Tories still debating the English Question

"... and UKIP contributors to Iain’s blog will be unwittingly disagreeing with Prof Jones’ strong union of national parliaments"

UKIPPERS shouldn't disagree. An English parliament is one of their objectives, according to their website!

Prof Jones is right.

Indeed, there is no need for separate MSP/AMs and MPs. Simply have MPs sitting part of the time in their national parliaments and part of the time as UK parliament.

Quite possibly not absolutely as simple as that in detail but certainly less costly and cumbersome than separate devolved assembly/parliaments as at present.

Can anyone tell me why the devolved territories, with a minority of UK population, are so complex that they require two sets of governance plus a Secretary of State each to run them.

Not only that but the British-Irish Council needs to have direct representation by the devolved territories because, seemingly, this is too difficult to be managed by the UK government alone ;-)

When the Conservative Shadow Scottish Secretary (James Gray) suggested that MSPs should be scrapped in favour of dual-mandate MPs that sit in the Scottish and UK parliament, he was sacked within 24hrs.

The Scottish Claim of Right - signed by Brown - estblished that the people of Scotland were constitutionally sovereign. If they want their own parliament with MPs elected on a Scottish-only manifesto, then that is their sovereign right. Not Westminster, Labour, the Tories, and certainly not UKIP, will change their minds on that.

Personally I think dual-mandate MPs are a bad idea, but the idea might have worked if, from the outset, each UK nation was constitutionally equal and there was separation of UK and national budgets. However, that didn't happen, and even if it had it would have been beset by problems.

National parliaments needn't be that costly if we scrap the Lords (which have been ruined by patronage anyway) and give the federal parliament some powers of scrutiny over the national parliaments. Regionalism in England can be accounted for with regional grand committees with devolution to England's traditional units of local government.

"Regionalism in England can be accounted for with regional grand committees with devolution to England’s traditional units of local government."

I think a distinctive vocabulary needs to be evolved. To me nowadays 'Regionalism' means dismantling England to assuage the smaller nations, to which my reaction is that if the price of continued Union is the demise of my nation as an entity, then the Union isn't anywhere near worth that.

If, however, you mean within the ambit of an English parliament, then it would perhaps be up to the traditional units of counties and equivalent to decide whether they wish to group themselves on a wider basis in some way. Only in that context can one then reasonably contemplate English regionalism/localism/whatever.

I don't mean Europe of the Regions' regionalism, obviously.

I'd like to see an English parliament with extra parliamentary time (freed up from UK legislation) where MPs could set up regional committees with local politicians and neighbouring MPs to focus on concerns particular to that area.

These wouldn't even, necessarily, be the regions that we know. They could be comprised of any counties or cities that wanted to cooperate together on a certain project, whether transport, or environmental or for delivery of better services to taxpayers. Free-market amoebic regionalism if you like, cooperation because of common interest and economies of scale.

Toque
Yes, that sounds organically flexible.

I'm actually very open to varying ways of organising the governance of England, as I don't profess to be an expert on constitutional matters or indeed anything else.

My only certainty is that there must be an English Parliament and Executive.

[...] Little Man in a Toque Tories still debating the English Question [...]