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Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

It was far more important than what happened in 1801, which turned out to be a blip in the constitutional history of the UK. What we are seeing now is a permanent change. It has not destroyed the United Kingdom, but it has undoubtedly created a new kind of United Kingdom. That has constitutional implications, as well as implications for fairness. I suspect that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) would suggest that, since Stormont, we have lived with the fact of Members from Northern Ireland being able to vote on all the measures in this House despite the fact that their own constituencies might not be affected by them. There is a de minimis issue that we can sometimes live with, but we now have something quite different, particularly if the Welsh approve an extension of the legislative powers of their Assembly in their referendum. We will have a situation in which not 11 but approximately 100 Members of this House from three of the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom will be able to vote on issues that do not affect their own constituents. There will be only one part of the UK that does not have that right. Rather curiously, having dominated the United Kingdom, by numbers, since the Act of Union in 1707, England will become the one part of the UK whose elected representatives do not, by themselves, have the final say on matters that affect purely their constituents. That will no longer be the case for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, but paradoxically it will have become so for England. Talking about 100 Members, rather than 11, is not a minimal side issue; it goes to the very heart not only of constitutional propriety but of fairness. My remarks today will be about fairness rather than constitutions, because that is the fundamental principle of our political system, and the implications of these arrangements are significant. We must not get this out of proportion, however. I do not believe that it is right to imply that, as a consequence of devolution, this place has effectively become an English Chamber because the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish have very little continuing involvement here as a result of the big areas that have been devolved to their own Parliaments in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. That is a gross exaggeration. If we look at the whole scope of government, we see that the UK Government and Parliament still have either sole or predominant responsibility for massive swaths of policy. The most important issues facing any Government are those of taxation. At this moment, virtually all tax powers reside with the United Kingdom Parliament, and all Members of Parliament from every part of the kingdom have an equal interest in and responsibility for those matters. The largest budget of the British Government is the social security budget, and that is a United Kingdom budget. It does not differentiate in any material way between north and south of the border.