The Campaign for an English Parliament has just issued a full report on the devolution process, going by the title of
DEVOLUTION FOR ENGLAND
A CRITIQUE OF THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY POLICY
‘ENGLISH VOTES ON ENGLISH MATTERS’
The report details the devolution progress to date and explores some of the problems that have been created by the New Labour devolution process.
The report argues that The Government’s devolution programme had two fundamental guiding principles:
distribution of governmental power from the centre to constituent parts.
distribution on the basis of nationhood.
Importantly it says that England was completely left out of the devolution programme.
Which is perhaps not entirely surprising considering, according to Jim Naughtie who informs us time and again in his book The Rivals, Gordon Brown was the engine behind the whole devolution campaign. „It‟s Gordon‟s passion,‟ Naughtie quotes Tony Blair as saying in 1997. „So we‟re doing it”
Instead Scotland now enjoys the best of both worlds.
It remains firmly in the Union with its status and power within it enhanced, and with increased subsidies from the English taxpayer, yet it is independent of the rest of the Union and its government in areas of really major governance.
We are not talking about minor matters. Scotland now has full self-government in the most major areas of public policy:
education, health, local government, social work, housing,
training, agriculture, fisheries and forestry, sport and the arts,
economic development including the administration of
European Structural Funds, tourism, many aspects of transport,
the legal system and law and order, most civil and criminal
law, prisons and the fire services, and various lesser matters.
It is not just an astonishing degree of independence within a Union which is denied to its other constituent nations; it is also one in which one of those other nations, namely England,
subsidises most generously.
Of the £45.3 billion spent in Scotland in 2003-4 only £34 billion was recovered in taxation.
The £11.3 billion difference, which works out at £2200 per head of population in Scotland, was paid by the UK Parliament.
If tax revenue from North Sea oil is excluded, namely £4.3 billion, there still would have been a £7 billion gap, which equates to a £281 surcharge on every English taxpayer.
One has to hand it to Brown and co. They have pulled of the biggest and brightest coup in the Union’s 300 year history.
Not only is there the gross political and constitutional injustice of the English Question
and the West Lothian Question,
There are also the financial aspects.
As we have seen, Scotland does not pay its way. Only by reason of the immensity of the grant being paid by the Exchequer out of its UK revenue to the Scottish Parliament can it afford to provide
the educational, health and social benefits it now enjoys which are not being made available in England.
There are free eye tests for all regardless of age, free personal
and social care for the elderly, highly specialist cancer
treatments available across the whole of Scotland, free bus
travel throughout Scotland and free central heating installation
for pensioners, and free prescriptions for 19-25 year olds.
Scottish university students do not pay either tuition fees or
top-up fees which in England can be as much as £3000 a year.
They don‟t pay them even if they are at an English university.
No EU students (except the English, Welsh and Northern Irish)
pay them either. English students at Scottish universities
however must pay £3600 yearly in tuition fees for four-year
degrees while Scottish (and EU) students pay nothing in
advance and just £2000 after graduation. In addition there is
the -now notorious- Barnett Formula, brought in in 1978 to
check the rise of Scottish nationalism and the SNP
(interestingly the same argument used with UK MPs to sell the
devolution legislation of 1998). By reason of that Formula
alone, each Scottish person is in receipt of at least £1300 more
per head expenditure than English people (Public Expenditure
Statistical Analyses 2005). The Formula‟s advantages over
England enjoyed by Scotland are of course enjoyed by Wales
and Northern Ireland as well in varying ways, although
Scotland‟s devolution setlement outdoes both.
The Report then explains “The West Lothian Question” and “The English Question”
And “THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY POLICY” (EVoEM)
Before a critique of the policy “DEFECTS OF THE POLICY”
“EVoVM has two practical difficulties. The first is deciding which MPs will be entitled to vote on which bills.” The second practical difficulty is deciding which constituents will be affected by any particular bill.”
CEP argue that EVoEM will not adequately address either the West Lothian Question or the English Question but will in fact bring UK government into a state of confusion and ridicule and possible chaos. Neither can EVoEM ever be an adequate forum for the people of England or an effective champion of their concerns. Or give England its own representation within the European Union.
Instead of a way of holding the union together EVoEM contains the seeds of the break-up of the Union. It will introduce into the House of Commons an essentially divisive, indeed destructive, element which does not exist at present.
The Union Parliament is the Union Parliament. EVoEM would turn it into something else: a part time Union Parliament and a part time English Parliament,and will not provide England with its own Executive.
Technorati Tags: West Lothian Question, The English Question, British Constitution, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, devolution
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