| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Dalyell: That is peanuts compared to the nuclear issue. Will the Minister comment about the vitally important deeply engineered repository?
Mr. Raynsford: I was about to come to that. My hon. Friend will recognise that there are a wide range of issues, and I do not accept that the points that I have raised are "peanuts". If we succeed in reducing carbon dioxide emission from motor vehicles, in the home and in buildings through more energy efficient measures and better building regulations--we are reviewing part L of the building regulations--that will be a significant achievement.
The climate change levy will encourage businesses to use energy more efficiently. We recognise the particular concerns of energy-intensive industries and offer the prospect of a significantly lower rate of levy to those sectors that enter into agreements to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions. We are consulting specifically on that issue--to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North referred--and we are working to ensure a constructive approach to combined heat and power and renewables as part of the package. That approach is under consultation so I cannot give a more definitive answer today.
My hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) referred to the importance of changing people's attitudes. That is a key element in the Government's £7 million "Are you doing your bit?" publicity campaign. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) asked about the Government's response to the House of Lords recommendations on the storage of nuclear waste. The Government will respond to that in due course, and I shall ask my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment to write to my hon. Friend about it--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst):
Order. We shall now move on to the next debate.
11 am
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire): I am delighted to have the opportunity to introduce this debate, which is crucial for the United Kingdom. This morning, however, I speak more particularly as the Member of Parliament for North Wiltshire. It is worth my admitting, before anyone else points it out, that I am a Scot. I was born, bred and educated in Scotland, as I have already pointed out in one or two debates on devolution. Now, I speak not as a Scot but as someone who has spent more than half his life in England. I speak as an honorary Englishman, and as a Member who represents an English constituency.
This debate is vital for my constituents because, in the past two years of constitutional debate and the headlong rush towards devolution for Scotland and Wales, not a word has been said about the English question. England is a slumbering giant who is only now beginning to wake up and think about the English question.
I am delighted to see in his place this morning the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) who, 20 or 30 years ago, first raised all these issues in the famous West Lothian question. Unfortunately, he will have to leave the debate later, so we shall not hear his views on the English question, which would be to the point. The West Lothian question remains on the table, unanswered. The Labour Government, in their fixation on Scotland and Wales, have not even tried to address that question and its consequences for England.
Even the recent report by the Select Committee on Procedure, which is grandly entitled "The Procedural Consequences of Devolution", does not mention the English question in its many hundreds of pages. It makes no attempt whatsoever to address the consequences of devolution for my constituents in England. That is a shame, because there is a variety of procedural and structural solutions to the West Lothian question which should have been addressed, and which should be addressed now that Scotland and Wales are, so to speak, out of the way.
Those solutions include a full English Parliament. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman), who recently produced a book called "The English Parliament". If she is lucky enough to catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker, she will undoubtedly want to expand on that option. Another procedural option is curiously called the in-and-out method. I shall not attempt to deal with all the various options this morning because this is not an academic lecture. We are not discussing the various constitutional possibilities available to us, although I look forward to hearing my right hon. and hon. Friends' solutions to the West Lothian question later in the debate.
The important point is the principle that, since devolution, Members of the Scottish Parliament in Holyrood speak and vote exclusively on Scottish business; to a lesser degree, Members of the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff speak and vote on Welsh matters, and Northern Ireland Members in Stormont will speak and vote on Northern Irish matters. Why, then, should Scottish and Welsh Members come here and speak and vote on English matters? That position is totally illogical and unsustainable. Why should the fate of my constituents in North Wiltshire depend on the peculiar parliamentary
arithmetic that includes those people who have chosen to set up their own Parliament in Edinburgh and Assembly in Wales? There is no logic in that, and it is important that this Parliament now addresses that question.
If the solution is that English Members of Parliament come to Westminster to speak and vote exclusively on English matters, as they did before 1707, so be it. That is my personal preference. That would be the price that Scotland and Wales must pay for devolution. If we have English MPs in this place speaking and voting onEnglish matters, there will be important constitutional consequences that we must start to address. Those consequences are the prime reason that the Labour party will not even consider that solution.
First, it is extremely likely that the party in power--the majority party--in England would be different from the majority party in the United Kingdom.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Mr. Nick Raynsford)
indicated dissent.
Mr. Gray:
The Minister shakes his head. He would be right to say that in this Parliament, of course, there would be a Labour majority in England as there is in Scotland. I shall return to his challenge in a moment.
Labour's fear is that there would be a Conservative majority in England, as there has been for about 90 per cent. of this century, even when there has been an overall Labour majority provided by the Scottish Labour MPs. While we have one Parliament, one Government and one constitution, we in North Wiltshire do not mind being dominated by Labour MPs and a Labour Government even if there is a Conservative majority in England. However, the position is quite different if Scotland and Wales have their own Parliament and Assembly respectively. Why should my constituents in North Wiltshire then be dominated by a Labour Government if there is a Conservative majority in England?
That brings me back to the Minister's indication of dissent a moment ago. If he believes, in his arrogant new Labour manner, that new Labour will have a majority in England for all time, I put to him not the West Lothian question but the Chippenham challenge: he must allow an English Government to be set up, based on the majority of Members of Parliament in England, as he appears to be confident that Labour will dominate that Government as well as the UK Government. Let the Minister put his money where his mouth is and agree to my proposal.
It is clear that if we had English Members of Parliament speaking and voting on English matters in Westminster, the UK Government would not fall every time they lost a Division in the English Parliament. They would want to maintain their power over the UK. The majority in England would effectively form an English Government. Perhaps an English Parliament is too grand an expression, but we could have an English Government. Certain Departments of State, particularly those that have no interest in Scotland and Wales, would then be answerable to English Ministers sitting in this place as part of an English Government, who would match those in Scotland and Wales.
If there were any difference in parity between the English and UK Governments, the position would be no more complex than it would if we had a Conservative
Government in the UK--as many Conservative Members hope and expect that we shall in two years--and a Labour Government in Holyrood or a Labour-dominated Assembly in Cardiff. The stresses and strains between Holyrood and Westminster, which have so often been pointed out by the hon. Member for Linlithgow, are precisely the same as those that would exist if we had a Labour Government nationally and an English Government.
The second problem of which the Labour Government are well aware, and the second reason that they will not even begin to accept my proposed solution, relates to the Barnett formula. If we had an English Government at Westminster, how could we justify the fact that the Government spend £4,792 per head in Scotland, compared to £3,897 in England? Why is less spent on the English than on the Scots? Why does Scotland annually receive a subsidy of £7 billion, or £1,000 per head of population?
That is fine while we are one nation with one Government and one Parliament. The richer parts of the nation must subsidise the poorer parts. I am only too pleased that that is the case. That would remain the case for the north-east and north-west of England and, perhaps, Devon and Cornwall. My relatively prosperous constituents in North Wiltshire should pay their taxes towards subsidising the less prosperous parts of the nation, but not when the less prosperous parts are making their own decisions. Why should my constituents subsidise decisions made in Holyrood over which I have no control and in which I have no say?
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |