Devolution

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:04 pm on 21 July 2004.

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Photo of Tony Lloyd Tony Lloyd Labour, Manchester Central 5:04, 21 July 2004

I would hope that that is the nature of democracy, but we all know that those who speak the language of democracy but use the procedures of this place to try to prevent the public from having the right to decide are no democrats. They do a great disservice.

Not that many years ago, when I came into Parliament, there were still a significant number of Conservative Members of Parliament in the north-west. The Labour party in my region was berated from the Conservative Front Bench. There are disagreements among members of the north-west parliamentary Labour party, but at least there are enough of us to have agreement and disagreement. There are no longer enough Tories from the north-west even to have agreement on these issues. The Tory party in the north-west was massively distrusted because of the Thatcherite legacy, particularly because the Thatcherite Government were identified as government of the north by the south-east, and it will be many, many years before the Tory party is considered a respectable voice for the north-west.