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Dr. Julian Lewis: Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will address himself to a question that I put to the Minister of State, who significantly failed to answer it. What is democratic, fair or in any way an improvement in a system that allows a party--namely the right hon. Gentleman's party, which came fourth--to share power with the party that came first, to the exclusion of the parties that came second and third?
Mr. Maclennan: It remains to be seen whether there will be such a sharing of power. Furthermore, as all the parties are minority parties, whether or not any of them come to a formal agreement, those that are not within the agreement will still bear and share responsibility for the actions of the Scottish Executive and the Scottish Parliament. The balance is quite different in the new bodies and it will not be possible simply to strike attitudes about the actions that are being taken, for, as no party has an overall majority, the other minority parties will be held to account if they, too, do not behave responsibly. ThatI believe to be a benign effect of proportional representation.
The other parties, whether in opposition or coalition, also have a responsibility to ensure that their criticisms are not captious and that their work is constructive. A minority party such as the Liberal Democrats must pay due regard to the fact that the Labour party in Scotland and in Wales has won more seats and more votes in the elections.
I do not doubt that there will be strenuous arguments within the new bodies in the future, but the happy difference between those debates and the ones with which we have become familiar at Westminster is that the protagonists in those Assemblies know that they may have to do business with each other, regardless of party allegiance. That, I believe, will lead to some tempering of the aggressiveness that was displayed by the hon. Member for Woodspring tonight.
Dr. Godman:
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. As a frequent visitor to Northern Ireland, I can report that there is keen interest there in recent developments in Scotland and Wales. Even the Unionists who are opposed to the implementation of the Good Friday agreement are anxious for devolution to be implemented in Northern Ireland by way of an Assembly up and running.
Mr. Maclennan:
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, which I hope that he will have a chance to develop later in the debate.
When British people criticise this House, they frequently express regret that our discussion is not more accommodating, more directed to seeking agreement and less to scoring points. The House of Commons may have something to learn from the style of the new bodies. In any event, I suggest that we stand back before we make any judgments about what is being done in Scotland and Wales.
It will not be too long before we can essaysome comparison between our newly elected British parliamentary bodies and judge their openness, responsiveness and effectiveness in delivering what the British people voted for in those parts of the United Kingdom. For now, we would be wise to confine ourselves to making such procedural adjustments to our own ways of doing business as are necessary to take account of the existence and legitimacy of the devolved bodies.
We shall not need for much longer three separate territorial Departments, with their Secretaries of State coming before us to be questioned as frequently as before. Now is an opportunity greatly to slim the ministerial ranks, and, in the future construction of the Houseof Commons, to take account of the changed balance of responsibility between the Members.
The Government have already indicated that, in respect of Scotland, an approach is likely to be made to the boundary commission to reduce the direct representation of Scotland in the House. That is natural and just. I hope that, by the time that the boundary commission sits, the progress of devolution in other parts of the United Kingdom will have been sufficiently rapid and far advanced to make a general slimming of the House of Commons appropriate, as work is decentralised from the Palace of Westminster and Whitehall.
Although the case for separate territorial Departments is rapidly vanishing, it would be appropriate for the foreseeable future to retain a Minister of Cabinet rank with some responsibility for liaison between the United Kingdom Government and the devolved Governments--a Minister who can ensure that there is equity in the treatment of the various members of the semi-federal United Kingdom. Such a ministry could help to provide for the proper channelling of concerns and proposals about the developing relationships of the different parts of the UK to each other.
The House will wish to consider in due course how to effect liaison with the other elected Chambers in areas of overlapping and cognate responsibility. Similarly, we shall wish to consider how to concert our dealings with the European Union where it is desirable to find a common voice. Preliminary thinking is in train in our Procedure Committee about those matters. We should await the expression of views from the new Assemblies in Scotland and Wales before arriving at conclusions about how best to effect proper liaison.
Mr. Richard Shepherd (Aldridge-Brownhills):
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He is addressing some of the important issues. The Minister did not seem to think that Scotland was part of a democracy--that was one of the arguments that she advanced. Does the right hon. Gentleman, who represents a Scottish constituency, feel at least a little uncomfortable about meddling in transport or education--matters over which he has no
Mr. Maclennan:
By defining the problem in terms of what is exclusively related to England and Wales, the hon. Gentleman reveals the difficulty of accepting any proposition that would separate the Scottish representatives in the House from debate. There are few matters affecting the example that he gave--transport--that do not touch Scotland. In his book, future arrangements for servicing the channel tunnel, for example, might be a matter of concern only to English Members of Parliament. That is not how it is viewed from the north of Scotland. Similarly, within the United Kingdom--
Mr. Brady:
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Maclennan:
I am dealing with one point. Intervention upon intervention is not necessarily helpful for carrying the argument forward. There are matters which, although they are predominantly of concern to those immediately affected, have a ripple effect on the whole of the United Kingdom.
I see us moving towards a federal Parliament in which there will be concurrent responsibilities for many of the matters that are at present regarded as exclusive. I hope that, in debates in that federal Parliament, there will be a full voice for Members from all the nations and regions of the United Kingdom. Until we have reached that happy outcome, we are bound to face some anomalies, but they are unlikely to be anything like as troublesome to the English as have been the anomalies of the oppressive use of their parliamentary majority in England to the Scots over at least two generations.
Mr. Brady:
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. I hear his comments about the difficulty of defining precisely the items of business that would affect only England and Wales, without having any effect on Scotland. Would not one acceptable way forward, at least as an interim measure, be that Scottish Members might exercise a self-denying ordinance and simply refrain from voting on business in which they feel they should not be involved?
Mr. Maclennan:
That convention would certainly run with the grain of my thinking about the undesirability of my voting in this place on matters with which I am not particularly engaged, but I do not know that the Whips in any of the parties would follow such a lead with great enthusiasm.
Another point needs to be made about the difference between Scotland and England in these matters. Effectively, the Scots and the Welsh have been in a minority for a long time; they always will be, because of demography. That minority has had to accept being trampled upon, over and over again. For demographic
reasons, I cannot for the life of me see how the Scots and the Welsh will ever be in a position to do the same in reverse--it baffles the imagination.
Mrs. Gorman:
The right hon. Gentleman said that the Scots have been trampled upon by this Parliament in past decades. Can he explain why the Conservative majority in this House, throughout the past two decades at least, kept in place the Barnett formula, which greatly advantaged the Scottish electorate with additional expenditure of 23 per cent. on their health programme and 25 per cent. on their education? How is that trampling on Scottish feelings?
Mr. Maclennan:
I do not want to go into the details of the Barnett formula, which was accepted across the parties and whose successors have built upon it for decades. The principle was broadly accepted that it was equitable. If the hon. Lady is saying that there should be some inequitable settlement imposed on the Scots, she is merely fortifying the point that I am making: in the tax-raising as opposed to the tax spending effects, we have suffered oppression. The Minister of State referred to the poll tax, which was deeply resented and could be the reason for the Conservative party's disappearance, to vanishing point, from Scotland's representation in this Chamber.
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