A Silly Question

Peter Hitchens writes:

For many years now it’s been thought clever to go on about the ‘West Lothian’ question when the issue of Scottish devolution is discussed.

First asked by Enoch Powell and Tam Dalyell (both clever men, both dedicated troublemakers),  it boils down to:

‘How can Scottish MPs at Westminster vote on purely English issues when MPs from England have lost their powers to take decisions about parallel Scottish matters?’

I used to be entranced by this clever-clogs stuff, and I can still see some strength in it.

But I have been forced into a rethink by David Cameron’s decision to pretend he is under pressure on this from his backbenchers, whom he royally ignores when it suits him, on every subject there is.

He’s plainly playing a little game of ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’. Having come within inches of saying goodbye to the Scottish contingent of Labour MPs, thanks to the near-success of the campaign for Scottish independence, he has taken a strong liking to the idea.

And, despite the referendum result, he wants to find a way of getting rid of the Scots anyway.

For, as we all know, he has no chance of a Westminster majority as long as there is a Scottish contingent there. So, let’s make a matter of party advantage into a matter of principle.

But is it actually?  If it is, it’s funny that it’s been allowed to lie untended on the shelf for so many long decades.  And which principle is it?

Let us turn to the wisdom of Edmund Burke, whose 1774 address to the voters of Bristol (read it  here) is thought by many to be the last word on the proper role of an MP.

His constituents wanted Burke to be a kind of delegate from Bristol, representing the interests of Bristol in the national Parliament. Burke, in my view quite rightly, thought them mistaken.

He believed that he was above all a member of the national legislature, sent there from Bristol, to use his own judgement and good sense as long as he was their MP. He was bound to listen to them, but not to take their advice.

If they didn’t like the way he spoke and voted they could get rid of him, but he was not simply their mouthpiece. The crucial passage runs thus:

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.

You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.

If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect.

So, for instance, say an MP from Scotland is, for example, a distinguished historian of Russia, an economist with a reputation for wise prediction, a former Army staff officer, a sometime steelworker,  fisherman or train driver, or an experienced mother of children.

Will he or she be excluded from any vote on English matters, because he or she is Scottish, even if his or her area of expertise and knowledge is under discussion and being voted upon?

Will he or she be allowed to speak, but forbidden to vote? Will he or she be excluded from major ministerial office, because too many of that ministry’s decisions concern England alone?

If not, then where will the line be drawn?

Any MP, wherever he or she is from, is fundamentally qualified by the fact that he or she has been chosen by electors to go to Parliament and be a member of it. He or she can surely listen with attention to debate, and have his or her mind changed?

The real scandal here is not that Scottish MPs vote on English laws, but that the brute power of the whips often compels MPs of all parties and from all parts of the country to vote against their own personal desires and wisdom. That is something I would very gladly see reformed.

I might add, will the same rule be applied with equal rigour to MPs from Northern Ireland, which is pretty thoroughly devolved?

And what about the European ‘Parliament’?  Since the EU still devolves a few powers to us here in the UK, should Euro-MPs from the UK be debarred from voting on matters that affect any of the other EU member countries? And should they be debarred from voting on our business? And how would we define what was our business.

I’d be happy, in a  mischievous sort of way,  with anything that gummed up the works of that horrible body.

But it seems to me that if the rule is ‘You can’t vote on matters in other parts of the federation, if your part of the federation has substantial devolved powers’, then it could turn out to be quite explosive.

Put simply, it means that we no longer have a UK Parliament, just a place where all the UK MPs have offices, and are entitled to be, but are increasingly excluded from having anything to do with anything outside their own provinces.

That looks to me like a dissolution of the Union, in everything but name. Perhaps that is what we want.

For me, I’m content to let Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have significant amounts of self-government if it makes them happy.

I have absolutely no desire for an ‘English Parliament’ mainly because we have had such a body since 1265 or so, and it still exists, only with additional members from other parts of the country.

The other reason for not wanting such a thing is much like my reason for not wanting a written constitution. Who will design it?

I don’t just mean that the building will be a ghastly modernistic shed in Milton Keynes, designed by one of those New Labour architects who have done quite enough damage already.

I mean that it will be elected according to some rigged system of proportional representation, probably based upon the infernal ‘regions’ which the EU is determined to impose upon us sooner or later.

As for our existing form of government, Scotland and Wales are entitled to some special measure of self-rule because England utterly dominates the UK, in terms of population, tax-base and usable land.

Weren’t you shocked by how few people voted in the Scottish referendum? I don’t mean the excellent high turnout, but the actual totals.

There are English counties with more people in them than voted for Scottish independence.

Northern Ireland, by contrast, oughtn’t to have such a body, as direct rule from London is the only way of overcoming sectarianism.

Some other form of strengthened local power might be designed, but not one that allows either community to lord it over the other, or which allows terrorist gangs significant influence over government and law.

Certainly it should be spared somehow from copying mainland Britain’s comprehensive school disaster, but I suppose for that to happen there’d have to be an official recognition that it is a disaster, which some people amazingly still refuse to admit.

But I digress [and I shan't be allowing up any comments on the digression].

That point, that the outlying parts of the UK are so small in population by comparison with England, is crucial to understanding why the West Lothian question is silly as well as clever.

England dominates the others simply by existing, much as Germany dominates the continent.

It can afford to subsidize its neighbours, and give them a large measure of home rule, and is wise to do so if it doesn’t want foreign powers meddling in our island, slipping in through an unguarded back door.

It doesn’t need any special protection or privileges.