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azzuri
'Our Scotland' Fossil
Joined: 12 Sep 2005
Posts: 3776
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 Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 1:54 am Post subject: PM pressed over Scottish MPs voting on English legislation.. |
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see - http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=447&id=197552006
| Quote: | Blair pressed over Scottish MPs voting on English legislation
GERRI PEEV POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
TONY Blair was ambushed by his senior back-benchers yesterday over his failure to tackle the constitutional anomaly of allowing Scottish MPs to vote on England-only legislation.
As the debate over controversial education reforms and the smoking ban looms, they demanded that he stop Scottish MPs from pushing through laws that only apply south of the Border.
To a resounding chorus of "hear hear" from the chairs of all the Commons committees, who make up the liaison committee, Tony Wright, the Labour chairman of the public administration committee, said his middle England constituents resented Scottish MPs having power over their affairs.
He pointed to the smoking ban as one law which had been decided separately in the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. "You can see why the cry is going up from my constituents who say, why can't we have English votes for English laws," he told Mr Blair.
The Prime Minister tried to dismiss the notion of stripping MPs who have devolved parliaments from voting on England-only matters. "If you try to have two classes of MPs, it just doesn't work," he told the committee.
It would be "very hard" to define what constituted devolved and reserved matters. "I doubt if a government is going to introduce this," he said.
However, Alan Williams, the Labour chair of the liaison committee, said the Prime Minister could no longer "fail to address it". The anti-devolution campaigner later said that Labour's mandate would be further eroded in future elections, as it was likely to be returned with a slashed majority.
• Lord Baker, a Tory peer and former home secretary, will try to curb the voting rights of Scottish and Welsh MPs during a debate on his bill on Friday. |
It's the issue that just won't go away, will it Tony?!?! 
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Aventinian
'Our Scotland' Fossil
Joined: 10 Dec 2005
Posts: 4256
Location: Broadcasting From An Anonymous Location Within the United Kingdom.
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| Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 4:51 am Post subject: |
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I don't think the average Englishman gives that much of a toss to be honest.
But yes, it needs to be solved.
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'Socialists cry "Power to the people", and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.' |
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SLG
Born Again..........and still Scottish!
Joined: 16 Sep 2005
Posts: 5515
Location: Dùn Eideann
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| Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 10:01 am Post subject: |
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Michael Knowles gives a toss. But then he might not be your average Englishman.
| Quote: | Devolution left the Union horribly out of kilter
IAIN Macwhirter's article, Yet another step towards declaring independence, is very thought-provoking. The devolution legislation was a very good thing in principle but it was rushed and ill-thought-out. It was given only to 16% of the population of this island, namely the Scots and the Welsh. The other 84%, the English, were left out of it entirely. In other words it left the Union horribly out of kilter, in a quite grotesque constitutional and political mess, illustrations of which are the West Lothian Question and the English Question.
The WLQ and the EQ are not only creating havoc with the passage of legislation in Westminster but put Scottish MPs, when they vote on English matters like education reform, in a state of defiance of the most basic principle of representative democracy, acountability to their electorate.
What Mr Macwhirter's article does is inform us that even with Scotland, which got extensive devolution (such as Wales did not get, which is another very serious anomaly), the outcome has been extremely problematic. It is a form of devolution in which one parliament, namely the Scottish Parliament, remains in a state of "financial dependency" upon another, namely the UK Parliament, a situation which in Lord Steel's words "no self-respecting parliament" should tolerate.
There are four possible ways by which to put this whole matter right. There could be a return to the "status-quo ante", namely the 1998 devolution legislation is repealed by common consent, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly are closed down and we return to having just a UK Parliament. That will not happen.
Or we could move to an extension to England and Wales of parliaments in the same relationship to the UK Parliament as is the present Scottish Parliament. That will work if Scotland and Wales are prepared to continue with England's domination of the UK Parliament which given the size of the English population cannot on grounds of fairness be avoided or denied.
Or we can terminate the Union and have three independent countries. The question then arises: are Scotland and Wales economically viable on their own given that 48% and 55% of Scottish and Welsh employment respectively is public-sector? England's by contrast is 37%.
The fourth possibility is proposed by the Earl of Mar and Kellie, a variation upon the previous one, namely a sort of Commonwealth solution: "They depart politically but not socially from the UK. The social hinge is the Crown. They remain socially British but are politically autonomous."
One thing is absolutely certain. The constitutional and political mess the Union is now in due to the botched devolution of 1998 cannot continue. But it will continue if as now fresh thinking is blocked by the determination of the Labour government to maintain party political advantage. The crisis of the WLQ and the EQ is piling on the pressure to institute an English Constitutional Convention. The wider crisis of the state of the Union, as the gross inadequacies and contradictions of devolution 1998 bite across all three nations of this island, now demands a UK Constitutional Convention as well.
Michael Knowles,chairman, Campaign for an English Parliament, Congleton, Cheshire. |
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/57703.html |
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