An English Grand Committee, Anyone?

No, I didn't think so. Still, at least it wouldn't actually involve any more politicians, as of course an English Parliament would.

The Parliament of the United Kingdom can still legislate in any policy area it likes with effect in any part of the United Kingdom it likes. Sir Malcolm Rifkind speaks of a "convention" that it does not do so, and proposes that his Grand Committee have a similar "conventional" authority, thus providing "balance".

But the devolved bodies have not existed for anything like long enough for there to be any such "convention", so it does not need to be "balanced", because it does not exist. Parliament should simply exercise its rights, written into the devolution legislation itself. Nobody beyond the thoroughly dispossessed fundamentalist wing of the SNP (where is your referendum?) would object unless they simply happened to object to the legislation in question, in which case they, like anyone else, could just be told to change the legislators. And as for the SNP fundamentalists, did they vote against devolution, either in the referendum or (where applicable) on the floor of the House of Commons? I bet they didn't. So they wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

There should also be a second chamber with equal representation from each of the areas having a Lord Lieutenant: one for one candidate, with the requisite number declared elected at the end. (Calls for equal representation for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland suggest that there exist in the United Kingdom a state other than the United Kingdom, or a nation other than the British nation. There does not, simply in point of fact, whether or not anyone might want there to.) That chamber should have exactly the same revising powers in relation to the devolved bodies as in relation to the House of Commons.