There will not be an English parliament, “not today, not tomorrow”, proclaimed Lord Falconer, the lord chancellor, as if he were nipping a dangerous separatist movement in the bud. Speaking at a conference on devolution on Friday, the Scottish peer, who is also constitutional secretary, stood firm against the forces of federalism.
However, apart from the Campaign for an English Parliament, a pressure group which regards Scots as foreigners, there is no clamour for a devolved England. Unless the place has undergone a dramatic transformation since I was last there, the English are as bored by talk of constitutional change as they were in the run-up to devolution in Scotland and Wales.
Now, as then, opinion polls indicate that the English tolerate Scottish and Welsh devolution. But they don’t want England to be “compensated” by having their country chopped up into a bunch of bureaucratic, soulless regions. Even the ballot for a regional assembly in the northeast of England where there really is a local identity was overwhelmingly rejected in 2004 by 78% of those who voted, despite (or because of) John Prescott’s endeavours.
The affection for the union persists (north and south of the border); south of the Tweed so does an attachment to the status quo. In fact, as befits the bigger country, England lacks a national inferiority complex about its neighbours and, according to another of the speakers at the devolution conference, Professor Robert Hazel from University College London, is “pretty relaxed and generous towards Scotland and Wales”. Pretty generous, too, with Scots receiving proportionately more per head than the English from the Treasury.
Scottish predictions (rife when 30 Scottish MPs voted for a ban on fox hunting in England) that devolution would result in a southern backlash have failed to materialise. Rumblings about a Scottish Raj in the British cabinet turned out to be more of a conversation opener than a serious complaint and apathy or indifference to the Jocks is more common than positive dislike.
As an English incomer to Scotland I have experienced no resentment from friends either in London or in Edinburgh, no mutual hatred and only the occasional chippiness on the part of some Scots. Maybe that’s because the advantages said to be enjoyed by the Scots post-home rule are mostly a fiction. The poor performance of public services despite massive increases in spending has been a big disappointment. The well-documented discrepancies between the Scottish and English health systems reflect badly on devolution, as do Scotland’s unreformed comprehensive schools.
A think tank of academics goes as far as saying that devolution has left Scotland lagging behind England. Economic growth has been weaker in Scotland in the seven years since devolution, and there is a “perverse tendency” to let England take the lead. Scottish decision-makers, says the government-backed Economic and Social Research Council, are wedded to old Labour policies on public services compared with their more innovative English counterparts. Why indeed would the English begrudge the Scots their slower business start-up rate, their ever burgeoning bureaucracy, their swollen public sector?
Nor does the resurgence in English self-identification and awareness in the wake of devolution to Scotland and Wales strike me, in my Scottish fastness, as overbearing. The flag-waving of the St George’s Cross has only been slightly more vigorous. Love of England by the English has not been noticeably strengthened or weakened by devolution. In categorically ruling out an English parliament “in any kind of future”, Falconer has shot a paper tiger.
That said, why should the English continue to put up with Scottish and Welsh MPs voting on English-only issues at Westminster? Falconer argues that all matters at Westminster “impact on the union” and were therefore pertinent to all MPs, but this is not the case.
There have been some glaring examples where Scottish MPs have had their say on policies that will not apply in Scotland. The vote at Westminster to ban smoking in England was taken by all MPs, although Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had already made their own decisions. Scottish MPs helped the government push through university top-up fees and foundation hospitals but the Scottish parliament is implacably opposed to both measures. This week Tony Blair’s controversial education reforms will probably win approval at last, with the backing of stalwart Scottish MPs, whose own constituents will not be affected.
When Labour had a big majority and depended less on loyal Scots at Westminster, the flaws of the devolved settlement were not so obvious. Now the constant presence of the “do as I say but not as I do” Scottish MPs offends the English sense of fair play and irks nearly all Scottish politicians outside the Labour party. Whenever public opinion has been tested in Scotland, voters too have believed it is unfair for Scottish MPs to influence English legislation.
However, Blair will not ban Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland MPs from voting on matters that don’t directly concern them, saying that creating “two classes of MPs” will get parliament “into all sorts of problems”. He forgets that problems exist: they need to be addressed. The simplest solution would be for Scottish MPs to withdraw during English-only debates.
This may cause confusion to begin with and sometimes it will be genuinely difficult to distinguish between those things that are purely English and those that have an indirect bearing on Scotland, such as university top-up fees. But the Scottish Nationalists and the lone Scottish Tory MP (David Mundell) have already adopted this self-denying ordinance and it doesn’t tie them in too many knots.
Is it conceivable that Scotland’s Labour group would quietly do the same, perhaps in a few months after the education bill has passed on to the statute books, and thereby resolve the West Lothian question once and for all, by convention rather than law?
Not a chance! Soon there will be a new, unmistakeably Scottish, prime minister’s majority to uphold. Stand by for more blather about Britishness, not self-rule for the Sassenachs.
Minette Marrin is away
