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Sunday 12 October 2008

Leading article

How to save the Union

The Spectator on Malcolm Rifkind's answer to the West Lothian question

New Labour’s devolution experiment responded to the desire of the Scottish and Welsh people for greater autonomy. In so doing, however, it has created new and growing grievances among the people of England. It is this sentiment that Sir Malcolm Rifkind’s deposition to the Tory party’s Democracy Task Force is meant to address: Sir Malcolm proposes that an English Grand Committee be established in the House of Commons to consider English business in which only the members for English constituencies would be able to vote. This would tackle the longstanding ‘West Lothian question’, labelled as such by Enoch Powell after the constituency represented by the Labour MP, Tam Dalyell, who raised the issue forcefully in the devolution debates of the 1970s: why should a Scottish MP be able to vote on matters relating to England when an English MP cannot vote on matters relating solely to Scotland?

New Labour’s answer to the West Lothian question has been to ignore it. ‘Now that we have devolution up and running,’ Lord Irvine said when still Lord Chancellor, ‘I think the best thing to do about the West Lothian question is to stop asking it.’ The government’s sole response has been to cut the number of Scottish MPs from 72 to 59 — a gesture which does not address the heart of the matter at all.

Gordon Brown and his colleagues should recognise that there has been a change in the landscape of public opinion south of the border and that this cannot be dismissed (as it was at the 2001 and 2005 elections) as a matter raised vexatiously by wicked Tories. What was once a debating point for constitutional theorists is now — as a direct consequence of the government’s reforms — a live political issue.

Since the introduction of the Scottish Parliament, opinion polls have suggested that two thirds of English voters agree or strongly agree that Scottish MPs should no longer be allowed to vote in the House of Commons on legislation that affects only England (and indeed that Scottish voters acknowledge the fairness and sense in this, too). Now, the English, who cast more votes for the Tories than for Labour at the last general election, see a Scottish Prime Minister, a Scottish Chancellor, an increasingly assertive SNP executive in Edinburgh and the survival of the Barnett formula, which guarantees advantageous funding for Scotland. If the opinion polls are right, there is a real chance that Labour might still be the largest single party at Westminster after the next election, with the Tories holding the majority of seats in England. At that point, the West Lothian question would become the stuff of constitutional crisis. That is one of many reasons why it should be addressed now rather than later.

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