Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.

Before addressing the details of the Bill, I cannot help reflecting on the last half hour of debate. Devolution has not gone far enough in the United Kingdom; the sooner Northern Ireland has an Assembly to deal with these matters, the better.

This Bill seeks to answer the West Lothian question, which was raised by Tam Dalyell in the 1977 debates when the Labour government introduced their first measure to establish a directly elected Assembly in Scotland. Tam would get up on clause after clause and ask, "What should Scottish MPs do at Westminster after Scotland has its own Parliament?" Enoch Powell dubbed that the West Lothian question. The Bill in 1977 did not proceed because the government did not secure a guillotine, but they resumed with another Bill in 1978 to establish a Scottish Parliament and it was on a measure in that Bill that they were defeated in 1979.

The West Lothian question is not a new constitutional question. It was first addressed by Edmund Burke during the American Revolution, when he advocated local self-government for the 13 American colonies. He described it as "local patriotism". The colonies would then come under the Westminster umbrella, which would convey "imperial patriotism". The writings of Edmund Burke influenced Gladstone very strongly in establishing the first Home Rule Bill in 1886. He had to grapple with exactly the West Lothian question. He said:

"If Ireland is to have domestic legislation for Irish affairs they cannot come here for English or Scottish affairs".

The first Home Rule Bill of 1886 excluded Irish MPs from coming to Westminster altogether. The second Home Rule Bill in 1893 modified that. It rejected the proposal that I shall be putting to your Lordships later, which is called "in and out". Gladstone went for a policy that reduced Irish representation at Westminster. He reduced the number of Irish MPs who were allowed to come to Westminster from 103 to 80; it was quite a modest reduction. That was also proposed in Asquith's Bill, which reached the statute book and was implemented in 1914. Both Harcourt and Morley pointed out to Gladstone that reducing the number of Irish MPs did not really solve the question at all, because Irish MPs could attend and vote and determine policy in England, Scotland and Wales. The Gladstonian settlement had within it the seeds of future friction.

I shall briefly address the position of the Government on devolution, which is important, as they have been the main proponents of it and have made the most significant changes. The early Labour leaders, Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald, were Scottish home rulers, but the Attlee government did not turn to devolution at all. Attlee was not remotely interested in it; he would let sleeping dogs lie. Indeed, that was also the position of the first Wilson government from 1964 to 1970, apart from one very interesting debate in 1965, when Wilson had a majority of only two. It was a measure on steel denationalisation. This is what Wilson said:

"I am sure the House will agree that there is an apparent lack of logic, for example, about steel, when Northern Ireland members can, and presumably will, swell the Tory ranks tonight, when we have no power to vote on questions about steel in Northern Ireland because of the fact that the Stormont Parliament has concurrent jurisdiction in these matters".

There was a devolved Parliament, but Northern Ireland Members could come here. Wilson asked the House of Commons to,

"look at the question of why he"—

the leader of the Conservative Party—

"gets the support of his honourable Friends beside him—for example, on matters affecting housing discrimination in London—when we English, Scottish and Welsh Members cannot express our views about housing conditions in Belfast".—[Hansard, Commons, 6/5/65; cols. 1560-61.]

Harold Wilson did not pursue the matter; he decided to have another general election and to try to secure a majority of more than two. None the less, he had focused on it. The Labour Party was fairly cool about devolution. The Labour Party conference of 1968 passed a resolution opposing devolution. However, by 1970, the Scottish nationalists had appeared as a serious and major threat to Labour in Scotland, having one MP in 1970 and 11 in 1974, with 30 per cent of the vote. It was the second Wilson administration, from February 1974 to October 1974, which committed the Labour Party to a directly elected Scottish Assembly.

My point is that the conversion was relatively late. It was always opposed by certain distinguished Labour Members of Parliament. Neil Kinnock was strongly opposed to it, as was Eric Heffer, because they realised the consequences of the policy. We have just discovered in the past three or four weeks that one of the major supporters of the policy was Denis Healey. According to the papers released by the Public Record Office, as Chancellor of the Exchequer he urged the setting up of a Scottish Assembly to defeat Scottish nationalists, as he did not want the Scottish nationalists to get their talons on North Sea oil. For all those reasons, the government were committed, but they failed to do it. John Smith promoted the policy, and Tony Blair accepted that legacy and introduced the Acts of 1998 and 1999.

Why is this now a question? Why should it come up again now? First, the constitutional settlement that the Government have imposed on the country is neither static nor final. Since 2000, the Acts have been extended as regards devolution. Since that time, control over fire and rescue services, animal health, the audit of devolved bodies, the ombudsman and student support have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament. As for Wales, the Government now have the Government of Wales Bill before the House of Commons, which creates a Welsh Executive, rather like the Scottish Executive, and a chief Minister in the Assembly. It also creates a form of legislation that is virtually that for a Parliament, in that the Welsh Assembly will in the future be able to draft legislation and bring it forward in a complete form to this House, and we will approve it with an hour's debate through an Order in Council. That makes the Assembly a Parliament in all but name, but it is not called a Parliament. There would have to be a referendum, if the Government win the next election, to decide whether it should be called a Parliament. In fact, the change is very significant. Since 2000, there has been a steady movement away from the hub to the rim of the wheel, and I think that that will continue. Certainly, Mr Jack McConnell, Scotland's First Minister, wants it to continue. He has argued that he wants the Scottish Parliament to have control over drugs, firearms, broadcasting, immigration and nuclear power. The current settlement is neither static nor final.

We have now had six years of devolution. Before the creation of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly, the West Lothian question was to some extent rather academic and theoretical; it was really a synonym for opposition to devolution. That is not now the case and we now have to address the question. So far, the Government's response is a modified form of the Gladstonian solution of reducing the number of Scottish MPs. At the last election, the number of Scottish MPs was reduced to 59. As a side issue—I do not wish to feature on this very strongly—if it was truly proportionate it would be 54, not 59, but I leave that argument aside. Scotland is over-represented in the House of Commons. When it comes to Wales, for which there has been no reduction, as it does not have a Parliament—it has an Assembly, although that is going to get powers to make it virtually a Parliament—the numbers should be reduced from 40 to 32. That should make a reduction to 86 Scottish and Welsh MPs.

But if you take the principle that operated when Stormont existed, there should be a further reduction. When Stormont existed as a separate Assembly in the United Kingdom, Ulster should have had 17 MPs in the other place, but did not; there were only 12 MPs. I see the former leader of the Ulster Unionists nodding, so I have got the facts right. If you reduced that 86 proportionately by a third, the Scottish and Welsh MPs—if the Government believe that this is the solution to the West Lothian question—should number 56, not 84. I do not really think that that answers the West Lothian question.

The Government depend on the Scottish and Welsh Labour MPs, although there is one fewer as a result of the by-election yesterday—I was going to say 40 Scottish Labour MPs, but it is now 39, and 29 Welsh Labour MPs, which makes 68 altogether, to carry the Government's legislation in the lower House. They will have to carry contentious and difficult legislation that affects only England. That is outrageous. It is outrageous that the Member for Doon Valley or the Member for Paisley North—the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, will have a chance later and I will refer to him several times—or the Member for Caithness should be able to decide over the schools in my former constituency of Dorking. Why should they come and tell my constituents how they should appoint head teachers, how they should select children or whether they should have trust schools? When I was the Member for Dorking, I had no control over education in Paisley North, Doon Valley or Caithness—in fact, the Members for those constituencies do not have any control over that. That is outrageous and unacceptable. You should have English votes for English laws.

Let me give a further example. Your Lordships will recall that the Scottish Parliament decided that there should be a total smoking ban in Scotland. In the Health Bill, which is before the lower House, the Government, prompted by Dr John Reid, who is a Scottish MP—no matter—said that they wanted a partial ban. That is part of the Bill that will eventually come to this House. Before Christmas, in a Commons committee, Sir George Young, a long-term anti-smoker, moved that there should be a total ban in England. That Motion was lost by one vote. A Scottish Member of Parliament decided whether we should have a partial or total ban in England. That is absurd. I put it again to the honourable Member for Doon Valley, who is also, I believe, the chairman of Motherwell Football Club.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

Heart of Midlothian.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

I am sorry, my Lords, Heart of Midlothian. If he was still a Member of the lower House and he had voted on the smoking ban, he would be telling Chelsea supporters where they could smoke, how they could smoke, when they could smoke and whether they could smoke. Whereas the supporters of Heart of Midlothian, if they exist—

Noble Lords:

Oh!

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, they would have absolutely no influence on it at all. It is absolute absurdity.

Another example is roads. I resent the fact that the present Secretary of State for Transport is a Scot, because he is making decisions on roads in East Sussex, where I live, which I think are lunatic and wrong; but there we have it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Mr Darling made a huge faux pas by going to Dunfermline at the beginning of the by-election and saying that there would be no increase in the Firth of Forth tolls. The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Alistair Darling have no control over the tolls on the Firth of Forth bridge. That is a matter for the Scottish Parliament. Many Members of that Parliament are very offended that the Chancellor and Mr Darling went up there and said that. In fact, I think they contributed to last night's defeat, because the people of Dunfermline were saying clearly, "We want to run our own affairs, we do not want to be bullied by Ministers coming from Westminster, particularly the Chancellor". The Chancellor is responsible for the loss of Dunfermline. I gather, in the repositioning of Gordon Brown, he will take a greater interest in constitutional matters. I hope he starts by figuring out what he has done so far.

The Government recognised that the case for English votes for English laws is unanswerable, so they decided that their answer was to have English regional assemblies. They asked their Deputy Prime Minister to fly the kite, and we all watched it thud to the ground.

My proposals in the Bill are designed to resolve this matter. I seek to give the Speaker powers, or rather confirm powers that the Speaker already has, to certify the territorial extent of a Bill. He has that power and he has exercised it in regard to Scottish Bills. He would designate groups of MPs—English MPs, Scottish MPs, Welsh MPs and Northern Ireland MPs—allowing them to vote only on such Bills, parts of Bills and statutory instruments. That is the nub of my proposals. There are many objections to them and I should like to deal with some of them.

The first objection is technical—can you separate out bits of Bills? The answer is that clearly you can; it is done in much legislation. In this Bill, I have given considerable power of discretion to the Speaker to decide on these matters. The Speaker can take advice from the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, if he wishes. For the Government to say that it is not possible to define Bills, parts of Bills and statutory instruments is not an acceptable argument. I know that my noble friend Lord MacGregor has spoken and written about that and, no doubt, will refer to it later.

The second argument is that my proposal creates two classes of MPs. Well, there are already two types of MPs. When I was in the House of Commons before devolution, we were all equal. We could vote on absolutely everything that we wanted to and we had the right to do so. Devolution changes everything. For example, English MPs in the House of Commons can vote on English roads, English hospitals and English schools, whereas Scottish MPs cannot vote on Scottish roads and so on. Two classes of MPs already exist, so the argument that you would create inequality between them does not stand up.

Do not think for a moment that this is just a Conservative point of view. Many people on both sides of the House of Commons share it. In the debate in January on the Government of Wales Bill, the Father of the House, Alan Williams, who is a well respected Labour MP for Swansea, said the following:

"I abstained on tuition charges because I felt that I should not vote on them, but we have an anomalous situation whereby Scottish and Welsh Members, who are not answerable to English constituencies, will vote to impose on them measures that will not apply in Scotland or Wales. That affronts my concept of the democratic accountability that I thought existed in our country".—[Hansard, Commons, 9/1/06; col. 55.]

It is not only Alan Williams. Peter Kilfoyle, a well known supporter of the Government, said:

"It seems a perverse form of democracy when members representing Scottish or Welsh seats decide on matters which, in their case, are devolved to the Welsh Assembly or the Scottish Parliament.

"Those members would rightly take umbrage at interference by the British Parliament in such devolved areas. I take exception to any member who wants it both ways".

And it is not only him, but someone from the mainstream of the Labour Party, Tony Wright, the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee. Speaking at a meeting with the Prime Minister and heads of other committees, to a resounding chorus of "Hear, hear"—or so it says in the Scotsman, so it must be true—he said that his

"middle England constituents resented Scottish MPs having power over their affairs".

That support for my Bill extends not only to the Labour Party, but to the Liberal Party. Simon Hughes has made it clear that he supports this measure. An article in Times Online this week stated:

"Campbell would stop Scots MPs voting".

The Government have to address this question very seriously indeed. They can no longer shelter under the answer given by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg, who is in a place—not his former place—in the Chamber. He said of the West Lothian question that the best thing to do about it was not to ask it. That was just about tenable in 1998 and 1999, but not now, because we have had the experience of seeing what happens. While you can turn a blind eye if you are a daring and imaginative commander in war, if you are dealing with a constitutional matter, turning a blind eye is an excuse for torpor and friction. This matter has to be addressed.

The third objection that I have heard many times is that the Scots and sometimes the Welsh will say, "Well, in the Thatcher years you imposed a whole lot on us that we objected to fundamentally". I see the Lord Chancellor nodding. I am glad, because the noble and learned Lord has the capacity of occasionally stumbling upon the truth. Then he picks himself up as if nothing had happened. Of course, we did what we did because it was a unitary Parliament. But devolution, I say to the Lord Chancellor, changes everything. Once you establish in a unitary kingdom a federal unit with power to make laws—absolute power—with only a theoretical control from Westminster, you change everything. We have to address that problem.

The fourth argument is that the Westminster Parliament is supreme—the noble and learned Lord is nodding again. The argument is that the Westminster Parliament can vote on anything, and that is in the Bill that the noble and learned Lord introduced to the House. In theory, that is right, but its Members can legislate in Scotland only if they get the approval of the Scottish Parliament through a Sewel Motion. Theoretically they are able to legislate on, say, road speeds in Scotland but, if they did not get a Sewel Motion, there would be a major constitutional crisis because the Scottish Parliament would say, "That is for us to decide, not Westminster".

The sovereignty of Parliament is at best a dormant sovereignty. The point that the House should grasp is that, once sovereignty is devolved, it is not a devolution but a division and sharing of sovereignty. That is what happens and that has been consolidated by the experience of the past six years.

The last argument is so trivial that I shall barely touch on it. It is that, because measures before Parliament affect the constituents of Scottish Members of Parliament, they should have a say on them. In the debates on tuition, some Scottish Members of Parliament said, "We've got constituents who go to English universities and therefore we are involved and want to have a say on it". That is a totally absurd argument. Let us suppose that their constituents went to Trinity College, Dublin. Those MPs would not ask for a seat in the Irish Parliament, would they? The same would apply if their constituents went to the Sorbonne. Of course that would not be the case. One might as well say, "I'm a Scottish Member of Parliament. I may fall ill in England and so I want a say on how hospital trusts are run". It is an absolutely ridiculous and absurd argument.

I come back to the point that devolution changes everything. It is not static or final but is moving further and further on as we speak. The Procedure Committee in the Parliament of 1997 to 2001, which had a majority of Labour members, argued for a proposal very similar to my own. The government of the day totally rejected it, although it was supported by a Labour majority. The clear principle is that there should be English votes for English laws.

I am a unionist. I believe that the United Kingdom has been an enormous success. It is neither a nation nor a country; it was a political creation in the middle of the 18th century and it has served the peoples of our countries well and it has served the world well. But I do not believe that it would hold together if there were manifest inequalities and unfairness between the constituent parts. Again, I quote Gladstone:

"The concession of local self-government is not the way to sap or impair but the way to strengthen and consolidate unity".

I support that totally. I married a Scot; all my children went to a Scottish university, as did their mother; I even go on holiday to Scotland—I do not know Sharm el-Sheik. I am aware of the Scottish dimension. I believe that the only way in which we will hold our United Kingdom together is by recognising that we should have English votes for English laws.

Moved, That the Bill be now read a second time.—(Lord Baker of Dorking.)

Lord Sewel (Labour)

My Lords, in moving the Second Reading of the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, has given us a history lesson. It was a somewhat incomplete and, if I may say so, somewhat partial history lesson, but we will leave that for the moment.

The noble Lord argues that the Bill helps to secure a more stable and equitable devolution settlement. Let us get this bit of history of the Conservative Party and devolution straight. The Conservative Party opposed devolution in government from 1979 to 1997; it opposed devolution in the 1997 general election; it opposed devolution in the 1997 referendum; and it opposed devolution in Parliament—to the extent that the Scotland Bill still holds the record for taking up most time in this House since 1997. That is the history with which the party opposite comes to this issue. We know where it comes from.

The noble Lord himself brings certain characteristics to this debate. One of them is indefatigability. He is also the master of the unintended consequence. As a Minister, he indefatigably sought out problems that others might not have seen and came forward with novel legislative solutions. He sought out the problem of domestic rates. He came forward with the novel legislative solution of the poll tax, the unintended consequence being the eventual downfall of his own leader. Now he identifies the problem of Welsh and Scottish representation at Westminster and comes forward with the novel legislative solution of this Bill—the unintended consequence being a very real threat to the union, and that is what concerns me.

As someone who was born in London, brought up in Yorkshire, got his first job in Swansea, lived most of his adult life in the north-east of Scotland, and, along the way, was a graduate of an English, a Welsh and a Scottish university, I am a passionate defender of the union. I am equally passionate in my view that the union succeeds because it encourages and recognises diversity. That diversity strengthens the Union but it means that everything does not fit together in a formulaic uniformity. There are what may be seen as anomalies—they possibly are—and they have to be faced and perhaps accepted.

In attempting to answer the so-called West Lothian question, the Conservative Party has a choice and that choice is simple. It must decide whether it is the party of the Union or the party of England. If it goes down the road indicated by this Bill, it will impose a totally unworkable structure on the House of Commons. That will spring not from the arguments advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, but from the fact that we will have the strange situation of a government who have the full confidence of the House of Commons but who are structurally unable to secure large parts of their legislative programme. That will be extremely difficult to convey to the electorate.

More important is the question of two-tier membership of the House of Commons. Introducing that would shatter the unifying role that the House of Commons plays in the political life of the United Kingdom. That depends on all Members of the House of Commons being equal, no matter from which part of the United Kingdom they are elected. There must be no second-class Members of the House of Commons.

The truth of the matter is that this is an opportunistic Bill. Quite simply, would we be discussing the Bill today if the present-day Conservative Party were flourishing in Wales and Scotland and if it had a majority of the votes in Scotland, as it had in 1955? The answer is no. The Bill is a confession of failure. It is not the union that has failed the Conservative Party; it is the Conservative Party that is about to fail the union. The West Lothian question is not new to British politics, as the noble Lord indicated, although I do not think that he went thoroughly down the route on which he started in his analysis. For decades, we had what I suppose could be called the West Antrim question—or, perhaps more accurately, the North Antrim question. Of course, it was never really asked—certainly not by the Conservative Party. As far back as the 1920s the Government of Ireland Act established a form of devolution for Scotland. Ulster MPs were full Members of the House of Commons, and the Conservative Party, to my knowledge, never raised the question that Ulster MPs should be second-class Members. Why not? It would be churlish to suggest that for most of that period the Ulster Unionist Party was a close ally of the Conservative Party.

What about the West Lothian question? If it is an issue—and I remain far from convinced that it is a burning issue among the people of the United Kingdom—then there are different ways of handling it. The strongest unionist position is to recognise it as an anomaly, but an anomaly that is well worth accepting if it secures the future of the union. Alternatively, it is possible to argue that we should replicate something similar to the situation established by the Government of Ireland Act.

There is, however, a qualitatively different set of solutions which is similar to the one proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Baker. There is the idea that English legislation should require a double majority—a majority of all Members of the House of Commons and a majority of English Members of the House of Commons. Then, there is the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, which clearly relies on establishing a two-tier system of membership. I believe that those two so-called solutions will be seen for what they are—a desperate attempt by the party opposite to come up with some self-serving constitutional wheeze to secure its position in the House of Commons in the face of its failure to secure the support of the people of Wales and Scotland.

The choice for the party opposite is clear. It can be a narrow party of England—it can follow a policy of vindictive and reckless constitutional change in an attempt to secure its short-term interests—or it can behave like a true unionist party, true to its own roots, and accept the challenge of winning the support of the electorate in Wales, Scotland and England. It cannot be both.

The Earl of Glasgow (Spokesperson in the Lords, Transport; Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I am becoming increasingly worried by the growing anti-Scottish feeling in England, most evident in the Conservative home counties. Some recent articles in the so-called quality press have been so aggressively anti-Scottish and anti-Scotsmen that they border on incitement to racial hatred. Their bile is not only directed at the understandable concerns at what is seen as an excessive Scottish influence on the political affairs of England—the issue at the heart of the Bill—but a growing resentment of Scottish involvement in all walks of English life.

Scotsmen, as we all know, run English banks; they are captains of English industries; they manage English football teams; they head powerful trade unions; they command armies, navies and Royal Marines; they are ever-evident as presenters on English televisions. One particular Scotsman's antics have even succeeded in doubling the viewing figures of that ghastly, demeaning "reality" programme, "Big Brother". And that is not to mention that nearly half the British Cabinet are Scotsmen.

Of course, English-Scottish rivalry has always existed. But in the past two centuries anyway, it has always seemed a healthy rivalry. We Scots have had to suffer the patronisation of the English and their mocking insensitivity to our culture. For instance, I have hardly met an Englishman who knows anything about Robert Burns, our national poet, who is revered by the French, the Russians and most European countries as well as the Americans, yet is deliberately ignored by the English. "Auld Lang Syne—What does that mean, for heaven's sake?", they say. We have to pretend that we do not mind jokes about sporrans, bagpipes and haggis. Spike Milligan, in the 1950s' "Goon Show", invented a Scottish character—"Hairy McLegs".

We are also supposed to be mean. They must be referring to those living on the east coast. We west coast Scots are famous for our friendliness and generosity. Anyway, Scots have never been mean—we are canny. That, by the way, is a Presbyterian virtue, not a fault.

Part of this English resentment is based on an annoying suspicion that the Scots are relatively more intelligent than they are—more canny, anyway. Incidentally, I am an exception to that rule, but that is only because I was educated in England.

It is not my imagination when I now fear that the rivalry between our two countries, which has always been tempered with good humour, is now becoming resentful and acrimonious. That sizeable Scottish minority who pride themselves in hating the English, and have always done so, now seem to have their counterparts in England. This is a very worrying development. To some extent, among Conservative voters especially, that new animosity has been caused by the creation of the Scottish Parliament and what has come to be known as the West Lothian question—the ability of Scottish MPs to speak and vote on purely English matters when English MPs have no comparable right to participate in Scottish affairs. That is so self-evidently unfair and illogical, yet there seems to be no simple solution to it, despite what has already been said.

That, however, is what the Bill is attempting to do. But, regrettably, its proposed solution does not seem to make practical sense. Is the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, seriously suggesting that a Cabinet Minister—no, let us go further: a future Prime Minister—will be unable to speak or vote on important English matters because his constituency happens to be in Scotland?

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, Tony Blair cannot vote on any matters devolved to the Scottish Parliament. He cannot even ask or answer Questions on such matters.

The Earl of Glasgow (Spokesperson in the Lords, Transport; Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I am talking about a Prime Minister. I shall carry on.

It might make sense to deny Scottish MPs the right to speak on English Bills on those occasions when there is a free vote, but only if it were a free vote. If that had been the law the Hunting Act, for instance, would not have had 50 or so Scottish MPs voting against a sport that affected only the English countryside. As we know, Scotland had already ruled on the subject. But I cannot see how Scottish MPs, who like all other MPs in the United Kingdom are subject to their parties' Whips, could be disallowed from voting on a government Bill, even it were one that affected only England. Short of abolishing the Scottish Parliament, or perhaps just drastically clipping its wings, I do not see the solution to the problem.

I was interested to hear that the earlier speakers felt as strongly as I do that the Bill, if passed, would help to loosen the bonds that bind England and Scotland together. My SNP friends see this Bill, as they do all other attempts to resolve the West Lothian question, as a win-win situation for their cause. Although such a Bill might help to stem the tide of anti-Scottish feeling in England, it would also result in a weakening of the union. That is what those of us who believe passionately in the union most fear. Like other speakers, I believe that Scotland needs England and that England needs Scotland and that any greatness or influence that we may still have in the world depends on us remaining a united United Kingdom.

Unless the voting rights of Scottish MPs can be limited only to free votes on English matters, I cannot support the Bill. But I much welcome the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Adams, and look forward to hearing her views on this matter.

Lord Laird (Crossbench)

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, on his excellent, amusing and interesting speech presenting the Second Reading of his Bill. It is not one that I would agree with at all. I have tremendous sympathy with the predicament that the noble Lord and others find themselves in, described as the West Lothian affair. But the solution that he has come up with is, in my opinion, totally unworkable.

The Bill would mean that the other place would have to have a system of majorities: a majority for the government of English affairs, a majority for the government for overall UK affairs and a majority for the government of affairs which may need to be dealt with in Northern Ireland. It is a bit like a kaleidoscope—every now and again, you would have to shake the bits and look to see what the pattern was. It could well be that the only reason why the Labour Party, for example, was in power was that it was relying on 39 Scottish votes. You would therefore have a situation where the Tories might hold the majority of English seats, but the Labour Party was in power because of its Scottish seats. That does not seem terribly sensible.

What about budgets? We are, in a sense, one unit. When you start cutting up moneys, you take moneys away from one district and give them to another. I am not well versed in the intricacies of the Barnett formula, but it seems that when you vote on one bit, you vote on the lot because it all has a knock-on effect.

What about the Lords? Would the same thing not apply to us? How do you set about who we are in the Lords?

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, the noble Lord has no constituency representation at all. He is here because of his personal excellence, not because he represents anybody but himself.

Lord Laird (Crossbench)

My Lords, I am not disputing the personal excellence bit. The question is, when we come to vote on legislation, are we then deemed to be from a particular area? That is the logic of this.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

But the noble Lord is not representing a particular area.

Lord Laird (Crossbench)

My Lords, the point is that we still have a say in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. If you are going to limit the lower House, is it not then logical to limit the Members of the upper House? That is the next step.

Take, for example, my very good friend the noble Lord, Lord Steinberg, of Belfast, whom I have known most of my life. He does not live in Northern Ireland—he is an excellent Tory Member of this House—but he is the noble Lord, Lord Steinberg, of Belfast. Is he to be classified as a Northern Ireland Peer and excluded from talking on English issues? The whole thing does not fit into the House of Lords well.

What about the Northern Ireland Members? If, under the solution of the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, you still have no devolution in Northern Ireland, would it be only the Northern Ireland Members who could vote on activities in Northern Ireland? You could do that, but the government party does not even organise in Northern Ireland. There is a sub-government for Northern Ireland run by the DUP. It mightn't be a bad thing, but that is what the solution would be, because it is the largest party in Northern Ireland. If they are the people who can vote on Northern Ireland activities, how could they be members of the Government? The Government would then be multi-party.

How can you be a Cabinet Minister from, say, Scotland if you are not allowed to vote on issues in another area? That is not logical. The noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, asked a good question, and the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, managed to answer the wrong one. If the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom happened to be a Scot—although it seems slightly less likely after last night's result, but not to worry—could he then not vote on English affairs?

I am very conscious of the problem of the West Lothian question. Coming from Northern Ireland and being an Ulster Unionist, and having been the last person ever elected to the Stormont Parliament, I am in a good position to say that the Stormont Parliament worked and provided good legislation. As a unionist, however, it was a compromise too far for us. We should never have accepted that system of slight home rule—devolution—in 1921. That made us different from the rest of the kingdom and we have suffered for it ever since.

The problem is that you do not have different solutions for different areas: you have one solution. If we are going to go down the devolution route, this Parliament must become a federal Parliament, with a lot of similar Parliaments or Assemblies around the place. You cannot have different powers in different sections; first- and second-class Members of Parliament; Members of the House of Lords who do not know where they are; or Cabinet members, including the Prime Minister, who are not even allowed to vote on issues affecting the largest part of the United Kingdom.

The lesson of Northern Ireland must be learned. We were made different in 1921. As a unionist, I regret that we accepted that solution. Please do not get caught up in this type of devolution, which will cause intense problems in future. The West Lothian question will not go away. In 20 or 30 years' time, however, somebody might come up with the solution that this will become a federal Parliament and there must be regional Parliaments. That is the only viable solution: that we are all equal.

Lord Wakeham (Conservative)

My Lords, it is my great pleasure to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Adams of Craigielea, on her maiden speech. She comes to this House with enormous experience in central and local government. I remember when she first came to the House of Commons just before I left and I also remember with affection her husband who was for many years MP for the same constituency. I also remember talking to Tony Benn on the day his son, Hilary, was elected Member of Parliament for Leeds Central, and the enormous pride he had in that. When he was telling me about it, he looked at me and said, "I want to create a dynasty, but by democratic means". So the noble Baroness followed, by democratic means, a family tradition. She is not the first to do so—many have—and she is certainly most welcome in this House. I congratulate her on her powerful speech—to say that it was not controversial would be flattery of a kind to which even I cannot stoop. However, it indicates that her contributions on many other subjects will be much appreciated by all of us in this House.

I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Baker on his timely and important Bill. There was never any problem about my noble friend making a good speech because he always makes a good speech. Indeed, I have on a few occasions heard him make an extremely good speech when he had a very bad case to deploy. But today he made a good speech on a good case and it will take a bit of answering. What happens to my noble friend's Bill as it goes through Parliament is important to me, but, equally important, is that the problem will not go away whatever happens. Sooner or later, voters in England will find a way of righting what is increasingly seen as an injustice.

My noble friend's proposals are sensible and practical and I support them, but I must admit that part of my desire to make a short contribution to the debate was to listen to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor. He cannot dodge this issue, certainly not in the charming way his predecessor managed to do, as already alluded to; that the best way of dealing with the West Lothian question is not to ask it. That was the substance of the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Sewel. They feel that the problems that may be created, if they cause trouble, are insufficient when it comes to keeping the union together. My noble friend and I also strongly believe in the union and want to find a way of keeping it together.

The problem will not go away. The late and much-missed Donald Dewar made clear that the original devolution settlement was only stage one of the process. One has only to read his St Andrew's Day speech of 30 November 1998 to see that. Therefore, the previous views from the government Front Bench are not an adequate solution to the problem. My noble friend touched on the different alternatives that he saw, the obvious one being reducing the number of MPs at Westminster who represent devolved parts of the United Kingdom. I do not believe that would work, not least because the necessary reduction would present us with enormous problems.

I want to pick up on what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Adams. The Barnett formula has been around for most of my political life. I do not believe that even its architect—the noble Lord, Lord Barnett—now defends it as a sensible way of dealing with these matters. So things must change, but the solution is not to reduce the number of Members at Westminster, although a strong case can be made for it.

The Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords, which I had the honour to chair, looked at the subject in an indirect fashion. We were conscious that it was a problem and we made two proposals. Both are relevant, but are not necessarily sufficient to deal with the major issue which my noble friend's Bill addresses. First, we proposed that the House of Lords should set up a Select Committee to monitor the relationship between the devolved assemblies and Westminster to deal with clashes between the two bodies. A committee of officials within Whitehall already does that, but it seemed to us that there was a case for a more transparent Select Committee.

Secondly, we proposed an elected element from the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. Small though that elected element was for other good reasons, it was intended that the Members of your Lordships' House here to represent the nations and regions of the United Kingdom would be able to perform a great service in helping to maintain the unity of the United Kingdom. But neither of those proposals, both of which were worth pursuing, is likely to deal with the problem of the major anomaly increasingly facing us that a great many English people feel that the present constitution of the House of Commons is not fair or democratic and needs to be changed.

My noble friend's Bill has a number of difficulties and I have no doubt that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor has a fistful of arguments that he will deploy about why it is difficult. We know it is difficult. In my view, the Bill is the best proposal that has been put on the table, certainly recently. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will give us the benefit of his thinking, not just on my noble friend's excellent Bill, but on what is increasingly seen to be a problem in the United Kingdom.

The Earl of Mar and Kellie (Spokesperson in the Lords, Transport; Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, for introducing this Private Member's Bill which is giving us the chance to debate the permutations of what may be answers to Tam Dalyell's West Lothian question. I enjoyed the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Adams of Craigielea, and I hope that we will hear more from her in future.

I shall speak first from the perspective of the Hanoverian settlement and then from that of the Stuart settlement, which will be true to myself. The orthodox unionist view must be that there are four responses to the West Lothian question. It is worth remembering that the West Lothian question has two manifestations. One is that of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish Members voting on to the statute book legislation otherwise devolved elsewhere, especially when the government of the day does not have a parliamentary majority in England. The second is the presence in an England-only department of a Minister who is a Member for a Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish constituency. It has already been mentioned that Dr John Reid was the finest example of that when he was Secretary of State for Health in England.

The first response to the West Lothian question is to take a deep look into the Scottish political psyche and muse on the 293 years during which English Members voted into being Scottish domestic legislation and, in so musing, to enjoy some Schadenfreude. That is the "do nothing about it" option. The protests that are believed to be arising about this in England betray the real truth. The treaties of union of 1536, 1706 and 1800 were the embodiment of England's political desire to dominate the British Isles. That political aim began to unravel in the case of Scotland in 1885 and, most definitely, in Ireland's case in 1922. No doubt, English Ministers of the time would have claimed to have been doing that in the name of security. However, all our former local enemies are now fellow members of the European Union, the UN and NATO.

The next option must be the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. It has some merit. On the face of it, it aims to prevent MPs from devolved areas voting on English domestic matters. If only it were that simple. As Scottish experience since 1999 shows, UK Bills often require the co-operation of Scottish Ministers or the use of devolved services, in part, for their implementation. I can see that the Speaker would have to certify parts of Bills, possibly clauses of Bills and perhaps even subsections of Bills. That would be quite complicated and probably too difficult. I am also surprised that the Bill does not prevent Peers resident in Scotland voting on English domestic matters. I find that the Bill throws up real problems of governance: a UK government without a three-figure majority would be unable to legislate for England.

The third option is to legislate for English devolution in one of two forms. I favour the creation of an English devolved Parliament, but the alternative is the creation of English regional assemblies. Those bodies must have real legislative powers. I reject the regional approach because England is a superpower with 50 million people and the fourth largest economy. It ought to be a single entity. This solution would clearly leave the United Kingdom with a more uniform constitutional structure and the United Kingdom Parliament would deal with reserved UK matters only. It would be a proper federal structure, and my noble friends would like it. However, the line between devolved and reserved activities would have to be redrawn in the light of experience since 1999. It has already been said that Messrs Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling got into a muddle over Schedule 5 and decisions on the Forth road bridge tolls. Confusion is quite easy, even for those who designed the system.

I shall leave those who believe in the Holy Grail—the Hanoverian settlement and its parliamentary unions—with their four options and shall consider further possibilities. The creation of a United Kingdom was embodied in the 1503 marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor and was inaugurated by the short-lived Treaty of Perpetual Peace, which collapsed 10 years later on Flodden Field. James IV and his Ministers clearly saw that the security of Scotland could be achieved by a union of the Crowns. That occurred 100 years later when his great-grandson James VI became King of England, Ireland and, fancifully, France in 1603. As a Stuart-style unionist—and I had better mention that I am a member of the independence convention—I am very content with the constitutional architecture of one Crown and three governments of international standing. Not everything in the Stuart era was brilliant, and I do not seek to uphold most of it. However, the future of the United Kingdom or, even better, the British Isles, lies in the earlier manifestation of the United Kingdom.

Since Scotland is now submerged within an unnecessary parliamentary union, I believe that the English-speaking peoples of the British Isles would benefit from the resumption of statehood by Scotland. People who live in Scotland would feel better about themselves as a small Nordic-style state, rather than as a small part of a superpower and I suspect that the world community would benefit from the re-emergence of Scottish statesmen in international institutions. They could bring a different British Isles perspective to the top table, as the Irish have definitely done in recent years.

I must ask the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, to whom I believe I have given written notice in writing, about the procurement of a referendum for Scottish full autonomy. Last week, the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General was unable to give me any answer to this question. Since I believe that the resumption of statehood is a matter that ought to come from the people, not from any political party or within any multifarious election manifesto, a referendum should be triggered by a petition from the people. So, if this Government were presented with a petition with more than 1,000,000 signatures, as the United Kingdom Government were in 1950 in the case of the national covenant, would this Government ignore such a petition for a referendum? I hope that the noble and learned Lord will tell the House how the United Kingdom would be prepared to receive such a popular request. This really must have a declared democratic route.

Clearly, that would be a big step for Scotland, and I must acknowledge that there would be big issues about, among other things, the budget and the submarine base. The former would be a difficult process of adjusting to the funding of a small country and its different range of government activities ceasing to be part of a superpower. The latter could be dealt with as a treaty port, as was the case in the Irish treaty negotiations in 1922.

That said, I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for allowing us to discuss solutions and responses to the West Lothian question and for the chance to look into our constitutional history and seek what I believe to be the real answer. I shall watch this Bill with interest, both from the point of view of amendment and to see whether the House decides to send it to a Select Committee for further examination of the possible solutions.

Lord Elder (Labour)

My Lords, I find myself following the distinguished Liberal Democrat, who seemed to me, in a very interesting variation on various trends, to have come dangerously close to coming out as a nationalist this morning. I found much about the debate perplexing, not least that the Bill before us had been moved by a Member of the party which claims to be in favour of the union. I think that this debate really revolves around the question of how to deal with an unwritten constitution that has been around for hundreds of years which has a number of anomalies, and how one deals with these anomalies. It is perfectly appropriate to cope with anomalies; the question is whether this Bill, instead of dealing with anomalies, in fact creates a constitutional crisis. I take the view that it creates a constitutional crisis and should therefore be avoided.

It is surprising that the Bill challenges the right of this Parliament to sit as a UK legislature with powers over all matters, and, if enacted, would undoubtedly signal at last the start of the end of that union. It expresses a view which is wholly destructive and determinedly opportunistic and which should certainly not be given support in this House.

There have always been anomalies in our unwritten constitution. I find it ironic that the noble Lord, when in government, never showed any inclination to accommodate these anomalies, and, as a Secretary of State, was satisfied to govern Wales and Scotland without any sort of electoral consent from the Scottish and Welsh people. Has he forgotten that he was a member of the government that used their English majority to force the poll tax on the people of Scotland before the rest of the United Kingdom? One of the more interesting phenomena of that time is that is it is always said that the government tried it out in Scotland first and—this is really fascinating—having found that it was unsuccessful and politically disastrous, went on to use it for the rest of the United Kingdom, with, as my noble friend Lord Sewel said, disastrous consequences for both their then leader and subsequently their government.

It appears that this Bill wishes to create two classes of MPs. Under the noble Lord's proposals, we would cease to have a UK Parliament. Instead we would have a London Parliament where Scottish and Welsh MPs were visitors with limited rights, powers and influence. I can think of nothing more likely to lead to a break-up of the union than an adoption of such measures.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, does the noble Lord recognise that English MPs have limited powers now on Welsh and Scottish matters? Why does he not say that that is unacceptable? English MPs have no influence on Welsh and Scottish matters. How does that reconcile with what he has said?

A noble Lord:

Not true.

Lord Elder (Labour)

My Lords, it is, as my colleague was saying, not true. I shall come to that if the noble Lord will allow. He says repeatedly that in reality the Westminster Parliament does not have the power or right to govern. Whether or not he likes it, that is not in statute the case. I will come back to that again, but he really must not keep repeating a point which is simply an assertion and not substantiated by what is in statute.

I did not like what happened under the most recent Conservative government and the democratic deficit that was created then. That is one reason I argued so strongly for devolution within the United Kingdom. I have never wavered in my belief that we were stronger as part of the UK, and I do not do so now. We went ahead with devolution in the knowledge that we were likely to be switching one set of anomalies under the constitution for another, but some of us—those who were not nationalists—have been prepared to live with the consequences of old anomalies because the price to be gained from the strength of the UK meant that it was worth while.

Confronted by another aspect of the same constitutional anomaly, some noble Lords seem to want to cut and run. They dismiss the idea of finding a way of dealing with the anomaly but are intent instead to create a major constitutional crisis. It shows what superficial supporters of the union they have become. They claim that the majority feel threatened by a minority and need special protection. I can understand the old position where a minority felt oppressed by a majority, but the idea that a special dispensation should be used to protect the majority, which is what England is, seems rather odd.

Noble Lords also make the assumption that future governments will be as indifferent to the feelings of the majority as the sponsors of the Bill were in the past to the feelings of the minority. I do not believe that that would be the case, not least because, having been in the position we were in between 1979 and 1997, the Scots and the Welsh are a good deal more sensitive to the issues surrounding democratic accountability than the members of the Official Opposition ever were.

Scots and the Welsh remember how it felt to be ruled by a government who had little sympathy or concern for their issues. It was not democracy; it was grossly unfair. Those of us who believe in a United Kingdom believe that we are all, as constituent parts of the United Kingdom and as part of the European Union, stronger than we would be on our own. We had accepted the constitutional anomalies involved when Westminster government seemed indifferent to us. That is what devolution is within the United Kingdom—it leaves Westminster intact. In a famous phrase, "power devolved is power retained". In Westminster, the Parliament of the United Kingdom remains sovereign.

A past leader of the Conservative Party, William Hague, argued that devolution for Scotland and Wales was unfair to England and would lead to the break-up of Britain. He argued briefly for an English Parliament, but soon backed off. But neither he nor the noble Lord ever, as far as I can remember, went on record to say that the pre-devolution settlement was unfair to Scotland or Wales.

Now a new leader of the Conservative Party claims to believe in devolution. The Dunfermline by-election, I am happy to concede to the Liberal Democrats, was a remarkable victory yesterday. But the interesting thing to draw out of it is that their party and my party, whatever that result had been, would have continued to fight in every seat in every bit of Scotland, Wales and England, whereas the implication of the Bill is, frankly, that the Conservatives are withdrawing into their laager and are not prepared to do so. I return to what the leader of the Conservative Party said. There was much quoting of what he said about his being a liberal Conservative and agreeing with Liberal Democrats on Iraq. The same leaflet also said that he agreed with the Liberal Democrats on devolution. Since the Liberal Democrats' attitude to devolution has always been well known—they see it as a staging post towards a federal solution, which they have valued for a long time—the interesting question for the Conservatives seems to me whether in supporting the Liberal Democrats in devolution, Mr Cameron is now becoming a federalist, or whether he is just a bit reckless with the constitution, as I would say this Bill is.

Supporters of this Bill also have some strange bedfellows. The Scottish National Party gives it its backing, not through any political principle, but precisely because it sees the Bill as a means to an end; namely, to set in train the break-up of the United Kingdom. It believes that the UK Parliament should not have a role in legislating north of the border and that the Scottish Parliament should be the only legislative body as far as Scotland is concerned. How do the noble Lord and his supporters on the Benches opposite feel, as unionists, to have such allies?

The noble Lord referred to the second Home Rule Bill of 1893 when Irish MPs were reduced in number. He did not go on to say that this House rejected that Bill in Committee because it was impossible to define what was and what was not national legislation. Over 100 years later that issue still exists. A great deal of legislation can too easily be described as English but in fact has a huge direct and indirect impact on the devolved governments, not least in the finances available to them, as has been mentioned. The House of Lords was right to reject that Bill then and it will be right when it fails to support this one.

Finally, I say of this Bill that it represents a terrible failure of nerve and of ambition for the Tories. They clearly feel that they have no chance of gaining seats in Scotland and in Wales. For a party that had more than half the votes in Scotland 50 years ago, that is a reflection of how far it has retreated over the years into some parts of one of the countries of the UK. It can hardly now claim to be a party of the whole nation or, indeed, one that supports the union. This is a bad Bill, and it should be treated accordingly.

Lord Strathclyde (Leader of the Opposition In the House of Lords, Parliament; Conservative)

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Elder, promised that he would answer the question of my noble friend Lord Baker when he said that English MPs had no say over Scottish matters. I was looking forward to hearing what the noble Lord said. Does he not have an answer, or did he forget to give it, and if so, could he please give us the answer?

Lord Elder (Labour)

My Lords, the point that I made was that, constitutionally, English MPs and Westminster have the power to legislate on all matters in the United Kingdom. That is what devolution means. You may say that it may not be exercised; I do not know. However, I will say that the provision may or may not be dormant, but the fact is that it is a constitutional provision which is there. The Conservative Party seems to be playing very fast and loose with the constitution here. It is even deciding to miss out bits of the constitution which are inconvenient to its argument simply because it finds it easier to do so.

This is the constitutional position; MPs and this House have an absolute right to legislate across the United Kingdom. That is where they have that power.

Lord Richard (Labour)

My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend will allow me to suggest to the noble Lords, Lord Baker and Lord Strathclyde, that whatever is said about Scotland is not true so far as Wales is concerned. It is just not true that English Members of Parliament are incapable of influencing what the Welsh Assembly does. Noble Lords will know that the Welsh Assembly does not have the power of primary legislative competence. It cannot pass Acts—I am being waved at by a Whip; I am not quite sure why.

My point is that the only power that the Welsh Assembly has is in subsidiary legislation, and English Members of Parliament who sit at Westminster pass the main Act under which the subsidiary legislation is made. That is part of their power, so it is just not true that English MPs cannot affect what goes on in Wales. They can.

Lord Judd (Labour)

My Lords, I am sure that we would at least thank the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, for giving us this opportunity to have what is proving to be a very thoughtful and interesting debate. At the outset of my remarks, I also take this opportunity to pay a warm tribute to my noble friend Lady Adams of Craigielea for a very forthright and honest speech that was absolutely characteristic of Scottish culture at its best.

I shall make just one observation on the last exchange. As a former Defence Minister, I can say that defence is not a devolved issue, so far as I am aware. It is very possible that English MPs would vote on a defence policy that had immense implications for the social and economic life of the Scottish people. To say that there is a clear-cut division is an oversimplification. I hope that the noble Lord would agree that there must be a certain sensitivity when an unelected House such as ours, which does not hesitate to put its views forward or indeed to vote on what the elected House wants to do, decides that it is up to it to start telling the elected House how it ought to make its affairs more democratic and more transparently so. I am slightly uneasy about credibility in that context.

Having said that, I think that we all recognise that the noble Lord has focused on a real issue, but if we are going to deal with that issue, it is important to have a little perspective. I had a Scottish mother and an English father. I am very close to my Scottish family. I grew up in a family in which one of the anecdotes that was repeatedly told was of the Scottish businessman who was building his business with some success and managed to resolve all the problems that arose at St Andrew's House. However, finally a problem arose that made it necessary to go to see people in government in London. His family was rather anxious about it. When he returned they gathered around and asked how it went. He said, "It went fine. Why? What's the problem?". They said, "But how did you get on with all those Sassenachs?". He said, "Sassenachs? I didnae meet any Sassenachs; I only met the heads of department".

When I had my first tentative job on the fringes of government, I was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of Housing and Local Government. That was a very big department, with tremendous responsibilities in England and Wales. Every Monday morning I used to perch right at the end of a very long table. Down one side were ranged what always seemed quite a large number of Ministers in the department, carrying one responsibility or another; on the other side were the senior civil servants. I intend no disloyalty to my Secretary of State whom I love personally and whom I was glad to speak for, but the person who in many ways physically, let alone intellectually, dominated the occasion was the permanent secretary, a big Scot of immense intellect and authority. Here was this Scot leading this department which had extensive responsibilities in England and Wales. There is some perspective to be examined here.

The noble Lord made a point to which I related very warmly: he said that he was strongly a unionist but that he believed that unionism—and successful unionism—was directly related to the success of devolution. I totally agree with his argument but it leaves unresolved the issue of English identity and means that at some point the question of an English Parliament may have to be examined. The evolutionary approach to constitutional reform clearly presents new challenges.

Apart from the West Lothian question, we have the issue of regional government without matching regional democratic institutions. In Cumbria, where I live, more and more the key strategic issues relate to regional administration. I hope that the setback of the referendum in the north-east will not be allowed to become terminal, because I believe that that issue will not go away.

Then there is the issue of how, increasingly, matters that affect the people of the United Kingdom as a whole are decided at European or international level. Quite how do English parliamentary institutions relate effectively to that new dimension? Then, of course, there is still the unresolved future of the second Chamber. There is also the issue of the electoral system itself. Why is one form of electing representatives appropriate in one part of the country and not in another? We have diversity here; what are the implications? What are we learning from this experience?

There is a need for a comprehensive review and a road map identifying our destination and how we can best reach it. I am becoming convinced that tactical management arrangements are not enough and could even undermine stability and public confidence. We must be able to see the wood, not just the trees. I am uneasy when constitutional policy-making is undertaken within a party-political context. I believe that the constitution belongs to the people and we, the politicians, are practitioners within it. If the constitution is to be effective, the widest possible consensus is needed. That is essential for political stability. I wonder whether the time has come for a classic, old-style royal commission with a comprehensive constitutional remit which can identify the issues and make recommendations on the way forward, but on a comprehensive, holistic basis, not a piecemeal one—a basis on which the interrelationship of the issues could be examined, avoiding what might be described as the "bubble in the lino" syndrome, an issue preoccupying us today.

The relevance of my suggestions—perhaps its urgency—is underlined by the growing disturbing evidence of public disenchantment, not least among the young, with the political system. There is a massive task to be undertaken to bring British people on board as a whole in the future of our political system and in understanding the underlying strategic issues, and, then, determining how best we can work towards fulfilling those strategic objectives with the practical measures that we may introduce in one context or another. At the moment, too often the tail is wagging the dog.

Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market (Conservative)

My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Baker on introducing this Bill and I strongly support him. Like my noble friend Lord Wakeham, I believe that this is an issue which simply will not go away. I rarely quote myself but on this occasion I cannot resist. I spoke at the Second Reading of the original Scotland Bill in 1976. I remember it well because the Second Reading took three days, going through night after night. Looking back, I found that I spoke at 5.32 am on the second day, when the English voice was starting to be heard.

I mention that because the noble Lords, Lord Sewel and Lord Elder, have suggested that it is somewhat novel or opportunistic at this stage for my noble friend to raise this matter: not at all; it has been raised from the beginning. I spoke as someone who was born, brought up and educated in Scotland, but I had come to live down south and was representing an English constituency in Norfolk where I had been for only two years. Now I have lived in Norfolk for more than 30 years.

I first addressed the paper that the Government had produced, headed, Devolution: The English Dilemma, which indicated that they were aware of the dilemma and produced two solutions. The first solution was to build up the economic planning councils, which was clearly ludicrous because it had no democratic element. The other solution was regional assemblies. I produced the usual arguments against regional assemblies not having the same powers as the Scottish Parliament, and so on. In particular, I said that there was no demand in England for it except in the north-east. We now learn, and the Deputy Prime Minister has certainly learnt, that there is not even demand for it there. So there was no case for the regional assemblies. I therefore described it in the debate as a,

"smoke screen and a con trick to cover up the patent unfairness of the devolution proposals for English people".—[Hansard, Commons; 14/12/76; col. 1468.]

I went on to deal with the question that we are debating now. I mention this because it was the obvious enormous hole in the Government's then proposals. We warned of the consequences from the outset. I said that the only answer was that the,

"Scottish and Welsh Members of the House should be deprived from voting on matters affecting only England—the same subjects as are being devolved to the Scottish Assembly. While there is no support in Norfolk for a regional assembly, there is growing anger at the fact that Scottish and Welsh Members may often speak and vote on matters that affect my constituents most, such as education, health and local government, whereas their own English Members will have no opportunity to speak or vote on similar matters affecting Scotland",

which is precisely this issue.

At that point, the Member for West Lothian, Mr Tam Dalyell, stood up and asked me:

"Would it not create an odd form of government if my honourable friend the Member for Lanarkshire North and I partly made up a government majority but were not able to vote on the most delicate issues of English politics?"

I responded:

"I accept that that may sometimes happen. It is an inevitable consequence of the dog's breakfast with which we are presented. I should prefer that to the present alternative, which will be unfair to all English constituencies".—[Hansard, Commons; 14/12/76; col. 1474.]

The honourable Member for West Lothian listened carefully and attended all the way through. He then produced the West Lothian question.

Now, that issue is not just a prospect but a reality. I note that my honourable friend in the other place, Sir George Young, in the debate in Westminster Hall on 6 January 2004, came to exactly the same point, but having now experienced it. He said:

"It is impossible to defend or explain that to my constituents . . . whereby Scottish Members can impose top-up fees or foundation hospitals on my constituents but cannot impose those policies on their own constituencies. The position is indefensible and inequitable".—[Hansard, Commons, 6/1/04; col. 47WH.]

Interestingly, in the same debate and on the same point, a Scottish MP from the Scottish National Party said:

"It is a boil that needs to be lanced . . . The Scottish Parliament has changed absolutely everything".—[Hansard, Commons, 6/1/04; col. 49WH.]

Of course, it has, and my noble friend was right to point that out.

So the issue has been around for a long time and has been pointed out, but it is the Government who have produced the situation for us. As my noble friend pointed out, it has been compounded by the fact that some Members representing Scottish constituencies are Ministers in departments affecting only England. Therefore, they are developing policies for English constituencies over which they have no control in Scotland. He referred to the present Secretary of State for Transport. Since 1997, there have been five people with Scottish backgrounds or constituencies who decide English roads but have no decisions themselves in the same way affecting their own constituencies or Scotland. One of those people happens to be a Member of this House, so I will exclude him, but four others have represented Scottish constituencies and have dealt with English transport matters. That rubs salt into the wound. Just imagine, if Ministers in the Scottish Parliament and important posts were drawn from English constituencies. What an outcry there would be if that happened north of the border.

On the arguments against the proposal, I am really backing up some of the points made by my noble friend. First, as he rightly pointed out, we already have two sorts of MP. But I do not think that the case could have been better put than by the Scottish nationalist MP, Peter Wishart, who in that debate acknowledged two classes of Members in the other place. He said:

"I am in a different class of Member from an English MP because I have no say on schools, hospitals and most of the public services in my constituency. I do, however—this is almost preposterous—have a say on schools, hospitals and public services in the constituency of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire",

who was introducing the debate. He continued:

"That is patently unfair and increasingly untenable".—[Hansard, Commons; 6/1/04; col. 50WH.]

I agree with that.

Secondly, there are the difficulties of drafting, to which reference has been made. Parliamentary procedures and legislative drafting have evolved to meet changing circumstances—one of the biggest in recent years being devolution. There has been much adaptation. I believe that we would have to do that again. It is certainly not beyond the wit of man, drafters and Ministers to deal with it. Some Bills which currently involve English and Scottish matters, particularly the Sewel aspect, exist, but that is a convenience in many ways for the Scottish Parliament. They would have to be split and we would have to accept that. Perhaps there would be more work for the Scottish Parliament, but I do not think that it has as big a load as the other place here.

Some Bills clearly would have implications for Scotland and England. Here, I acknowledge and welcome the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Adams of Craigielea. I understood some of the points that she made. Her point about block grants is fair. There is not just an indirect effect; block grants legislation has a direct effect. I hope that the way in which we run the Barnett formula at present will change in a future case. But, for now, that is the way in which it works. It may be that the Speaker would be right to classify that not just as an English matter and that it would be a matter on which all Members would speak and vote because it directly affects Scottish constituencies. I do not believe that it is impossible to deal with the drafting.

My noble friend dismissed "indirect interest" as almost ludicrous, and I agree with him; that is, the suggestion that some English measures—for example, tuition fees—may have an indirect effect on some constituents of Scottish MPs. But you can equally argue the other way around: some Scottish votes—for example, on tuition fees—have an implication for English Members and their constituents. I do not believe that that is a decent argument. What would the Scottish Parliament and people say if in order to accommodate this point for English MPs, English MPs were allowed to speak and vote on issues in the Scottish Parliament where they were able to argue the same indirect interest? I know that they would say, "Absolutely not on". Therefore, I do not think that is a good argument in this case.

Next there is the dilemma that would arise were we to have a Labour majority in the Scottish Parliament and a Conservative majority in England. This is very much a realistic possibility to which we would have to learn to adjust. Just as the Scottish Parliament has adjusted to the coalition government, the Labour Scottish Executive would have to adjust to a Conservative government at Westminster—a point to which your Lordships' Select Committee on the Constitution drew attention in its recent report on how devolution was working out. After all, on English matters, that would be the wish of the electorate. An alternative would be an English Parliament, but I believe that my noble friend's proposal is a much neater and much less expensive way of dealing with the issue.

I turn finally to a point which has not been much raised in the debate so far—the evidence of the polls. Increasingly, as we get experience of how matters are working out now, it is clear that in England—according to the polls—a considerable majority of English people feel that it is unfair that Scottish MPs should be voting on English matters. Much more interesting, in a way, is that the same polls in Scotland indicate that the majority of Scottish people also feel that it is unfair to the people of England. The Scottish people have a great sense of fairness—except perhaps where their own personal interests are deeply affected—and I think it is time for those Scottish Labour MPs and ex Labour MPs who resist to listen to what their own voters think is fair.

I conclude on this note. My noble friend referred to the answer of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine—"Don't ask the question". They do not want to ask the question because they do not have an answer to it—other than what is proposed in my noble friend's Bill.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

My Lords, although I do not support the Bill I welcome the debate, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in a sparkling speech which we all enjoyed. I add my congratulations to my noble friend Lady Adams of Craigielea on her excellent maiden speech. I look forward to hearing her speak on many future occasions.

I hope I will be forgiven for saying that I am just a wee bit suspicious that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has introduced the Bill more in mischief making than in trying to find a real solution to a genuine problem. I hope I do not shock the noble Lord when I say that I genuinely understand the concerns of some English Members of the House of Commons on this matter. Michael Ancram described the constitution as being "unbalanced", and I think that is a fair description.

As next year is the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union—which makes this debate relatively topical—it may be appropriate to remind noble Lords opposite that before devolution, before the setting up of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, Scottish MPs and the Scottish people had to endure—not only for decades but for centuries—the anomaly whereby English MPs determined legislation which applied only to Scotland. That often meant, during what should be described as the Thatcher years, that Bills were pushed through which were total anathema to the majority of Scottish MPs and the people of Scotland.

My noble friend Lord Elder referred to the poll tax being pushed through—and the fingerprints of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, are on that particular measure—which rubbed salt into the wound because it came to Scotland a year before it came to England and Wales. Another example is the reorganisation of local government in Scotland, where the Conservative government abolished popular regions such as Strathclyde and Lothian and introduced a new system which they thought would be of benefit to them. But it split up Ayrshire, for example, and was not popular in my own county.

We had to endure that anomaly for centuries, so it is not a great disaster if the imbalance the other way lasts for a few years while we try to find a stable solution. But what the noble Lord has produced is not a stable solution. It is patchy, it is messy, it is unworkable and it is hasty. First, all current MPs were elected at the last election on the understanding that they would be Members of the House of Commons in a United Kingdom Parliament. We should not change that in the middle of a Parliament. As the Prime Minister said to the Liaison Committee, two classes of MPs—I think it would be more than two—would not work.

The noble Lord should know that Bills have clauses, some which apply to England, some to Wales only, some to England and Wales, some to Great Britain and some to the whole of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. Under the noble Lord's Bill, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs would be in and out like some kind of parliamentary hokey-cokey—it would be completely unworkable.

Can the noble Lord say in his reply how he would suggest the Speaker might designate the Crossrail Bill or other Bills that apply only to London? Would only London MPs be allowed to vote on those Bills? How could the Speaker designate such Bills? There are a number of other examples.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, the Greater London Assembly does not have legislative powers; it cannot create laws for London. It is in a quite different situation. The noble Lord must appreciate that devolution changes everything. It is the power of a delegated parliament in this country to make its own laws for its own people.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

My Lords, I think the noble Lord does not understand what I am saying. There are Bills that go through this House and the House of Commons that apply only to London. Would it be only London MPs who vote on them, or only English MPs? There are a number of other anomalies like that.

I think there is a problem but we need to look at it in a calm and considered way to provide a lasting solution. My personal view—and it is a personal view—is that the only long-term, stable solution is the setting-up of an English Assembly or an English Parliament, a matter to which my noble friend Lord Judd and others have referred. I accept that there may be other possible solutions. Some people have suggested, for example, an English Grand Committee to deal with English matters. I do not believe that is the right way forward but it could be considered.

I completely agree with and endorse—if it was a Motion I would second it—the suggestion put forward by my noble friend Lord Judd that a Royal Commission should be set up to examine the various options and to make recommendations. As my noble friend rightly said, it could also look at the outstanding matter of the powers, the role and the composition of this Chamber and other outstanding related constitutional issues.

I do not think that any Royal Commission has been set up by the present Government; I am reliably informed by a good source that the Prime Minister is not too keen on them. But I know that my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor has particular influence with the Prime Minister and I hope that he will convince him that this is an area where a Royal Commission would be useful. Certainly it would be likely to come up with a better solution than the dog's breakfast we have before us today.

In conclusion, I say to noble Lords opposite that the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, two or three times quoted Scottish Nationalist Members of Parliament in support of this Bill. Does he not realise why they are supporting it? Does he not remember that their whole function is to break up the United Kingdom? This unholy alliance—which is what it is—between the Tories and nationalists would result in the break-up of the United Kingdom. I believe we can strengthen the United Kingdom with a federal solution. I hope that, when he comes to speak, the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, will support that view. It would be a strong, stable solution which would strengthen the whole of the United Kingdom.

Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market (Conservative)

My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I also quoted the Scottish people who, according to the polls, are also in favour of this solution.

Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Labour)

My Lords, if the Scottish people heard the arguments for federalism put properly and in a systematic and coherent way, they would recognise the right of the English people to have devolution in a considered way. As my noble friend Lady Adams said, it took us decades—I campaigned for it for decades until we got it for Scotland—and the people of England can wait for some time while we consider the issue in a proper and systematic way. I think that is, in the long term, the way to strengthen the union. Both Houses of this federal Parliament would deal with matters that are not devolved, but each constituent parliament or assembly, as part of the United Kingdom, would have devolved areas. That seems to me to be the long-term, stable solution.

Lord Howarth of Newport (Labour)

My Lords, it gives me particular pleasure to add my very warm congratulations to my noble friend Lady Adams of Craigielea on her wise and entirely persuasive maiden speech.

In bringing this Bill before us, the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, has, I think, offered the wrong answer to the wrong question. I believe that this measure would weaken Parliament and would tend towards the break-up of the United Kingdom.

Parliament, as the noble Lord noted, has been here before. In the late 1970s there were endless debates about the dilemma of devolution. One attempt to resolve that dilemma was the so-called "in and out" remedy which the Bill parades before us. Contrary to the wishes of the government of the time, an elaborate version of the noble Lord's central proposition was inserted in the 1978 devolution legislation, whereby there should be a further House of Commons vote after 14 days where a Bill which,

"does not relate to or concern Scotland",

should be carried in a vote in which the participation of Scottish MPs was decisive.

The same compelling objections were advanced to the "in and out" solution then as ought to be advanced today. It is impossibly complicated and would lead to disputes about which Bills should fall into the relevant category. Whatever advice the Speaker might take it would be invidious for the Speaker to be required to arbitrate in strongly contested, strongly politicised definitional issues, and having to do so would weaken his perceived impartiality and authority. It would lead to an instability damaging to the Government. I am not sure whether the noble Lord was ever a Whip but I invite him to imagine attempting to govern on a basis of different formal majorities or minorities in the House of Commons.

William Hague floated the "in and out" remedy again in 1999, with his slogan,

"English votes on English laws".

That was not a serious proposal for better government; it was a device to attempt to crank up English patriotism and hostility to devolution, and it did not impress.

The most profound objection to the proposal in the Bill remains that it would create different classes of Members of Parliament. Enoch Powell said in the earlier debates that Members of Parliament are,

"in the best sense of the word, peers in every respect and sit on a basis of equality of responsibility and rights".

The Bill would end that equality. To divide Members of Parliament along national lines, to disqualify Members of Parliament from taking part in great swathes of parliamentary business, to create a situation in which the whole House of Commons should deliberate and vote together only on reserved matters would lead to a fragmentation of Parliament, and if Parliament fragments, the United Kingdom will fragment.

The noble Lord's measure would be a disaster.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, Enoch Powell was dead right. He defined what has happened. He was opposing devolution because he saw the consequences. The consequences are now with us. Enoch Powell was right. Say it again—it is absolutely true.

Lord Howarth of Newport (Labour)

My Lords, the noble Lord's proposal would compound the very problem that Enoch Powell foresaw.

The only logical solutions to the West Lothian question are home rule for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—which would, by definition, mean the disintegration of the United Kingdom—or a partial but consistent devolution throughout the United Kingdom. But as we know, there is no demand for an English Parliament. However many times Conservatives may argue that the situation created by devolution is indefensible and inequitable—the words of the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor—English voters, English citizens, remain unmoved by that argument. Despite the Deputy Prime Minister's powers of seduction, voters in the north-east slapped down his proposition for a regional assembly. That was their right. For the time being, at least, regional assemblies are going nowhere. That may change because, as my noble friend Lord Judd noted, there is a problem about the unaccountability of regional development agencies.

I am in favour of gradualism in matters of constitutional change. I am against schematic solutions. For that reason, I disagree with my noble friends who have recommended having a royal commission. The remedy, as my noble friend Lady Adams said, is in the hands of the English. If they wish to grasp that remedy, they will do so in due course.

The West Lothian question is the wrong question to ask, as my noble and learned friend Lord Irvine once said. There is no need to try to answer it, now or for the foreseeable future unless, as a Conservative, you are very worried about the inability of your party to win seats in Scotland and Wales. But in terms of the real interests of the United Kingdom, I think we can accept that the West Lothian question is a conundrum of great but abstract beauty which need detain only constitutional anoraks and the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who is far too stylish to be an anorak.

There are problems about how we are to legislate in the context of devolution. Having represented a Welsh constituency, I am very aware that Wales-only legislation has not been adequately scrutinised by Westminster. If it is agreed between the Executives in Cardiff and Whitehall, it lands as a fait accompli on Wales. I believe that the answer to that lies in fuller participation by all Members of the House of Commons. But we will have an opportunity to examine these matters further when the Government of Wales Bill is brought before us.

Meanwhile, the West Lothian question does not, I submit, bother our citizens overmuch. They know that devolution, by providing a focus for Scottish and Welsh identity within the United Kingdom, has strengthened the cohesion of the United Kingdom. The noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, quoted polls, but polls have shown that since devolution, more Scots say that they are proud to be Scots, while rejecting nationalism.

My spies in Dorking tell me that nothing is further from the minds of the good people in the "Baker's Arms". They want more freedom and more choice in education—the noble Lord raised that very point, anticipating the debates we will shortly have on education legislation—which the noble Lord denied them through his great, centralising Education Reform Act 1988, and they will not mind if they get more freedom and choice in education by grace of Scottish and Welsh Members of Parliament. As they enjoy their beer in the "Baker's Arms", they enjoy stories that start, "There was an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman" because it is traditional for the nations of the British Isles to tease each other about their idiosyncrasies while happily accepting that we all remain Britons together.

In Dorking, they recognise that Tony Blair, a Member of Parliament from County Durham, that remote palatinate, is a splendid Prime Minister. They look forward to Gordon Brown, every inch a Scotsman, representing a Scottish constituency, becoming Prime Minister. Dorking is not Dunfermline. They look forward to it, but they are not impatient. They say to themselves that among the political leaders they have most admired in our history, many have been Scots—Harold Macmillan, Alec Home, Robin Cook—and others Welsh—David Lloyd George, Nye Bevan, Neil Kinnock. So far from wanting Members of Parliament from Scotland or Wales to disengage from the great issues concerning the governance of England, they want the ablest Members of Parliament, from wherever they come, to be leaders of our politics.

They do mind about some constitutional issues. They do not want regional assemblies, at least for now, but they want the restoration of real responsibility and authority to local government, which the noble Lord also denied them when he was Secretary of State. They are worried about a perceived decline in the standing of Parliament and politicians, but the noble Lord's Bill would compound that problem. They are uneasy about the relationship between Parliament and the European Union and between Parliament and the judiciary. But in addressing himself to constitutional issues, the noble Lord has not chosen to address those great questions.

I am surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, as a Conservative and a historian, should introduce a measure such as this. A true Conservative—and I am objective in this matter, albeit a little partial because of my unregenerate sympathy with true conservatism—sees the strength of our constitution residing in its flexibility and its ability to accommodate and express the diversity of our United Kingdom. A true Conservative does not worry about anomalies and is not preoccupied with symmetry, consistency or uniformity. James VI and I was not bothered about such matters, nor were the framers of the Act of Union. So why, after centuries of historical experience and the forging of British identity, should we be now?

To a Conservative, politics is not rooted in logic or even rationality but in an understanding of human nature and a pragmatic response to its distinctive and varied manifestations. The organic metaphor for the constitution has been the compelling metaphor for Conservatives, at least since Burke. We should allow our communities and nations to develop and express themselves in their distinctive institutions. Conservatives such as the noble Lord should not be putting forward a blueprint for constitutional change because he should recognise that authority is immanent in our ancient institutions.

I have always admired the noble Lord's virtuosity as a politician, but I had never before thought of him as a purist. When he was Home Secretary, he betrayed no embarrassment about the extension of the franchise by his predecessor the noble Lord, Lord Brittan, to Britons living abroad. While police may have wanted to interview some of those expatriates on the Costa del Sol, the Conservative Party was busy canvassing their votes. If a retired Surrey businessman should be entitled to vote in a British general election, why should a Member of Parliament from a Welsh, Scottish or Irish constituency, duly elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom, not vote on all matters brought before the Parliament of the United Kingdom?

I can only suppose that this measure brought forward by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, is a spoof. It must be so, and I very much agree with the point raised by my noble friend Lord Judd: it is plainly unsuitable for the House of Lords to initiate legislation—radical legislation—imposing duties on the Speaker of the House of Commons and constraining the powers of Members of the House of Commons. The noble Lord has offered us elegant entertainment for this Friday morning and we should be grateful for that, but the Bill should not proceed.

Lord Howie of Troon (Labour)

My Lords, I greatly enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, whom I have known for a number of years. I enjoyed even more the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Adams of Craigielea. I am not sure that I will come in to listen to her when she is being controversial.

The first thing that strikes me—my noble friend Lord Howarth touched on it in his closing remarks—is whether this is a suitable Bill to be put forward as a Private Member's Bill in this House. It has a certain constitutional veneer about it, but it is intended to limit the legitimate power of Members of another House. I know that it is proper within the rules and all that sort of thing, but I do not think that it is appropriate and it should not be done.

It is not really a constitutional Bill. It is a wholly political Bill. I say that because, from my knowledge of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, he is political from the top of his shining head to the tip of his toe. He never does anything that is not political nor has he ever done, nor is he failing to do so today. He can see a situation—this has been mentioned before, but speaking so late in the debate I am bound to be repetitive; I apologise for that but I shall go on anyway—in which one party, probably his, has a majority in England and another party, possibly mine or possibly the Lib Dems—who can tell?—has a majority in the UK, and this would cause certain problems. He is trying to resolve them by a sort of dodge.

I think back to 1964 when I was a Whip in the other place. We had enough trouble then and we would have had much more if this Bill had been in operation. How could a government with a majority of four, as it was— sometimes it was only two—have survived in a situation such as this? It is quite out of the question. Such a situation is bound to arise sometime in the future.

As has been said, this is not a new question. It was raised by Gladstone and others. But what I find most interesting is this. When the Irish problem was partially solved in the early 1920s, this question was totally ignored because although it is theoretically a difficult constitutional matter, it is not much of a difficulty at all. During the period of Stormont rule—indeed, during the period when the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and I were both Members of the other place for a short time in the 1960s—he and I were unable to vote on Northern Ireland questions. If I remember rightly, we were not even allowed to refer to them, however obliquely. At the same time, the Northern Ireland Members, most of whom were Unionists—or old-type Unionists, I should say—were able to vote on English questions. That is exactly the situation that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, finds undesirable today.

There is a difference between then and now—and the difference is at the base of the urge to introduce this legislation. It is the fact that the Ulster Unionists were in effect what you might call the Conservative Party in exile. Most of the Northern Irish Members were Unionists in those days, and they could be relied on to support the Conservative government. That is not the case with the political balance in Scotland and Wales, and that is the real nub of the matter—that is where this legislation originates. The question was solved by ignoring it—and that worked quite happily. There was not one whimper of criticism from the likes of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, about that situation then, when it was to his advantage. The boot is now perhaps on the other foot.

I shall refer to another anomaly. It has been said that our constitution and the working of it is anomalous. That is true; but that is part of our diversity, to use a vogue word of the present day. If we can have diversity in other parts of our social life, we can have it in our constitutional affairs as well. But as my noble friend Lord Foulkes said, Scotland has suffered under the hammer of the English majority in this Parliament not for a short time since devolution but for the biggest part of 300 years. Mention has been made of the poll tax and local government legislation, which was forced through against Scottish rule by English majorities. That was the constitutional settlement, and it was accepted but resented. In another case that I remember well, from the early 1990s, when the Conservatives were on this side of the House and I was on that side, they brought in a Criminal Justice Bill that applied to the United Kingdom and so applied to Scotland. But of course it was significant because the Scottish part of that Bill was totally opposed by the entire Scottish establishment, whether it was political or legal or the press. All were opposed to it. I remember how the noble and learned Lord, Lord McCluskey, sitting on the Back Bench, just where the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, is sitting now, produced a speech of such controlled indignation that not even my noble friend Lady Adams could have equalled it. He was incandescent. A powerful argument was made, explaining how inapplicable this Bill was to Scotland and how it was opposed by all elements of Scottish opinion. None the less, it was steamrollered through on the back of English votes.

There is a question about the House of Lords, as well, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Laird. Both the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, and I sat in the other place as Scotchmen for English seats, and both of us have lived in England for a very long time—he for 30 years and I in London for 50 years. So we are unusual. We have to think, as we sit in the House of Lords, whether we are Scotchmen or whether we have remnants from our English constituencies and our English domicile. So far as I am concerned, I know the answer. I would have no difficulty in solving it. But it is a problem: how could we have a situation where Scots in the Commons could not vote on something, whereas Scots in this House were permitted to do so? That is not even sensible.

The noble Lord, Lord Laird, was right yet again when he talked about the solution—if there is one. To be frank, I do not think we need a solution, though I will come to my suggestions on how to deal with it in a moment. If the English are really as worked up about this matter as we are told, there should be a demand in England for an English Parliament as there was in Scotland, and that demand should come from below. We should not have a device that tries to make an English Parliament by changing the rules here. Maybe a federation is the proper solution, but I leave that to the English. It is up to them; if they want it, they can have it. If not, they will have to do without it.

I listened to what my noble friend Lord Judd said about a Royal Commission. I quite like the idea. But since the old anomaly worked for nearly 300 years, why not let the new anomaly work for another 300 years and have the Royal Commission then?

Lord Anderson of Swansea (Labour)

My Lords, we have reached the part of the debate where everything that can be said has been said, but that has never stopped a Welsh Peer—and, may I add, a United Kingdom Peer—from making his own contribution. I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lady Adams, who, in that wonderful tradition of non-partisan docility of Scottish politics, made a contribution in the full traditions of this House. I would be the last person in the world to imagine that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has any partisan motives in what he has put forward. He has spoken as an academic looking dispassionately at the constitution.

For me this debate is a happy moment of nostalgia; a return journey to the 1970s, when we had such wonderful debates. It is rather like a bad film—this is where I came in. Most of the issues raised today were raised then. At the time, after a brief sabbatical, not of my own choosing, I had returned to the House of Commons in 1974, when my own party in the previous four years had reached an agreement on devolution. I felt that a number of questions had not been addressed, and, alas, was labelled, along with the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, and others as the "gang of six" who asked questions about anomalies, and indeed flirted with ideas such as having an indirect assembly brought from local authorities in Wales, which would go some way to meeting the problem—which was, I concede, far less acute in Wales than it was in Scotland, without the separatist implications. We knew that, although the nationalists were joining with the majority of the Labour Party on devolution, they had a very different agenda: splitting the United Kingdom.

We had those debates. Some supported us by night—I think I called them the "Nicodemus faction". They included Viscount Tonypandy, who gave us every possible encouragement. I myself was converted to devolution during the 1980s by the policies of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, who was a recruiting sergeant for many in Wales and even more in Scotland. However, I still accept the main point made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker—that many of the constitutional implications remain unsolved, and perhaps will remain so unless we have a more radical look at our constitution. But my experience over those years taught me one clear thing about the British way of doing things—we are not very good at constitutions. We stumble along. We often sleepwalk through minefields without noticing and without reference to the longer term implications of what we are doing. So far as I am aware there is no real precedent in the world for devolution in what is essentially a unitary system. Institutions are not static, they are dynamic, and those within them will seek to move them further along the path. The problem with devolution in a unitary system is that there are no constitutional barriers to moving further along that path, and the usual deals between parties and coalitions and so on might lead to one going further along that path than one would choose.

The problem would be very different—I suspect that the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, may mention this—in a federal or quasi-federal constitution with clearly defined powers and barriers and with a supreme court to act as an arbiter; otherwise, there is a danger of moving step by step to fragmentation. Therefore, we should all agree with the noble Lord, Lord Baker, that there is, indeed, a problem, but I reject his solution as dangerous in its implications. Why do I say that the cure is worse than the problem? The noble Lord talked about anomalies. Are we not under our constitution in a House which is an anomaly in itself? So far as I am aware, there is no precedent for a House of this nature, but perhaps someone mentioned Swaziland once. Is it not an anomaly that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, should institute a Bill in this House telling the other place what it should do and what should be the responsibilities of the Speaker? Surely a non-anomalous position would be if the other place itself were to start this Bill.

The problem—the in-and-out situation, or whatever—as many noble Lords have said, was raised Cato-like in its persistency by Tam Dalyell, but his motive clearly was that he was against devolution as such. I believe that Tam Dalyell would be the first to concede that. The starting point now is that the devolution settlement, after its teething problems, is settling down pretty well. Where there have been problems at the edges, they have, in a very British and pragmatic way, been solved, by pre-legislative consultations, by meetings in Wales—which, obviously, I know best—between the Assembly and Parliament, and by the proposals in the current Government of Wales Bill about Orders in Council, so, pragmatically, we are, indeed, moving to a reasonable solution. My judgment is that the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, would make Welsh and Scottish MPs second-class citizens here and give a major boost to English nationalism, which in my judgment is not in the interests of anyone. In short, he is playing with fire by encouraging fragmentation. Scottish and Welsh Members of Parliament are, indeed, United Kingdom Members of Parliament. The budget which they vote will affect every part of the United Kingdom. Certainly, every Bill will have budgetary implications that affect us all.

Incidentally, tinkering with the constitution has implications elsewhere. The point has been raised about the relevance of this Bill to the House of Lords. Yes, we do not have territorial or constituency responsibilities but most of us have particular links with areas. I wonder how we would seek to divide this House in the way that the noble Lord seeks to divide the House of Commons. For example, it might be done according to where someone has been born. I looked in Who's Who and Dod's to check where the noble Lord, Lord Baker, was born. He is rather coy about this, because it was not in Dod's nor in Who's Who. I should be proud if I had been born in Wales; in Newport in Gwent. I should say so, so that everyone could hear it.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, as far as I know, my birthplace is widely known. In my day, Newport was in Monmouthshire, which is part of England. It has moved into Wales since.

Viscount Bledisloe (Crossbench)

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Baker, is wrong. Monmouthshire was its own place. The United Kingdom consisted of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, the county of Monmouth and the city of Berwick-upon-Tweed. He was born neither in Wales nor in England.

Lord Anderson of Swansea (Labour)

My Lords, I happened also on one occasion to represent the county of Monmouthshire, and I recall that the motto of that county, as the Lord-Lieutenant was quick to remind me, was Utrique Fidelis; faithful to both. Indeed, it was part of Wales save for certain anomalies such as the legal side. I would be proud if I could say in Who's Who and in Dod's that I had been born in Newport, in Gwent, in the Principality of Wales.

The other inconsistency is in Clause 4, where the Speaker and the Deputies can,

"cast his vote on any item of business".

So the Speaker, although he may be, as he is now, from a Scottish constituency, can vote—possibly in a decisive way. However, the Prime Minister will not be able to cast his vote on those issues that are designated. I assume that the next Prime Minister will come from a Scottish constituency.

Finally, this is a UK Parliament. We are all Members of that UK Parliament, and we should be wary of any proposal that might subdivide. We should also avoid fanning the flames of English nationalism and giving comfort and aid to separatists. I am puzzled that this proposal comes from a member of a party that prides itself on being the Conservative and Unionist Party. It is in danger step by step of putting us on a slippery path to separatism. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, is speaking next; I give him a platform for telling us about federalism if he so wishes.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart (Spokesperson in the Lords, Scotland; Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, those who review this debate will surely agree that the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Adams of Craigielea, marked a real high point. We all listened to her with great interest, and some of us rather welcomed her understanding of the conventions and customs of this House and believe with her that the custom of uncontroversiality may be more honoured in the breach than the observance. As she said, in a wholly uncontroversial way, the linkage between the Scottish National Party and the Conservatives has been clearly brought out in this debate, most notably in the speech of the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market. We understand what she was driving at. We look forward to hearing from her again on many matters, and we are delighted that she is with us.

The question also has been raised about the appropriateness of the debate stemming from this House. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, thought that unsuitable; and that was an uncontroversial way of expressing the thought. It does seem very strange—and will seem strange to people from outside this House—that we should spend two hours discussing how to reduce the powers of certain Members of the House of Commons, without considering the anomalies to which this House gives rise.

The truth is that the Bill, which we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for introducing, since it gives us an opportunity to discuss issues that are worthy of discussion, invites us to consider some of the afterthoughts about the devolution settlement. I disagree with him that these are pressing issues for the people of England or anywhere else in this country. They are of some interest and have stimulated some debate, but, compared with other issues which are constitutional in nature, such as the need to recognise the demands of our public to have greater and more effective control over the Executive, this problem is minor.

The Bill can best be understood as the partisan response of the Conservative Party to its declining appeal to the electors of Scotland and Wales in particular. In the general election in 2001, no Conservative Member was returned to Westminster from Scotland. In 2005, one Conservative Member from Scotland was elected. Today, we learn that, in the Dunfermline and West Fife by-election, despite the incursion of the new Conservatives with their new leader, David Cameron, that party came a rather poor fourth. It is not necessary to look further for an explanation for this Bill. The party which in Scotland used to label itself the "Unionist party" has adopted a new mantra—if you can't beat them, ditch them.

That is comparable to the actions taken by the Conservative government. It will be well remembered that the government of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, of which the noble Lord, Lord Baker, was a senior member, decided to dispense with the Greater London Council. If you could not beat Ken Livingstone at the polls, then remove his power base. That approach has been a tradition in the Conservative Party, but it is one to which this House should give no support.

It may be deduced that the Bill is partisan in motivation from a comparison with proposals, made with the quiescence of the Conservative Party, regarding the full participation of its MP allies from Northern Ireland from 1922. I do not think that we have heard from the Conservatives before in these debates about how unacceptable that principle was. That is not hard to understand.

The Conservative Party has not traditionally displayed any squeamishness when it has held power in Westminster about foisting its doctrinaire conservative policies upon parts of the United Kingdom which have clearly rejected them. A number of noble Lords have alluded to the signal example of the poll tax. I remember particularly well the reform of local government when, accompanied by leaders of district councils from all over the Highlands, I petitioned the then Secretary of State, now the noble Lord, Lord Lang, against proposals to dispose of those local authorities and embrace them all in one Highland regional council. Were we listened to? No, we were not. We were turned away at the door. Those of us who represented Scottish constituencies, as I did for 35 years, experienced that time and again at the hands of unsympathetic, oppressive Conservative administrations with a declining representation north of the Border.

It therefore strikes me as particularly tasteless and unsympathetic to come forward with this proposal today. It has within it potentially the most disastrous results for our Union, which that party has so long pretended to value. Alas, it is only when the Conservative Party is in opposition that it is prepared to dress up naked self-interest in the mantle of constitutional principle, invoking Burke and Mr Gladstone when speaking on a Bill which at the time they opposed root and branch and whose principles they never accepted and do not accept today.

I happen to believe that this country would be wise to move towards the adoption of a written constitution. I very much sympathise with the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who attempted to put this debate and the questions that it raises in the much wider context of concern about the direction of our constitutional settlements and how we might seek to ensure coherence and balance of representation in the Westminster Parliament. I doubt whether a royal commission would obtain any greater support on this issue than did the Royal Commission on the Reform of the House of Lords under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, who spoke earlier in the debate. But I commend the general principle of putting the test to the people. That example, which might be commended to the noble Lord and, indeed, to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who spoke earlier on similar lines, is perhaps that which we can recall so vividly in Scotland of the Scottish Constitutional Convention. That represented a very broad cross-section of the public in both institutional and individual terms. Some such arrangement is more likely to produce a long-lasting settlement than will a committee, however distinguished, of the great and the good.

If we do receive such a settlement which attempts to deal with the desideratum of tidiness—it has to be said that tidiness has never characterised the British constitution, and the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, was right in his historical description of how it has come about—then we may think it appropriate to look, as a number of noble Lords have suggested, at federal examples as the way to ensure that this Parliament of Westminster treats the constituent parts in equal fashion. However, in moving with the proposals of the Bill, it has to be said that a hybrid English and United Kingdom Parliament would produce some rather dangerous fall-out consequences.

I draw the House's attention to a particularly interesting article in today's Financial Times, written by Professor Vernon Bogdanor, the distinguished Oxford tutor of Mr David Cameron. He points therein to the practical difficulty for the Speaker in determining which Bills might be deemed "English" for the purpose of excluding non-English Members of Parliament from participation. He quotes the conclusion of the 1973 Royal Commission on the Constitution:

"Any issue in Westminster involving expenditure of public money is of concern to all parts of the United Kingdom since it may directly affect the level of taxation and indirectly influence the level of a region's own expenditure".

He goes on to point out that the size of the block grant to Scotland and Wales depends on expenditure in England—another point made in that distinguished maiden speech. Substantial reductions in health and education expenditure in England could, through cuts in the block grant, have a knock-on effect in Wales and Scotland, which might run entirely counter to the policies of the Scottish and Welsh devolved and elected governments.

Perhaps the greater anomaly that would flow from the Bill is the splitting of the collective responsibility of the Cabinet. That may be the undeclared intention of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. While all may participate on overseas questions, some might have to be excluded from consideration of health and education, affecting perhaps 90 per cent of the United Kingdom public.

Conservatives have not always been so anxious to exclude the Celts from our counsels in Parliament. In this House we listen with attention to the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, from Wales, and to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, from Scotland, and to what they say on any matter before us. It is not so long since the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, broke what seemed to be a convention by appointing the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern—a Scots lawyer—to preside over this House and to head the English judiciary. Such anomalies have been accepted with equanimity when the individual is perceived to have the stature required for the position.

Is the Bill intended to cut Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and John Reid down to size? Will it exclude, by consequence, the possibility of their becoming Prime Minister of this country? I note that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in his customary sedentary position, intervenes to deny that.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, I shall intervene standing up. That is an absurd proposition. The noble Lord has been here long enough to know that matters that are not devolved to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly are central to the United Kingdom Parliament. Those are defence, foreign affairs, war and peace. A Prime Minister from Scotland could certainly be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and deal with such matters.

Lord Maclennan of Rogart (Spokesperson in the Lords, Scotland; Liberal Democrat)

My Lords, the noble Lord needs only enunciate that proposition to demonstrate how ridiculous it is. The idea that a Prime Minister of Britain could speak only about external relations is one that will not commend itself to the British people, any more than I believe that the Bill will commend itself to this House.

Lord Strathclyde (Leader of the Opposition In the House of Lords, Parliament; Conservative)

My Lords, I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking on bringing forward the Bill. Like the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Swansea, I have much enjoyed the debate. It reminds me very much of the debates that we used to have about Scotland long before the 1999 Act. Perhaps we should have such debates more regularly on matters that are naturally reserved to the United Kingdom Parliament.

I was rather stunned by the tone of the attacks on my noble friend—on his motives, his political record and on education. We have been told that he introduced the poll tax and caused the demise of my noble friend Lady Thatcher. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, even said that my noble friend was tasteless. Insults were rained down on his head for what is really a very humble measure.

It is no exaggeration—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Howie of Troon—that it should never have been left to a private Member, either my noble friend here or Mr Frank Field in another place, to introduce the proposal to be resolved before Parliament. The Government should have dealt with it a long time ago. My noble friend and Mr Field represent different parties, and, as my noble friend reminded us, Mr Simon Hughes told the Herald on 18 January that, if he were elected as Liberal Democrat leader, he would prevent Liberal Democrat MPs who represented Scottish constituencies voting on English laws. That shows that concern on the issue runs across all parties. I would love to be a fly on the wall when Mr Hughes explains that policy to Sir Menzies Campbell.

I listened in vain during the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, to learn whether he agreed with Mr Hughes. I take it that he does not. Certainly, his partner in the historic Cook/Maclennan talks that promised so much, Robin Cook, saw the tremendous problems raised by the West Lothian question, although I am not sure that he came up with any better solution.

In the Conservative Party, we agree with my noble friend Lord Baker that the West Lothian question needs to be addressed. Many noble Lords opposite accept that there is a problem but do not find my noble friend's solution favourable. There are also noble Lords opposite, however, who do not believe that there is a problem at all: the head-in-the-sand approach. They are in denial. Well, they ought to wake up and see what is coming down the tracks. We agree emphatically that, now that there is a Scottish Parliament and the Parliament at Westminster no longer speaks for the whole of the United Kingdom on domestic policy matters, it is not sustainable for policy in England on matters that are devolved to Scotland to be decided by the votes of MPs representing Scottish constituencies. That is not a nationalist agenda; it is certainly not a Scottish nationalist agenda. There will come a time, and it may not be long, when English people simply will not accept that. I wholly accept that that is not the case at present, but the feeling is out there, and it is growing. Speaking as a Scot and a passionate supporter of the union, I regret that. It will happen, however, and the matter will be startlingly personified when—I refer to the brief interchange between by noble friend Lord Baker and the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart—Mr Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister, as we now gather will happen some time next year.

It is possible, of course, that Mr Brown might take the Simon Hughes option and decide to set an example by not voting on English Bills. After all, the current Prime Minister sets a striking example of abstinence in the voting lobbies, as we discovered last week. Somehow, however, I do not think so. This intensely serious matter, which could be solved by a convention of not voting, in the same way as the noble and learned Lords of this House do not vote on political matters under the Bingham declaration, will therefore have to be solved by statute. I instinctively prefer convention to statute. It was that flexibility, for instance, that allowed us to save the recent Planning Act that Government carelessness had lost. However, this Government have never been comfortable with the role of convention in our constitution. I suspect that the only way around the problem is to look at statute to address the question. That law, my party believes, could and should be along the lines proposed by my noble friend Lord Baker.

I am delighted that we have the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor—still the Lord Chancellor—with us this afternoon. Will he tell the House whether the Government will bring forward a Bill during this Parliament along the lines proposed by my noble friend? Can he give us an assurance that, if my noble friend succeeds in carrying his Bill through this House, the Government will not object to it when it is presented?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Labour)

My Lords, it would be helpful to know whether it is now Conservative Party policy to support the Bill.

Lord Strathclyde (Leader of the Opposition In the House of Lords, Parliament; Conservative)

My Lords, I said, first, that I preferred convention. If convention is not going to work, it will have to be statute. I also said that a solution would have to be along the lines proposed by my noble friend Lord Baker. There are some issues, however, that will no doubt be teased out in Committee.

What is the noble and learned Lord going to do if the Bill gets to the House of Commons? Will he allow this Bill to be debated in another place, in the way that we have done today? I know that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor is a profound believer in the role of Parliament, and I am sure that he will want to encourage another place to have its say.

For those reasons, I say little about the central premises of my noble friend's Bill. He has, after all, expounded them clearly, and others have reinforced his arguments, with which I agree. I have no doubt, however, that those who say that the Speaker will not be able to find his way through Bills and decide which country they cover are wrong. The Speaker could be relied on to fulfil the role determined for him under the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Laird, and one or two other noble Lords mentioned the issue of this House. The problems do not arise in this House, however, as it is not, as yet, a representative House. Were it to be so, we would have to consider analogous arrangements or agree some convention to the same effect.

My noble friend gave us some splendid examples of smoking and roads policies illustrating the present inequalities, but there are others. In recent Sessions, we have debated two intensely controversial issues—the imposition of tuition fees on English students and the creation of foundation hospitals in England. Those policies are devolved matters in Scotland and ones in which the Scottish Parliament would have no part. However, they passed through the other place only with the votes of Members representing Scottish constituencies. That was a reason—not the only reason—why I thought it right to recommend to my colleagues to invite the other place to think again. On both occasions, the issues were returned by the other place, after further consideration, with majorities that did not depend on the votes of Scottish MPs. If it had not been so, it is highly likely that there would have been more divisive comment and greater resentment from those in England who resisted those policies.

That will eventually happen again in this Parliament, with its smaller government majority. It could happen again in the case of the impending education legislation, if the Prime Minister is not ready to accept Conservative support for constructive school reform. It could happen in respect of the legislation on identity cards, because the Scottish Parliament has declared that there will be no question of requiring people in Scotland to buy an ID card or accept electronic numbering and tagging before they have access to an NHS dentist or get a prescription. Yet, Scottish MPs may determine that English people will have to do just that.

We have to proceed carefully, in full awareness of the potential of the West Lothian question to divide. Many noble Lords have spoken on that, but I say to those who have said that this is a nationalist agenda: the high-risk road is not legislating as my noble friend proposes but not legislating and letting matters drift on. We all recall the words of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg:

"I think the best thing to do about the West Lothian question is to stop asking it".—[Hansard, 25/6/1999; col. 1201.]

We are not stopping asking it. Many in the House have asked it in a penetrating way today. Many people outside Parliament are asking it. My noble friend has provided not only an opportunity to debate but also perhaps the solution that we will come to in the end.

I therefore hope that we can go one better than the noble and learned Lord, Lord Irvine of Lairg. Will the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor tell us what the Government's answer is?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Labour)

My Lords, it has been an intensely interesting debate on an extremely important issue. Three particular points emerge. First was the profoundly excellent speech of my noble friend Lady Adams of Craigielea, who spoke with authority and insight and knew much more about the topic than many others. Secondly, there was absolutely no support for the Bill introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, other than on the Conservative Benches. Thirdly, it was tempting to dismiss the Bill to start with; the enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, was attractive and the enthusiasm that brought the poll tax and the Dangerous Dogs Act now turned to a constitutional issue. Unfortunately, it is not possible to treat it in that way because it was not only put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, but also by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, the Leader of the Conservatives in this House. He says that there should be two-tier MPs. He says that, whether by convention or legislation, the Scots, the Northern Irish and the Welsh should have limited rights to vote in the House of Commons. So we now take it that that is the Conservatives' position. That is a fundamental change from the position previously adopted by the Conservatives. It is a serious matter.

I quote from the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, who I am happy to say was in the Chamber earlier but, sadly, is no longer in her place. In her memoirs, The Downing Street Years, on page 624, she said:

"The Tory party is not of course an English party but a Unionist one".

It was quite hard to believe that she was talking about the same Conservative Party as described by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, given that he said with very great enthusiasm, "English laws for the English". That did not sound to me like a unionist party, but an English nationalist party.

In accordance with the conventions of this House, the Government will not seek to block this Bill being given a Second Reading should the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, wish it to have one. I very much hope that if the noble Lord is remotely a respecter of institutions he will not push this Bill to a Second Reading. It is not appropriate for an issue such as this to be dealt with in this way. The Government have no intention of bringing a Bill forward. Quite separately from the inappropriateness of moving the Bill, if it were to be passed it would undermine the union of which the noble Lord claims to be such a supporter. It is contrary to the most basic principles of our constitution and is wholly unworkable. I regard this as a matter of great seriousness.

As I said, it was tempting to try to dismiss this as part of the noble Lord's attractive enthusiasm, but it is wholly of a piece with the party opposite's view of the constitution. Between 1979 and 1997, they behaved in a way which damaged the constitution and resisted change when it was necessary to maintain the union—see their dogged opposition to devolution—and now in this Bill they propose an intensely damaging measure which betrays their total lack of understanding of our constitution. The period between 1979 and 1997 was when the union between England and Scotland was put under greatest strain in recent years. During that period, nationalist parties reached a high water-mark and, in 1997, the Tories ended up without a seat in Scotland or Wales.

Between 1979 and 1997, the Tories, using almost exclusively English votes, pushed forward legislation which was anathema to the people of Scotland. Occasionally a handful of MPs supported it, but every one of them lost his seat. If every Scottish, Northern Irish or Welsh MP voted together on an issue, they could not get their way in the UK Parliament. Over 80 per cent of Members of Parliament represent English seats. No measures are required to protect England from the votes of the other countries.

In Scotland, there was a firm and settled view that a wide range of domestic issues should be devolved to a Scottish Parliament. We in this party supported that view. We did so because of our desire to preserve and strengthen the union. The proposals for devolution were set out in our 1997 manifesto. Referendums in Scotland and Wales supported devolution. The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly have been elected and the tide of nationalism in both countries has receded. The Tories caused the damage that led to that Parliament and that Assembly being set up. They opposed the solution. They now propose something intensely damaging. I could not tell from the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Baker and Lord Strathclyde, whether they now support devolution. According to a pamphlet issued in the name of Mr David Cameron, he does.

I believe that the importance of the union for all parts of the country is an essential tenet of our view of the constitution. At the heart of the union is our national Parliament. It was so before devolution, and it remains so today.

Lord Strathclyde (Leader of the Opposition In the House of Lords, Parliament; Conservative)

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord has spoken with some passion about constitutional change, about the 1980s and the 1990s, and about the relationship between different parties and constituent parts of the United Kingdom, but nowhere has he recognised—and he may not recognise, but I would like him to say it—that something has changed since the devolution Act. Members of Parliament in Scotland do not have a say in certain matters in their own constituencies but are fully able to vote on those same matters in other parts of the United Kingdom—in England in particular. Does he not recognise that there is a fundamental change between what Margaret Thatcher was talking about—what we were doing in government in the 1980s and the 1990s—and the situation that pertains today?

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Labour)

My Lords, of course I recognise that there has been a major constitutional change. I addressed the issue of what most promotes the union. I have absolutely no doubt whatever that the proposal made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, and supported by the Conservatives, far from promoting the union, damages the union. I do not see a problem that is solved by the Bill. I am gratified that there is not a soul in this House who supports him, apart from the Conservatives who, as I understand it, caused the problem in the first place.

Our national Parliament is sovereign in all matters. If it is to remain at the heart of our union, all its members must be able to consider any matter before Parliament. At the heart of the argument advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, in favour of the Bill, is the proposition that if English MPs cannot vote on devolved matters because they are dealt with in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff, then non-English Members of Parliament should not be able to vote on comparable matters in the national Parliament. That is, as I understand it, though it was never put like that, the essence of his case.

To have some Members who can vote on some issues while others can vote on everything indubitably creates a two-tier system of MPs. Such a proposal, despite the claim of the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, to speak at one stage for the people of Scotland, has no groundswell of support, either in England or Scotland. That is unsurprising, because it has absolutely no basis in principle.

Devolution happened in Wales and Scotland because their peoples wanted it. The people of England have not been the victim of proposals forced on them almost exclusively by Scots and Welsh MPs. If every one of the non-English MPs coalesced they could not outvote the English MPs. Only if well over 200 English MPs and every non-English MP voted for a proposal can it get through.

The poll tax was forced as an experiment on the Scots. Is the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, surprised that the Scots wanted new arrangements? Fairness to the Scots, the Welsh, and the Northern Irish, coupled with strong local support, made devolution necessary. The preservation of the union made it necessary. There is no similar case for English devolution. The total disinterest that people in England show in this issue makes it clear that they realise that as well.

Parity with Scotland and Wales does not remotely support the proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and inevitably his proposal would promote separation between England and the rest. Two tiers of MPs encourages separation. It undermines the coherence of the single most important national body. I really hoped that the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, enthusiastic as he was, would notice that the blandishments of the Scottish National Party might be pointing in a different direction from the position he wanted to go. He is blinded by symmetry from the dangerous road he is urging us to take. It is also contrary to our constitutional view of the role of our elected MPs. Of course they represent their constituencies, but they do something more.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, gave us a partial quote from Edmund Burke, who described the House of Commons as,

"a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole . . . You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament".

That appears to be a constitutional principle that the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, wants to say goodbye to. It is critical to our constitution that MPs are about more than geographical or sectional interest. That has always been our constitutional principle. They must represent our national interest. All these principles show very clearly that the noble Lord's proposal is lunacy, but the assertion of principle in this case is so clearly supported by thinking through the consequences of these proposals.

At the heart of our constitution is the need for the executive to enjoy the confidence of the Commons. Having two classes of Members of Parliament means that the executive could enjoy the support of the majority on some issues, but not on others. There might be a majority for the government on defence or social security, but not on health and education. Whether there was a majority on the fight against terrorism would, in the mad, mad world of the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, depend on the view which the Speaker expressed on individual clauses in an individual Bill, because the noble Lord envisages in his Bill that the Speaker could say that the scope of one clause was territorial right across the UK, but that another clause was limited to a particular part of the United Kingdom.

The noble Lord does not explain in his rip-roaring speech how this matter is to be dealt with. Do we have an executive that cannot carry their manifesto programme in the House, or does he envisage an English executive and a national executive? Do we envisage a Prime Minister who could speak on some issues, but if he was from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, he could not speak on other issues? The first course is chaos. The second course is separation, or a significant step towards it.

Not one aspect of this has been thought through by the noble Lord, but the idiocies of this Bill go much deeper than that. It envisages that the Speaker will certify those Bills on which only English MPs can vote. The Barnett formula provides that Scotland and Wales get a proportion of English expenditure on devolved issues. Any Bill, or any provision of a Bill that could affect expenditure on a devolved issue, will affect expenditure in Scotland and Wales. Most provisions in health or education Bills will have such an effect.

It would be wrong in principle, and I am quite sure that even in the mad, mad world of the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, he does not intend that the non-English should be deprived of the ability to vote on something which so significantly affected their financial position. Parliament has at its heart the issue of supply, determining how the national cake should be cut. To exclude the non-English from voting on issues central to that is unthinkable. I would be interested to hear the view of the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, on that aspect of his proposal when he winds up.

Then there are the cross-border issues, which the noble Lord dismissed, treating Ireland as similar to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in their relationship. I do not think that the relationship is the same. I do not think for one moment that the relationship between the countries that make up our country is the same as the relationship between the United Kingdom and France, which he gave as an example. In a nation that encourages people to cross borders, there are bound to be cross-border issues. How we deal with supply, cross-border issues and issues where a successful approach is one that crosses the line between reserved and devolved issues is not addressed. These issues all need a national parliament. The point, as I say, has not been lost on those who oppose the union, and I cannot do better than to quote Mr Peter Wishart of the Scottish National Party, who made the point that his party is at one with the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking.

Where does this recipe for chaos, which the noble Lord proposes, end? His Bill is called the Parliament (Participation of Members of the House of Commons) Bill. Why stop at the House of Commons? He says that this is not a representative House, and that the principle that underlies his Bill in the Commons—namely that Members of that House cannot vote on Scottish and Welsh domestic issues—therefore does not apply here. I am afraid that it does, as a matter of principle. If the noble Lord is after symmetry, it would apply, because, as I understand it, the constitutional principle that underlies it is symmetry.

So we would have a two-tier House of Lords. Just think what we would lose. We would lose the excellent Question on breast cancer posed by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, on Thursday. Where would that leave the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde? As he told us proudly, he is Scottish to his fingertips. Wherever Strathclyde is, it is in Scotland. Would the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, be the Leader of the Conservatives in the House of Lords or would another noble Lord be the Leader of the Conservatives in the House of Lords (England)? Who could that be? It could not be the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, which may be a relief to the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde. Could it be the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking? We were worried that it could not be, until the noble Viscount, Lord Bledisloe, told us that Monmouth was in England, so perhaps it could be.

That is the route that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, wishes us to follow. A moment's thought tells us that it is unthought out and anti-unionist. The most sinister aspect of today's debate is that it represents, as I see it, a sea change in the Conservative Party's position in relation to it. Ernie Bevin once said that you do not want to open that Pandora's box, because you never know what Trojan horses will jump out. Perhaps I may ask the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, attractive as his enthusiasm is, to think again about the union of this country and to take this Bill and remove it from Parliament.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords, particularly the Lord Chancellor, for their contributions to this debate. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Adams of Craigielea. We have heard lots of Scottish accents during this debate, but I thought that hers was by far the most attractive, although I do not think that one should make comments like that these days. She also made a great deal of sense. I thought for a moment that she was going to support me, because she said, "I am a democrat". She campaigned for Scottish devolution, which, as I understand it in a simple way, is Scottish votes for Scottish laws. There is only a short step from that to English votes for English laws.

The noble Lord, Lord Sewel, was the first speaker. We enjoy a remarkable identity in one respect: we have both done things and our names have been added to things which have lived beyond our ministerial life. For me, it is "Baker days". For the noble Lord, Lord Sewel, it is the "Sewel Motion"; that is, a "sticking plaster" to deal with sovereignty. It gave the Scottish Parliament the power to approve any Bill which Westminster passed that affected Scotland. Unless it has that Sewel motion and that authority, Westminster cannot pass the Bill. The noble Lord did not touch on the supremacy of sovereignty in his winding-up comments. But the supremacy of Westminster by devolution is not just devolved—it is shared and divided. Scotland has now an independent Parliament that is capable of legislating for itself. As the noble Lord, Lord Elder, said, in theory, Westminster can legislate on everything because it is in the Act. But that is a dormant supremacy. It cannot be exercised without the approval of the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh Assembly will go the same way, which is a fundamental change. The poll tax and what happened in the Thatcher years have often been quoted during the debate. Evolution changes absolutely everything—it really does—and the noble Lord was part of the author of this, which he should recognise.

For the Lord Chancellor to come up with no solution, but to have a stubborn blindness to the problems that I have put, is amazing. In a rather sad revelation, the noble Earl, Lord Glasgow, said that he thought that there was no solution to the West Lothian question. I was reminded when he was speaking of the famous Schleswig-Holstein question, which puzzled people in the middle of the nineteenth century. Palmerston said that it was so complicated that only three people know the answer: "One is Prince Albert and he is dead. The second is a Foreign Office official who is mad. And the third is me, and I have forgotten the answer". But there is an answer to the West Lothian question.

The noble Lord, Lord Laird, made a frank speech, which was a wonderful rewinding of history. He did not want Stormont, the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly. All that the noble Lord, Lord Laird, wants is the old United Kingdom as it existed, which is a wonderfully romantic view, but I have to say that it would be impractical.

Lord Laird (Crossbench)

My Lords, that is not exactly my position. There should be that very satisfactory position or there should be total devolution, everywhere, on exactly the same basis. I am not satisfied with this unusual system of a wee bit here, a wee bit there and a different bit somewhere else.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, I accept the noble Lord's modification and I shall come to it in a moment.

I was very glad to have the support of my noble friend Lord Wakeham, particularly because he is a former Chief Whip. Former Chief Whips have antennae; they know when things are moving and something has to be addressed. So I am encouraged by the presence of my noble friend, who was one of our most astute Chief Whips. He knows that this question has got to be answered one way or another.

He said that the problem will not go away, a point touched upon by several noble Lords today. A number of noble Lords have said that my Bill would create a constitutional crisis—but we are heading towards a constitutional crisis. Let us think forward to the next election, when most people believe there could be a hung Parliament. If that hung Parliament was led by a Labour Government with a small majority in the other House and they depended on Scottish and Welsh MPs to carry very controversial legislation, does not the Lord Chancellor consider that that would constitute a constitutional crisis? I think it would. Suppose a Labour Government brought in legislation and said, for example, "We are going to stop immediately the sale of all council Houses"—something, as it were, on the left—and they carried it with Welsh and Scottish MPs, what would English MPs think of that?

And not only Conservative MPs. The noble and learned Lord said there is no support, but many Labour MPs agree with me—for instance, Alan Williams, the Father of the House; Tony Wright—

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Labour)

That is two.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, yes. But in the next government two might be enough. You never know.

As regards the Liberal Democrats, I was amazed at the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan. He said that he was not quite in touch with views in England. We can forgive him for that as he comes from the most remote part of Scotland, but I can assure him that views in England are much more strident than he thinks. He should be aware that certain distinguished members of his party support my Bill—for instance, Simon Hughes and Menzies Campbell support this measure. Not for the first time, the noble Lord is slightly out of touch with the views of the party he once led.

The noble Earl, Lord Mar and Kellie, quite openly, as I understood it, referred to an independent Scotland, which was beautifully described as the "Stuart solution". I had not heard it in quite those terms before.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Secretary of State, Department for Constitutional Affairs; Labour)

My Lords, the noble Lord said that Menzies Campbell supports the Bill. Was that a reference to his quote in the Scotsman, dated 30 January, where he said:

"It would be a grave mistake to tinker with one aspect of our constitutional arrangements in isolation"?

Is that it? Is that what the noble Lord is relying on?

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

My Lords, we have the same release. As I have said, I quoted from it because if it is in the Scotsman it must be true. In the headline of the release he states that Scots vote not to vote on English laws. He then goes on to say that he would like a bigger consideration of the issue—I accept that—but the point I am making is that many Liberal Democrats agree with this policy and many English Liberal Democrat MPs agree with it.

The noble Lord, Lord Elder, raised the question of anomalies. He said that there were many anomalies in our constitutional set up; let us live with anomalies. My Bill addresses an anomaly—the problem of two-tier MPs. There are two-tier MPs now. The Lord Chancellor asked, "Do we want to have two-tier MPs?". If he went down to the lower House occasionally he would know that there are two-tier MPs. English MPs can vote on English matters concerning their constituents. Scottish and Welsh MPs cannot vote on matters affecting their constituents. That is a separation of powers. It cannot be gainsaid that there are two classes of MPs. The words mean what they mean, not what Humpty Dumpty wants them to mean. There are two classes of MPs; they exist. It is no good the Chief Whip shrugging. He was an English MP. If he was in opposition and a Conservative government were putting legislation through, he would be absolutely the first to support my Bill.

Then we had the farrago about two-tier Lords. This is another wonderful invention of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor, because he has no answer to the question. He says that basically, this is not a problem. My Lords, it is. Noble Lords may think that this is partisan and I am being enthusiastic, but I beg your Lordships to realise that this problem has to be addressed. In the days when Tam Dalyell called it the West Lothian question, it was a surrogate for opposition to devolution. It is no longer a surrogate. I am a supporter of devolution because I believe that that is the way we hold our country together. It is the only way. As Gladstone said:

"Subject to this governing principle, every grant to portions of the country of enlarged powers for the management of their own affairs is, in my view, not a source of danger but a means of averting it. It is in the nature of a new guarantee for increased cohesion, happiness and strength".

If the Government decide to do nothing about this, they will be promoting an English backlash. I assure your Lordships that I am not trying to provoke that. I am trying seriously to address this constitutional matter and I very much hope that your Lordships will consider it in that way.

I welcome the support of my noble friend Lord MacGregor and was glad to know that he was the midwife to the West Lothian question. This is not a subject that Tories have come to late in the day. I accept that there has always been a large number of Tories opposed to devolution. There was always a small but eloquent number in favour. That is where the party stands.

When I was Home Secretary, I was the last Secretary of State to establish a royal commission. It was on the criminal justice system and it worked very well, coming up with sensible proposals that have been implemented. But the process takes a very long time. The history of royal commissions on the constitution is not encouraging; they take a very long time, they usually have a vast number of minority reports and, as far as I know, no proposals made by a royal commission on the constitution have ever been implemented. I am not entirely sure that that is the best route, which is why I suspect that the noble and learned Lord did not suggest it.

The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has had the rather unique distinction of being an English MP for one party and a Welsh MP for another—he has had a bifurcated role. When he was the Member of Parliament for Newport, West—

Lord Howarth of Newport (Labour)

East.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

I am sorry, my Lords—I should know, as I was born there. When he was the Member of Parliament for Newport, East, would his constituents in Stratford have welcomed a Labour Member, particularly one who used to represent them, supporting proposals to tell the people of Stratford how they appoint headmasters, choose children for their schools and whether they have trust schools? I believe that if he were still in touch with the Conservatives in Stratford, which I suspect he is not, they would not welcome that intervention.

Lord Howarth of Newport (Labour)

My Lords, I am happy that my former constituents in Stratford who are working in the Royal Shakespeare Company express themselves not dissatisfied with what I was able to do for them when I was Minister for the Arts as well as being Member of Parliament for Newport, East.

Lord Baker of Dorking (Conservative)

I am sure there is a love-in going on, my Lords. However, the noble Lord has a sort of bifurcated personality. He spoke a lot about my former constituents; I do not believe that they would like Labour and Welsh MPs telling them how to run their affairs. It is as simple and basic as that.

I welcome the support of my noble friend Lord Strathclyde, because this is now, as I understand it, Conservative policy. That is indeed welcome. The Labour Party and the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor have to come up with an answer. They say that there is no problem—we want to walk by on the other side. You cannot do that; the constitutional changes made by the Government have been fairly haphazard and not thought out. The position of devolution is neither static nor final, and he should recognise that. He has considerable intellectual distinction, and he should show it by addressing his mind in a positive way instead of abusing me. I am used to abuse—indeed, I thrive on it—but he owes the House something more than what he has given us today, a tirade about a rather tired argument.

This is a problem and the noble and learned Lord ought to address it as such. He has never stood for elective office. MPs are worried about this because Members go to the other House because they represent part of their country—a particular, isolated place called a constituency. They have territorial loyalties. They are not called by their names as we are in this House; they exist only because they are tied to the land that sent them there. When you have those English MPs being told that their policies will be determined by people who come from another constituency—another country that has its own Parliament or Assembly—they will not take it. I suggest to the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor that when he addresses his mind to this problem, he addresses it in a way that is akin with democracy and not assertion.

I hope that this Bill will find some progress somewhere. One day it will happen, of that I am quite sure in prediction. It may come, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said, within a wider agreement of moving towards an English Parliament and English executive. But this is an injustice that has to be put right. It is simply not fair that Scottish and Welsh MPs can determine the policy on English domestic issues. There must be English votes for English laws.

On Question, Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.