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Legislation (Territorial Extent) Bill

We have had a very long debate, but the issue is terribly simple. I agree with virtually everything that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has said—apart, of course, from the end game of what he is trying to achieve. The rest made sense. The issue is actually extremely simple, as becomes clear if we look at both the Bill before us—which is what we are supposed to do anyway on Third Reading—and our Standing Orders. The Bill, actually, does not pose innumerable political problems for either side of the House. All it says, under the heading ““Duties of the Secretary of State””, is:"““The Secretary of State must, when publishing draft legislation, ensure that the legal and financial effect of that legislation on each part of the United Kingdom is separately and clearly identified.””" It is as simple as that. It does not actually address the substance of the West Lothian question, but something that can address the substance of the West Lothian question is already in our Standing Orders. It is so simply put in Standing Order 97(1):"““After any public bill has been first printed, the Speaker shall, if of the opinion that its provisions relate exclusively to Scotland, give a certificate to that effect””." The House within five minutes next Tuesday afternoon, if it wished, could simply pass a motion to amend its own Standing Orders so that they read, ““After any public bill has been first printed, the Speaker shall, if of the opinion that its provisions relate exclusively to Scotland or England, give a certificate to that effect””. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) has said—some of the points that he made were quite good—that there might be great political consequences. There would not, because as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Oliver Heald) has said, Standing Order No. 97 is not a closed Standing Order, because it gives a route to the House and the Minister. Once the Speaker has given his certificate, that is not the end of the process, because Standing Order No. 97(2) states:"““On the order being read for the second reading of a bill so certified, a motion may be made by a Minister””." To respond to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, if there was doubt about whether the tuition fees Bill related exclusively to England—on the face of it, one might think that it would relate exclusively to England, given that it concerns education—because of a possible knock-on financial effect for Scotland, there could be communication through the usual channels. Despite the Speaker's certificate sending the Bill to Grand Committee—the English Grand Committee in this case—I am sure that we could accommodate the SNP, because our Standing Orders are sensible and, as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire has said, we have to live together in this place. In such circumstances, we could say that the tuition fees Bill should not be given to the English Grand Committee and that it should not be considered exclusively by English Members. There is therefore a neat and elegant solution to the problem. Despite four decades of debate about the West Lothian question, we could move in a slow and traditional way—in a Fabian way, if I may say so; not a revolutionary way—to solve the problem. We could simply amend our Standing Orders and develop a procedure, bit by bit, through which exclusively English legislation would be referred to an English Grand Committee, so that only English Members would vote. If that approach was such a problem, why, during the time we have had Standing Order No. 97—throughout the 20th century and, for all I know, the 19th century—has no hon. Member said that there was a great problem? There was no great debate even between 1992 and 1997. At that time, if the Speaker issued a certificate to say that a Bill was exclusively Scottish, it would be considered by the Scottish Grand Committee, on which the Labour party would have had a big majority, and there was no argument. If there was an insuperable problem with extending the remit of Standing Order No. 97 to England, one would have expected that the measure would have been the subject of great debate in the past, but that was not the case. To return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), if the Government wanted to act, they would not need a commission. We would not need even the Bill, because all it does is say that the Secretary of State will express an opinion about how legislation will affect particular parts of the United Kingdom. The Bill is completely harmless, because it ties neither the House nor any Minister.