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6.44 pm
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire): We always listen to the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) with both interest and respect. He has made a serious speech, encompassing some very important points. I hope that he will forgive me if I do not engage him in debate on his latter points--much as I am tempted to do so. I am also tempted by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), who made a typically idiosyncratic, but entertaining and fascinating, speech.
I am allowed to speak for only 10 minutes--the limitation is understandable, but it tends to destroy debate--so I shall make only a few points.
No one could seriously claim that Parliament is not in need of some reform when we see acres of green leather around us. It is most unfortunate--to put it mildly--that more hon. Members, particularly Conservatives, are not present to debate this fascinating and important subject.
I intervened during the speech of the Leader of the Opposition to make the important point that all constitutional issues should be debated on the Floor of the House. I believe that any constitutional legislation introduced by any Government should be treated in that way. Although I shall do what I can to ensure that the right hon. Gentleman does not become Prime Minister, in that unhappy event, I hope that he would honour the pledge that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House forced him to make today--we all heard it--and ensure that any constitutional legislation was debated on the Floor of the House.
Several areas need reform. I have always advocated fixed-term Parliaments, and the frenetic events of recent days and weeks have confirmed my belief. Unless a Government are defeated on the Floor of the House in a vote of confidence, they should serve their time--whether it be four or five years. We should quickly incorporate that reform into our constitution.
I am also a strong believer in electoral reform. I do not believe in proportional representation and I do not believe in the alternative vote. I believe strongly in the relationship between a Member of Parliament and his constituency. Every hon. Member should have 50 per cent. plus one of the vote.
Some 14 or 15 years ago, I introduced a private Member's Bill on the subject of the two-round election. If no candidate receives 50 per cent. plus one of the vote in an election, the electors should be allowed to consider in the intervening week who they want to represent them in Parliament. I think that that would give a new emphasis to the constituency and counter the presidential nature of our elections, which I deplore.
I also believe strongly that mistakes have been made in the past 18 years. I regret the fact that so much power has been taken away from local government. I am totally unrepentant about my consistent opposition to the abolition of the Greater London council. Although I held no brief for that institution--I thought that it was riddled with flaws--it was wrong to deprive this great city of a directly elected strategic authority. I believe that the matter should be put right at an early date.
The very structure of our kingdom lies at the heart of this debate. This is a unitary state. Although our constitution has evolved--I hope that I have said enough in the last two or three minutes to show that I readily accept that improvements can be made to it--to threaten the very fabric of our unitary state is an extremely serious matter. The ill-thought-out plans for devolution in Scotland and Wales would threaten the fabric of our unitary state.
It is no good the leader of the Liberal Democrats trying, as he did, to make false analogies with Spain and Germany, which have a totally different history from this country. They have not evolved in the same way. They do not have the long background of evolution towards a unitary state that we have. I would be very reluctant to tamper with that mechanism.
We have been a little remiss in not giving closer thought to devolution over the past 18 years. I fought very strongly--as the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) knows, because we were honourable opponents at that time--against the devolution proposals of the former Labour Government. I believed that they were misconceived and wrong. Nevertheless, I would like to have seen something similar to the appointed but not elected representative assemblies in Scotland and Wales, as was advocated by the late Lord Home of The Hirsel, then Sir Alec Douglas-Home, in one of his papers.
Mr. Maxton:
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Patrick Cormack:
No, I do not have time. I am extremely sorry.
Had we gone down that road at that time, we probably would not be having this debate today.
I shall now deal with the bicameral nature of our legislature, because no one can seriously defend the automatic right to sit in Parliament conferred by birth. I have never sought to defend that, and never would. I believe that it would be possible to have House of Lords reform that preserved an hereditary element along the lines of the Acts of Union of 1707 and 1800, because the accumulated experience that certain families have, and the
contribution of youth that the hereditary element brings, is not lightly to be cast aside. Many peers, including Labour peers--including Lord Strabolgi--have put forward a variety of alternative proposals that would preserve an element of that. Those proposals should be seriously addressed and properly considered. I hope that that will be done.
What alarms me most about the proposals for reform of the other place are those that would create an assembly of placemen; that would give more and more power to the party hierarchy; and that would lead to the appointment of apparatchiks, who would merely do the bidding of their political masters. I oppose such reforms for the same reason as I would oppose to the end of my days any list system for this House, because there are a number of hon. Members on these Benches who probably would never have got near the place on a list system.
Sir Patrick Cormack:
And over there, too. I quite agree. I do not want to see such an Assembly down the Corridor.
The quality of debate and the accumulation of wisdom and experience in the other place is second to none of any legislative chamber in the world, and we cast that away to the disadvantage of this country and its good governance. I do not believe that the other place should have the power of veto, and it does not have it, but I believe that the power of scrutiny, examination and delay is good. The one Bill in the past 18 years that the other place turned down was the War Crimes Act 1991, and that decision was one of the wisest ever taken in Parliament against one of the most foolish and inept measures proposed by any Government in recent years.
Mr. David Trimble (Upper Bann):
The hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) referred to the United Kingdom as a unitary state. It is up to a point; it is one kingdom, but it is not a uniform one. There are various differences within it, and we have seriously to address how best to reflect them. We will find the answer to some extent in the hon. Gentleman's comments about the need to look again at local government and to consider certain forms of devolution more seriously and more closely. The hon. Gentleman made a thoughtful speech as, indeed, did the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore).
I am sorry that I cannot quite praise the Prime Minister's speech and that of the Leader of the Opposition. I found the Leader of the Opposition's speech
extremely disappointing. Despite the fact that, throughout the Prime Minister's speech, Opposition Back Benchers were making noises about Northern Ireland, the Leader of the Opposition found it impossible to find time even to consider the issue of Northern Ireland during his speech.
The Prime Minister found some time for Northern Ireland, but I found what he had to say extremely unsatisfactory and riddled with errors. He tried to justify his view on Northern Ireland, which he acknowledged was very different from his view on the rest of the United Kingdom, by referring to special circumstances in Northern Ireland. When he elaborated on those special circumstances, one seemed to be key. He said that there were no elected representatives from Northern Ireland from parties that could form a Government here. That was a very carefully crafted phrase to avoid having to acknowledge the fact that the Conservative party cannot get votes in Northern Ireland because its policies are seen by the people of Northern Ireland as hostile to their interests on fundamental matters.
There was another reason. Until 1974--when the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) withdraw the Whip from my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Sir J. Molyneaux), and others--Northern Ireland returned at elections an overwhelming majority of members who were in a national party. There is simply no basis in fact for the distinction that the Prime Minister tried to draw. It is commonplace on these matters to say that Northern Ireland is different, but there are differences. There are special circumstances in Northern Ireland. There are cultural differences and national differences, but those can be replicated in other parts of the United Kingdom--in Wales and Scotland.
The only real point of difference in Northern Ireland is that we have a foreign Government with territorial ambitions--our own Government are at best neutral and at worst seek to undermine the Union--and we have terrorism. That is the difference. The fact that, because we have terrorism, the Government treat Northern Ireland differently is very dangerous, because it is a precedent that might be followed elsewhere. The Government must consider that very carefully.
The Prime Minister claimed that his policy is aimed at retaining Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. It is as well that he gabbled that sentence, because nobody in Northern Ireland believes him--and rightly so, because the proposals that the Government espouse on matters such as the framework document would very gravely damage the Union. Indeed, I suggest that they were intended to do so.
I regard the position on Northern Ireland--and the position on Europe--as the biggest constitutional issues that face the United Kingdom. The House will understand why I concentrate more on the former than the latter. Both must be treated seriously. We must deal with the fundamentals. The fundamental question for Northern Ireland is whether we have a Government who are prepared to sustain the Union and to regard themselves as having a responsibility to everyone in the Union. That is the key question.
The Government portray themselves as being in favour of the Union. They campaign here--that is what they were doing today--and in Scotland, but they do not realise that they will have no credibility in Scotland as a champion for the Union while they are working to undermine the
Union in Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State for Scotland knows how close Northern Ireland and Scotland are: hon. Members based in the south of England sometimes do not realise that. The Secretary of State will know that people in Scotland notice the difference between the Government's policy on Scotland and their policy on Northern Ireland. My hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) raised that point when he intervened in the Prime Minister's speech, but it was not answered.
We favour a form of devolution, and we can answer the West Lothian question with no problem. There are three different answers to it, one of which was touched on by the Liberal Democrats, who referred to the old Unionist policy of home rule all round. It was a Unionist policy before it was a Liberal Democrat policy. The problem with home rule all round is the size of England: the 80 per cent. in England would dominate. Despite attempts to revive that policy, it is not realistic.
Another answer to the West Lothian question was given by Simon Jenkins in The Times last week, who wrote in praise of Belfast--quite rightly, too. However, I prefer the answer that is based on the simple proposition that the important aspect of devolution or the establishment of separate parliaments is not the legislative powers, but the fiscal arrangements and whether the fiscal unity of the kingdom is being maintained. Key decisions on tax raising and expenditure involve, by extension, all key policy decisions, because most key policy decisions involve expenditure. If we have, as I believe we should, fiscal powers and powers to decide expenditure and main areas of policy here, clearly there must be full representation here. The danger with Labour's proposals for Scotland is that they would disrupt the fiscal unity of the kingdom.
The Jenkins defence in The Times last week interestingly referred to local taxation in terms of rates. The danger is that Labour is dealing not with local, but with national, taxation. While income tax is decided here, all the people are entitled to equal representation here. It is the old business of no taxation without representation. It is not a new point.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley supplied me earlier with the first report of the Cabinet Committee on the Irish question, dated 4 November 1919, which contains the proposals that emerged later as the Government of Ireland Act 1920. It says:
We can take away the West Lothian question. When we do that as I have suggested, we end up with a local administration which, in some respects, is more akin to local government than to the fully blown parliament some other people refer. This is where we match up with the points made by the hon. Member for South Staffordshire. Regional assemblies, albeit with some legislative powers, as in the proposals of the Ulster Unionist party, do not raise the same fundamental questions as parliaments.
"In regard to representation in the Imperial Parliament the Committee are clear that so long as the Imperial Parliament exercises taxing powers in Ireland, Ireland must have the right to representation in the Imperial Parliament on the basis of population."
Interestingly, the Government failed to provide for that, because they cut Northern Ireland's representation: it no longer operated on a population basis. Its representation was about half what it was entitled to based on its population.
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