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Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) made an engaging speech, but he did not let the facts get in the way of his argument. I felt a bit sorry for Lord Strathclyde, because he lives in Scotland and is Scottish, so to be described as having no connection with the country will have been a bitter blow. Equally, it was slightly unfair on the rest of us to be told that we knew nothing about Cumbria or Scotland, given that some of us love walking in the lakes and visit Scotland regularly. But there we go! I was struck by something else that the hon. Gentleman said. He spoke as though the Conservative party invented the West Lothian question—as though it was a sort of Conservative plot. In truth, of course, the question was posed by a Scottish Labour MP, the former Father of the House, Tam Dalyell. He was the one who asked whether it could be right for Scottish Members to vote on English legislation given that English Members had a right to do so on Scottish legislation. Following his speeches during the debates on the Scotland Act 1998, Conservative Members, including Michael Ancram, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), now the Secretary of State for Defence, and I came up with the policy of English votes for English laws to address the West Lothian question. Since then, the Conservative party has had a great deal of work done on the question—the democracy taskforce has been mentioned—and has come to the conclusion that something could be done to address the problem. The democracy taskforce looked at the Standing Orders of the House. For many years, Standing Order No. 97 has been used for these purposes for Scottish legislation. It is not right to suggest, as the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife did, that these Standing Orders would always be used in a hostile, unco-operative way. The fact is that we do have a book of Standing Orders, the House does operate by them and largely there is a consensual approach, through the usual channels, that ensures that we can do our business. I do not think therefore that he ought to be suspicious that, just because we would introduce a new Standing Order, suddenly the history and traditions of the House would change and we would use the procedures to be hostile to each other. Over the years, each of the great parties has been in government and opposition, and were one party to start behaving as though the Standing Orders were a battleground and try to ““get”” the other party, it would reap the whirlwind in due course. We rely on being able to do our business in a consensual way and the usual channels co-operate well, so I do not think that he should be so suspicious. To deal with English legislation, we would simply need to add to Standing Order No. 97, in line 3, page 91 of our Standing Orders, the words ““or England””, make the necessary consequential amendment and set up an English Grand Committee.