Malcolm Rifkind

David Cameron was questioned on the West Lothian Question yesterday, and true to form the eel in a suit slithered around the question:

Asked about the "West Lothian question", Cameron says the government is holding a review. The Tories went into the election proposing a convention that would stop Scottish MPs voting on England-only laws. Cameron says he does not want to create a system where there are two types of MPs. That's why he favours the establishment of a convention, rather than a more rigid system. But he will wait for the outcome of the review, he says.

He may be leaning towards asking non-English members to observe a self-denying ordinance on English legislation, or perhaps he prefers Malcolm Rifkind's 'elegant' East Lothian Answer.

I had a bit of a set-to with Malcolm Rifkind over his solution, you can read that exchange here. What Rifkind now proposes for England is far less than he once proposed for his native Scotland.

In 1975 Rifkind chaired a Scottish Devolution Policy group to determine how the Conservative Party should respond to the Labour Government's White Paper on Scottish devolution. To cut a long story short, Rifkind decided to counter demands for a bespoke Scottish Parliament and Executive by recommending a system by which an autonomous Scottish Assembly operated as a chamber within the Westminster system.

It is suggested that the Conservative's should propose an Assembly that would be integrated into the work of Westminster and will exercise its functions as part of the British Government.

The executive should remain the Secretary of State for Scotland responsible to Parliament. All purely Scottish legislation should be formally introduced into Parliament and then sent to the Assembly for Second Reading, Committee Stage and Report Stage. The legislation would then return to Westminster which would decide whether to give the Bill its Third Reading and might also have certain powers to amend. Given the full consideration which would have been given by them, it would be hoped that passage through the Lords would involve minimal delay.

If the Assembly declined to give a Second Reading, the Government could either amend to meet the Assembly's objections or withdraw the Bill. In some cases it would be possible to foresee Assembly opposition and consideration could be given to the possibility of United Kingdom legislation that would be solely considered by Parliament. In extreme cases, if the Assembly was being purely and deliberately obstructive, Parliament would, of course, have the legal right to by-pass the Assembly on purely Scottish bills.

Members of the assembly should also have the power to initiate their own legislation. Once it has completed its Stages in the Assembly it would go to Parliament which would have identical powers as with government legislation. The consideration of Scottish legislation in the Assembly should be led by the Secretary of State and his junior Ministers who should have the right to be present and speak during the proceedings of the Assembly. In addition, there should be no objection to the appointment of junior Ministers, including a Minister of State, from the ranks of the Assembly. At present, for example, the Solicitor-General for Scotland is not in either House of Parliament and, accordingly, no new principle would be invoked.

The Assembly should also have the power to summon Scottish Ministers before it or before a Select Committee with power to examine and scrutinise the actions of the Scottish Office.

The above gives you an idea of how an English Grand Committee might operate within the Westminster system. But it also exposes the inadequacy of Rifkind and Clarke's present plans for England. Any future English Grand Committee ought, at the very least, to be able to call UK Government ministers to account; it should have power to scrutinise the actions of the UK Parliament, and; it should contain at least one junior minister from each department of state.

Today's Sunday Times confirms the Tory u-turn on their long-standing policy of English Votes on English Laws. Ken Clarke's fudge, dubbed 'English Pauses on English Clauses', is to be adopted by the incoming Cameron government.

Scottish MPs will still be able to vote on issues that affect only England under a Tory government, despite David Cameron’s vow to end the anomaly.

Members with constituencies north of the border would not be banned from voting at the crucial second and third readings of bills on English-only legislation.

As Malcolm Rifkind noted, Ken Clarke's solution would not have prevented those infamous West Lothian complaints:

By leaving the Second Reading to be voted on by all MPs this will mean that legislation that only applies to England could receive a Second Reading and be approved in principle even if it was unacceptable to a majority of MPs representing English constituencies. Thus the legislation on tuition fees, foundation hospitals or fox hunting would still have been approved.

David Cameron, who has consistently accused Labour of failing to address the West Lothian Question, and who has stated that such failure puts the Union at risk, should now expect the same accusations leveled at him. He has reneged on a promise made not only by him but also by the three Tory leaders before him (Hague, IDS and Howard).

Far too much of our tax pays for bureaucracy – and under Labour it is running wild. We have new Parliaments for Scotland and Wales, new regional development agencies and a host of quangos stuffed with Labour politicians. And for what? — David Cameron, Oxford Journal, 19 May 2000

Cameron previously dismissed the 1998 round of devolution as bureaucracy, but now he falls over himself to pander to the sensibilities of Scottish and Welsh home-rulers. He will use the same 'bureaucracy and cost' argument against calls for an English parliament and democracy in England. But Cameron is a man of few, if any, political convictions. He is a man of political expedience who sways easily with public opinion. It is up to us to hold him to the wind, to make good on his promise of preventing Scottish MPs meddling in English issues by creating a de facto English Parliament within the Union Parliament. The best way to do that is to inform your Tory candidate that you will not be voting Conservative because of this decision, and to vote for English Votes on English Laws. Do it today.

David Cameron has also promised a ‘great amount of money for Scotland’s great needs’. That's nice. What a great guy. It must be super to be able to go up to the Scottish Conference and give positive messages about funding and protecting Scottish MPs' privileged voting rights. I expect we in England will have to wait until the English Conservative Conference to hear what promises he makes England...Oh wait....There is no English Conference (nor even English representation at the UK Conference) because the Tories are institutionally racist. Still, at least we know, thanks to news reports from Scotland, that English nationhood will be enshrined in the constitution by a simple procedural change to the Westminster voting system in the "first few weeks" of a Conservative government.

Seriously, can this really be their answer to the English Question?

David Cameron has given his strongest indication yet that Ken Clarke's solution will be in the next Conservative manifesto.

Mr Cameron backed the proposal drawn up by his party's democracy taskforce chaired by Ken Clarke, the former chancellor who is now shadow business secretary, to create an "English Grand Committee" at Westminster which would be closed to MPs from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and which - apart from exceptional circumstances - could not be overruled by the Commons as a whole.

All MPs would be allowed to vote on England-only laws at their third and final reading but the new parliamentary arrangement would prevent any party using Scottish votes to block amendments made by English MPs. - Herald

It's a piss poor solution but from a Tory standpoint, not an English standpoint, it represents an advance on their past three manifestos which contained the unworkable "English Votes on English Laws".

Why have the Tories come up with such a convoluted technical solution to the West Lothian Question?

It's not about good governance, it's just a way of mitigating the WLQ and responding to an English sense of grievance, whilst engineering an inbuilt Conservative majority at certain stages of certain bills.

The thing to bear in mind - when considering banning Scottish MPs - is that it's an unconstitutional measure. Because the Barnett Formula allocates money to Scotland as a proportion of what is spent in England, any decision affecting the English budget (Health, Transport, Education) has a knock-on effect on the Scottish budget. In this respect there is no "English-only" legislation, at least not until the Barnett Formula is scrapped.

"No taxation without representation"

The Tories are being disingenuous because Scottish MPs have a constitutional right to vote on anything that determines how their constituents' taxes are spent - in other words political federalism requires fiscal federalism.

The Barnett Formula is key because it is the Barnett system that helps provide the social glue that underpins the welfare state and the common contract that we all (as Brits) have with one another. This is why the SNP want it scrapped even though it is biased in Scotland's favour. At the moment we can pretend that we have a 'National' Health Service (even though in terms of policy and delivery we actually have four national health services) because it is funded from a common pot - we all put in and we all take out. This principle of British solidarity "British funding for British institutions" - to paraphrase our prime minister - is endangered by fiscal federalism.

Importantly Ken Clarke's solution allows Scottish MPs to vote on the principle of the bill but not the detail, thereby preserving their say in a British veto over spending plans for England, and consequently the Scottish budget. This helps to sustain the veneer of "Britishness" of institutions like the NHS.

Parliament itself is probably even more important to our sense of British identity than the NHS. According to Prof Vernon Bogdanor to be British is "to wish to be represented in the House of Commons", and there will be many who claim that this Conservative policy will create "two classes of MP" by reducing Scottish MPs' involvement in the House of Commons. This is nonsense because thanks to devolution there are already two classes of MP: those that can vote on legislation pertaining to the health and education of their constituents and those that cannot.

The real problem is that highlighted by an unnamed Labour spokesman:

A Labour spokesman said a policy of English votes for English laws would destroy the relationship between the House of Commons and the executive, and "catastrophically undermine the Union".

The Conservative solution means that it would be illogical, but not unconstitutional, for Scottish MPs to have an executive say on matters that they cannot vote on, so logic dictates that the future UK Cabinet should be disproportionately English, with non-English MP only permitted executive responsibility in reserved areas; it also has the potential to set an English bloc of MPs against the UK Government, encouraging English MPs to speak for England against the executive that governs England, and; it introduces nationalism into the Union parliament, encouraging MPs to split along national lines instead of party lines.

None of this will be a huge problem if there's a large Conservative majority, but a Labour or coalition government, or a minority or weak Conservative administration, could well find themselves beset by contradictions between UK-interest and English-interest.  For an English nationalist that's all well and good, and we can only hope and pray that it comes to pass.

How will the Conservative's enemies react to this policy?

I imagine that some English nationalists will be in favour, seeing it as a "slippery slope" to an English parliament, while others will regard it as a sop. The Labour and Lib Dem parties will be against it, but in the face of a Tory landslide they may well come to see it as a 'least damaging' solution. The SNP will be against it in public, but in private, because their MPs observe a self-denying ordinance, they'll be rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of Scottish Labour MPs becomming side-lined and increasing irrelevant at Westminster. Previously the other parties could just ignore Tory grandstanding on the question of England, but no longer. Because the Tories are likely to form the next government we can expect an extremely heated debate on this, and also on Tory plans to abolish the RDAs and assemblies.

There will also be people inside the Conservative Party who object. There are those who object on a technical basis, people like Malcolm Rifkind who point out that this solution would have made no difference to the votes on tuition fees, foundation hospitals or fox hunting, and there will be others like David Davis, Roger Gale, John Redwood and Mark Field who will say that it doesn't go far enough.

Personally I agree with Alistair Carmichael of the Liberal Democrats:

"If [David Cameron] were sincere about trying to solve this problem, then he would look seriously at the creation of an English parliament or regional assemblies, whatever the English people themselves decide."

Pissing about with technical Westminster solutions to the question of England, whether it's 'English votes' or 'Regional Ministers' will not answer the English question. Only the people of England can answer the English Question and we deserve the opportunity to have the decisive say about how we are governed. England deserves a distinctly English voice, not only in parliament but in government also.

Time for a National Conversation.

Alex Massie is one of those mealy-mouthed unionists of the same ilk as Gordon Brown, Malcolm Rifkind and Alan Cochrane; the type who have devolution for their own country but dismiss English claims as the bleatings of English nationalists.

One thing these Scottish unionists have in common is extremely strange hair.

But I digress.

In his latest post Massie highlights the following Cameron quote, which for Massie is acknowledgment that Cameron will lack a Scottish mandate and the moral basis on which to govern.

"If we win the election and if, by some miracle, we don't have 25 seats in Scotland and have slightly fewer, then I would be a Prime Minister who would want to govern in the interests of everyone in Scotland.

"I would recognise the shortage of mandate, if you like, in Scotland by getting straight up there and meeting the First Minister and saying, look, anyone who wants to try to work with me, I will work with them. I will make sure my ministers go to Holyrood and listen to committees there. Likewise, Scottish ministers should come to Westminster and engage with the committees here.

"I would do whatever it takes to govern in the interests of the whole of the United Kingdom and to try to make sure, that over time, that we can strengthen that United Kingdom. I would be prepared to consider anything to enable us to do that."

I don't like to bleat, but why should SNP ministers come to Westminster to participate in committees? The devolved government of Scotland belongs in Scotland, not England. England should not tolerate interference from politicians who only speak for Scotland when there is not one politician who can legitimately claim to speak for England; why should England submit to the backroom politics of a Scottish 'nationalist reading' of an English Tory victory?

Such is the blinkered view of commentators like Massie that they don't see this as an issue, all that matters to them is to "ensure that the SNP will not be able to split up the UK". It's the Union at all costs: "Better an imperfect Union than a broken one".

Unionists will continue to fawn over Cameron's imperfect Unionism (see 3000 Versts) for want of anything better, but the imperfection is such that it's only sustainable with a workable Tory majority, and even then only with the caveat of the Tories having a least one Scottish MP of the calibre required to be an effective Sectretary of State for Scotland against Alex Salmond (and looking at Mundell that's going to be a big ask). In Massie's world, and Cameron's too, the governance of England could legitimately rest on cutting deals with the SNP and Ulster unionists.

In England we've noticed that a few recent HoC's votes have been won for the Government when the majority of English MPs voted against (Heathrow Third Runway, Theresa May's amendment on English regional committees and 42-days detention) but these transgressions have been largely overlooked, even when they are the work of an unlikable Scotsman leading a detested government. The question is: Will the Scottish public be so forgiving of an English Etonian toff leading an English Tory Party with an almost entirely English cabinet?

Cameron is correct, he won't have a mandate for Scotland. It's best for him to acknowledge this openly, to crave the indulgence of the Scottish people to buy himself some time. This is no risky strategy, just common sense.

Dear Mr Rifkind,

I have been reading your amendments to Ken Clarke's DTF proposals with interest.

I appreciate that the Second Reading 'double majority' requirement affords protection to England in a way that Clarke does not, but I fail to see your case for a Report Stage in which non-English constituency MPs can debate the amendments made by an England-only Committee Stage. More to the point, why have an England-only Committee Stage at all unless it is an English Grand Committee that can be said to represent England?

In 1975 you chaired a Scottish Devolution Policy group to determine how the Conservative Party should respond to the Labour Government’s White Paper on Scottish devolution. You recommended:

"All purely Scottish legislation should be formally introduced into Parliament and then sent to the Assembly for Second Reading, Committee Stage and Report Stage. The legislation would then return to Westminster which would decide whether to give the Bill its Third Reading and might also have certain powers to amend...If the Assembly declined to give a Second Reading, the Government could either amend to meet the Assembly’s objections or withdraw the Bill."

If this level of autonomy is correct for Scotland in 1975, then why not allow English members the same autonomy up to Third Reading now?

Moreover, you recommended that the 'Scottish Assembly' members should have the power to 'initiate their own legislation', which in effect would have provided a distinct (if weak) national voice for Scotland - something that the Clarke proposals do not do for England.

Given the reality of Scottish government, I don't see any coherent logic in the Conservative proposals. Either the nation of England is an ancient and equal part of our Union of nations, a foundation for government just like Scotland, or; Great Britain is England writ large - England expanded - and England's interests are legitimately represented 'as Britain'. Either England should have voice as a nation, or not. The proposals on the table seem to allow English MPs to speak only negatively on behalf of England in reaction to the government of the day. In my opinion the proposals don't go far enough because they do not address the wider English Question, relating to the governance of England, they only serve up a technical solution to the anomaly of Scottish MPs' voting privileges.

Best regards,

Malcolm Rifkind responds:

Dear Mr Young

Thank you for your message.

You are correct that my proposals (and Kenneth Clarke’s) are far more modest than a Scottish Parliament or Welsh Assembly model would imply. That is because we are dealing with a different constitutional problem.

English MPs (unlike Scots and Welsh) already have a massive majority in the House of Commons. If they agree their views will always prevail. The difficulty we are seeking to resolve is when English MPs are divided on purely English issues. As you acknowledge, my proposal would resolve this and , therefore, there is no reason to go any further.

Kind regards

Malcolm Rifkind

My response is:

Dear Mr Rifkind,

Whilst we can agree that English MPs have a massive majority in the House, my response to you would be that the House splits down party - not national - lines. Majorities are party political, not territorial.

The Government of the day calls upon all its MPs, irrespective of the territory in which they were elected, in order to conduct its business. To expect English MPs to act as a national bloc would be to undermine the working of Parliament and effective government. There is no coherent logic to your solution because "English MPs" do not divide as English MPs, due to the simple fact that they are not elected as such - neither the Labour Party nor the Conservative Party have an English manifesto.

MPs are expected to vote with their conscience and/or their party, in the best interests of their constituents and/or the national interest. For MPs in the UK Parliament, elected on a UK manifesto, the national interest is the national interest of the United Kingdom. Given the nature of Parliament, which is essentially an electoral college that selects the Government, the plurality can properly be expected to put the interests of the UK Government above those of England, and to confer and reinforce that bias on the Government of the day (a point ably demonstrated by the anti-English bias of the present government which has a majority of English MPs).

This is not a different constitutional question.

Best regards,

UPDATE: And there's more.

Dear Mr Young,

I do not disagree with what you say but I draw a different conclusion from it.
MPs do normally vote with their party but, as the last few years demonstrate, they often decline to do so when they feel strongly that their party’s policy is wrong

An English Parliament or an English state would be ways of expressing English national sentiment but most people in England do not appear to want that as they feel that fundamental English interests can be protected within a United Kingdom Parliament that has a large majority of MPs from English constituencies. Public opinion wants a reform of the House of Commons to protect English interests but does not seem to wish to go any further than is necessary to deal with the “West Lothian “ anomaly.

You are entitled to wish to go further but that is where we have to agree to differ.

Regards

Malcolm Rifkind

For those who are having difficulty following this, I have prepared a handy little guide to Ken Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind's solution to the West Lothian Question.

Rifkind’s Scottish Assembly plan sounds familiar may also be of interest.

UPDATE II

Dear Mr Rifkind,

It depends on which polls you take. Depending on the question asked there is either demand for an English parliament, or demand for English votes on English Laws, or the two options combined dominate over a preference for the Status Quo, regional assemblies or independence.

However, there have been no polls since the Democracy Task Force issued its recommendations. And I fear that you will have difficulty explaining the logic of this solution to an increasingly exasperated English public. The original EVoEL was unworkable in practive, but at least it had a certain logic.

The present situation could be helped if politicians began referring to England instead of "This Country" or 'the nation's" when talking about education and health policy. At present there is a denial of England, and this forbidding does neither England nor democracy any service.

Best,

Recent polling on the subject is here.

Thank you for your further comments.

I have no difficulty with you publicising my earlier replies. It would, however, have been a courtesy to inform me that you intended doing so. Politeness doesn’t cost anything and is a virtue even in these modern times. You might like to reflect on this.
(You can also put these comments on your blog as well !)

Malcolm Rifkind

After a period of reflection....

Dear Mr Rifkind,

In your earlier response you invoke the people: "Public opinion wants a reform of the House of Commons to protect English interests but does not seem to wish to go any further than is necessary to deal with the “West Lothian“ anomaly."

It is, at best, a specious statement. The Department of Constitutional Affairs (now the Ministry of Justice) have conducted no research whatsoever into demand for an English parliament. Neither have the Conservative Party - unless you have done it in private and not disclosed the results.

As you are so keen on invoking the people, perhaps you and your good colleagues would deign to ask the people. It would be a courtesy. How about an English version of the Calman Commission, an English Constitutional Convention, a Royal Commission on the Governance of England and, following, a referendum on the recommendations?

Or are my countrymen and women less deserving of a say than yours? Do we just sit back quietly as our partner nations debate (again) changing the balance and working of the Union; mute as the Scots partake in the Calman Commission and National Conversation, and the Welsh in the All Wales Convention? The position of the Conservative Party is that an "imperfect Union is better than anything that threatens it". But that is the position of the Conservative Party, not the position of the people of England. We do not know the position of the people of England because they have never been consulted. What level of imperfection and asymmetry are we prepared to tolerate, and; what are the benefits to England of the options that, allegedly, "threaten" the Union?

These are issues that we - as England - are entitled to discuss, and in the absence of any forum in which to do it, England is having its debate online, on blogs, on forums, and on newspaper letters pages. For this reason I have no hesitation in publishing correspondence from MPs because it's the only chance we get to debate the issue. This is a debate that needs to be in the public domain, whether you or the rest of the Westminster Village like it or not.

In March of 2008 IPSOS Mori found that 52% of the public don't understand the policy of "English Votes on English Laws". I found it an incredibly low figure given that my conversations with Conservative MPs have led me to believe that the majority of the Parliamentary Conservative Party don't understand it either. It's been a Conservative manifesto pledge since the time of William Hague (in your manifesto under Duncan Smith, Howard and now Cameron), yet no one in the Party - not even Sir George Young - was able to explain how it would work. For years I've badgered the Conservative Party over their pathetic ill-thought through response to asymmetric devolution, and now I'm informed that the Party is looking into Clarke's recommendation, a bastardised version of English Votes on English Laws, which I call "English Pauses for English Clauses". And you're still not sure!

I look forward the new Conservative policy with relish. I hope you are sure of what "the people" want because if you are wrong then the question of England has the potential to split the party just like the question of Europe did, and people like me in cooperation with the Lib Dems, Labour and the SNP will work tirelessly to ensure that it does. You will deserve it because you will have been arrogant. Despite being a natural Conservative supporter, and a unionist still (if only just), I will not tolerate a Westminster solution to the English Question - only the people of England can answer the English Question!

Best regards,

For some reason (possibly embarrassment) the Conservatives have removed the Democracy Task Force report into answering the West Lothian Question from the internet. But no matter, I have put it back up and you can read it again and again to your heart's content here.

Listed below the DTF document on the Witanagemot Club Links page is Malcolm Rifkind's response to Ken Clarke, in which he suggests some improvement to Clarke's scheme to better protect England whilst preserving the unity and equality of the House.

Under Clarke’s scheme the English will be denied the affirmative expression of national identity afforded to the Scots; instead UK MPs elected in England will speak for England only negatively - by wrecking UK Government legislation at Committee Stage.

Essentially the scheme rests on the principle of two competing vetos. MPs elected in England (assumed to be acting in the interest of England, even though they are elected on a UK manifesto) can veto the legislation of the UK Government. In return the UK Parliament which selects the Government, and is comprised from MPs returned from all four corners, can at the Third Stage veto any changes that English MPs voted for at the Report Stage. In this way, if the English have transformed the bill to a manner that is acceptable to the English, the government can abort the legislation.

With Rifkind's amendment all MPs would vote exactly as they do under Clarke's scheme, but in addition the Second Stage would require a 'double-majority' (consensual non-vetoes) of both MPs representing English constituencies and the House as a whole.

The original "English votes on English Laws" idea, in which only English MPs vote at Second, Committee, Report and Third Stages has been discarded entirely on the basis "that it could leave the UK executive in a very weak and powerless position on important public service issues of serious political importance". It is not English democracy that is the concern of Rifkind and Clarke. Instead their concern is the preservation of executive power, whilst at the same time attempting to protect England from the power of a UK executive that cannot be assumed or trusted to be acting in English interests.

But what's fascinating is Malcolm Rifkind's intrusion into this debate on the English Question (and yes, the Tories do believe that an answer to the West Lothian Question puts the English Question to bed). In 1975 Mr Rifkind chaired a Scottish Devolution Policy group to determine how the Conservative Party should respond to the Labour Government's White Paper on Scottish devolution. You can read the findings of his group here, courtesy of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation.

To cut a long story short, Rifkind decided to counter demands for a bespoke Scottish Parliament and Executive by recommending a system by which an autonomous Scottish Assembly operated as a chamber within the Westminster system. Rifkind's recommendations on how this would work have some relevance to what is being discussed for England at present.

All purely Scottish legislation should be formally introduced into Parliament and then sent to the Assembly for Second Reading, Committee Stage and Report Stage. The legislation would then return to Westminster which would decide whether to give the Bill its Third Reading and might also have certain powers to amend. Given the full consideration which would have been given by them, it would be hoped that passage through the Lords would involve minimal delay.

If the Assembly declined to give a Second Reading, the Government could either amend to meet the Assembly's objections or withdraw the Bill. In some cases it would be possible to foresee Assembly opposition and consideration could be given to the possibility of United Kingdom legislation that would be solely considered by Parliament. In extreme cases, if the Assembly was being purely and deliberately obstructive, Parliament would, of course, have the legal right to by-pass the Assembly on purely Scottish bills.

Members of the assembly should also have the power to initiate their own legislation. Once it has completed its Stages in the Assembly it would go to Parliament which would have identical powers as with government legislation. The consideration of Scottish legislation in the Assembly should be led by the Secretary of State and his junior Ministers who should have the right to be present and speak during the proceedings of the Assembly. In addition, there should be no objection to the appointment of junior Ministers, including a Minister of State, from the ranks of the Assembly. At present, for example, the Solicitor-General for Scotland is not in either House of Parliament and, accordingly, no new principle would be invoked.

The Assembly should also have the power to summon Scottish Ministers before it or before a Select Committee with power to examine and scrutinise the actions of the Scottish Office.

The above gives you an idea of how an English Grand Committee might operate within the Westminster system. But it also exposes the inadequacy of Rifkind and Clarke's present plans for England. For Scotland Rifkind had in mind a system whereby politicians elected on a Scottish mandate to the 'Assembly' could be appointed junior ministers to the UK Government. Also, on the Second Reading there is no requirement for a 'double-majority', although the UK legislature does remain sovereign. And also, under Rifkind's Scottish plan, Assembly politicians have the right to hold the UK Government to account by hauling ministers before a Scottish Select Committee. And it goes without saying that, of course, the Assembly would have represented Scottish national interests, flying in the face of Westminster if need be; helped by the fact that politicians with a Scottish mandate would have the power to initiate Scottish legislation.

Rifkind goes on to speculate on how Scotland should be financed under his Assembly plan.

With regard to finance, the Secretary of State [for Scotland] should receive a block grant from the Treasury rather than the present practice of determining specific amounts for each of his functions.

And this line of thinking, folks, is how the Barnett Formula came about.

Also worth reading, if only to demonstrate what a conniving bunch politicians are, are the following two devolution memos from Willie Whitelaw.

Shadow Cabinet: Circulated Paper (Whitelaw on devolution)
Shadow Cabinet: Circulated Paper (Willie Whitelaw on Devolution Study Group)

I have little doubt that similar such connivances have been circulated by memo amongst members of the Democracy Task Force and Shadow Cabinet in 2008, and will be again in 2009. These words from Willie Whitelaw in 1975 might just have easily mumbled forth from the gob of Ken Clarke just last week.

I still have personal reservations regarding the political impact of what we might be proposing. There is little doubt that it will come under very severe criticism from the media but our colleagues appear to be prepared to accept this in the interest of our policy being right constitutionally. There is no doubt in my mind that a great deal of work will have to be done in presenting our proposals and in convincing informed opinion that we are on the right lines. At the same time, with the technical assistance which is now available to us, it ought to be possible to put more attractive clothes on the skeleton of the proposals we had at the last election.

This post is inspired by the ever-so-pragmatic Roger Helmer MEP.

For those who are having difficulty following this, I have prepared a handy little guide to Ken Clarke and Malcolm Rifkind’s solution to the West Lothian Question.

A very good article from John Lloyd in the FT:

Polls show that, even if the Celts would not vote for separation, the English would. Falconer told me that at a recent Hansard Society debate with Malcolm Rifkind, “half the audience were supporters of an English parliament, angry”.

Alfie's first hand account of that meeting demonstrates the intellectual rigor of Falconer's argument:

"Look, if England got its own Parliament, and the Union broke up.... what would happen to all the Scottish people living in England - and all the English people living in Scotland?"....

The heckling stopped - stunned. What was this overblown, overpaid, overpensioned and overweight buffoon going on about? Was he saying that all these people would be expelled back to their native countries because England got a little national democracy? Yes he was.... A collective moan of "For God's sake" rose from the audience..... Just then, the man who had travelled from Carlisle shouted out "What the hell are you talking about - what about the 400,000 French people living in London?"

Falconer gurned like a fish miming to the Sound of Silence..... Nothing came out.

In a speech to the ESRC Devolution and Constitutional Change Programme, March 2006, Lord Falconer informed us that, "One of the purposes of devolution was to ensure fairness to the nations of the UK." Apparently "fairness" dictates that England alone should forgo national representation.

It's been a bit quiet on this blog for the last few days. This is mostly because I've been up in Scotland for a long weekend, drinking my face off and attending the wedding of my good friend Mr MacIsaac. However, that's the end of fraternising with the enemy, hostilities are resumed. Good to be back...

Ken Clarke's plans to solve the West Lothian Question, have been greeted with predictable disdain by most political commentators. Typical was Iain Dale who declared that "England deserved better":

From what I have seen I cannot in any way defend this so-called solution. It is not even a half way house. Either you believe that England should have devolved government or you don't. If you do, then you either believe in English votes on English measures or you believe in some form of English Parliament.

But Iain Dale is wrong. Not that England deserves better, of course she does, but because neither Clarke's solution NOR English Votes on English measures is for people that believe that England should have "devolved government" (or "English government" if you prefer). Instead both are crude technical devices that attempt to right the democratic deficit brought about the very absence of English government. Clarke's contrivance is contrived to such a ludicrous degree precisely to avoid even the pretence of an English parliament that EVoEM offers, and the consequent threat that such a democratic English body would pose to the Union when Scots object to it on the grounds of their own irrelevance.

Indeed, as Clarke went to pains to point out on the Today Programme, his solution "means that the government retains control of the agenda; it retains control of the money." Scottish MPs would vote on the second reading of an English bill - "which is the vote on the principle of the bill" - thereby ensuring the legitimacy of any cabinet government that contained Scottish ministers. But as Malcom Rifkind points out Clarke's mechanism would not have prevented the disgraceful actions of Scottish MPs during the Foundation Hospital and Top-up Fee legislation, even if last week's English Planning Bill amendment, scuppered by Brown's non-English MPs, could have been carried by English rebels.

Under Clarke's scheme the English will be denied the affirmative expression of national identity afforded to the Scots; instead English MPs will speak for England only negatively by wrecking UK Government legislation by the of tabling ludicrous amendments, or the deleting of English clauses at committee stage. But fear not, for as Clarke points out the UK government retains control, and:

"at the final stage all the UK members would vote so if the English have transformed it to a way that is unacceptable to the Government the government could ask its majority to veto and abort the measure."

Or in other words if the English have transformed the bill to a manner that is acceptable to the English, the government could abort the legislation. Malcolm Rifkind does offer an slightly more sensible alternative to Clarke's madness:

There could be a requirement that at Second Reading and at Report stage, for a vote to be carried on amendments to an England-only Bill, the vote, to be declared carried, would need a majority both of the House as a whole and of MPs representing English constituencies.

Though one has to ask Rifkind why, if the English can veto the UK Government, should we bother letting the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish vote at all; why not just let the English draft and vote on their own legislation instead of muddling up UK Government and non-English MPs in the process? The simple answer to that question is "The Barnett Formula", a funding mechanism that provides Scottish MPs with the constitutional right to vote on English legislation by dint of the fact that English domestic legislation determines the block grant due to Scots as an inflated percentage of what is available to the English. Naturally Ken Clarke does not even bother to address the Barnett Formula.

Toque recommends.
Paul Kingsnorth: A radical answer to the Mid-Lothian question
Tony Sharp: Abandonment of the English
Fraser Nelson: Clarke waters down the West Lothian Answer
Womble on Tour: Do These Guys Understand The Problem ?

If the Conservatives do adopt as policy Ken Clarke's suggestion (or for that matter Rifkind's) I will join the SNP and campaign for English and Scottish independence. If I can't have an English parliament and government inside the Union then I'll have it outside the Union, it's as simple as that. And the sooner the English Conservative Party - for English is what it is - understands that the better for both England and the Union. The English Question is not just about voting irregularities within the Commons, it is about recognising that England is a nation deserving of the very same sovereignty as any other nation. All that "English Votes", or any variation on that theme, achieves is to inflame English nationalism and toss a bludgeon to Scottish nationalists with which to beat the last life out of the Union.