The little lad has his finger in the dyke.

Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander, as reported in the Scotsman:

"The Government's position on the West Lothian Question is a matter of public record and the subject has been comprehensively debated inside and outside of parliament for a hundred years.

"The Government remains as committed now to devolution as it was in 1997, just as it remains committed to a single class of MP in the UK parliament."

This is, of course, totally untrue. The 'West Lothian Question' was coined by Enoch Powell and championed by Tam Dayell. It goes something like this:

How can it be right that MPs elected to Westminster from Scottish constituencies have no ability to affect the issues of their constituents which have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament, and

If power over Scottish affairs is devolved to a Scottish Parliament, how can it be right that MPs representing Scottish constituencies in the Parliament of the United Kingdom will have the power to vote on issues affecting England (including those that don't affect Scotland), but English MPs will not have the power to vote on Scottish issues?

A similar question arose for Gladstone over Irish Home Rule (1893). Gladstone briefly toyed with an English Votes on English Matters solution (banning Irish MPs from voting on British legislation at Westminster) but decided that:

it would be impossible for the Speaker to certify uncontroversially what was an ‘imperial’ and what was a domestic question; that if the Commons majority on an imperial question was of a different partisan complexion to the majority on a domestic question, the Government (however it was made up) would be unable to carry the Commons on one class of bill.

The same objections now bedevil the Conservatives.

The extent to which the West Lothian Question has been "comprehensively debated inside and outside of parliament for a hundred years" is open to debate. If one in a thousand were aware of Gladstone's Irish version of the WLQ I would be surprised. I would say that the English public are, to a large extent, constitutionally illiterate, naive, and unaware of the injustices against them. We need more debate on this subject, and more public awareness, which is exactly what Douglas Alexander and the rest of the Scottish Raj are afraid of.

It just occured to me that Douglas Alexander is probably referring to the situation that existed between 1921 and 1972 when there was a Northern Irish Parliament and the Northern Irish could still send their representatives to Westminster to vote on British legislation. This arrangement tended to bolster the Conservatives vote so it's a subject that Labour like to bring up to defend the present arrangement in which their vote is bolstered by Scottish and Welsh MPs voting on English legislation.

The 'two wrongs make a right' argument doesn't cut much ice with me. Labour have deliberately gerrymendered the House of Commons in their favour, something that was never done in the case of Northern Ireland, which due to the troubles was considered a special case.