justice

Unlike the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), I am a Unionist. If there were countless instances where it would be difficult to sort out the full implications across the border of particular measures, I, as an English Member, would by now have raised repeated grievances about measures carried by the Scottish Parliament that might have implications for my constituency. Not the slightest instance of such a situation occurs to me; nor is it the case that every measure, on both sides of the border, has public expenditure implications for the other side. The Lord Chancellor is doing what his colleagues do: he is trying to elevate a great constitutional principle—the defence of the Union—when he is actually defending the partisan interest of his party, because he thinks it is possible that there could be a Labour Government who lacked an English majority.