Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
PROFESSOR CHARLIE
JEFFERY, PROFESSOR
ROBERT HAZELL
AND PROFESSOR
JOHN CURTICE
13 NOVEMBER 2007
Chairman: Welcome, professors three.
Before we start proceedings, we have to declare any interest that
may be particularly relevant to this inquiry.
Julie Morgan: I am married
to the First Minister in Wales.
Q1 Chairman: I do not think there
are any other specific interests that are relevant to the inquiry.
We are absolutely delighted to have three people with us who have
given a great deal of time and attention to the study of these
things. Our inquiry into Devolution is not of course primarily
an inquiry into how it has worked for Scotland and Wales, because
there are two other committees of the House which give a lot of
attention to that, but how it is functioning for the United Kingdom
as a whole and of course additionally the questions that arise
from the position of England. There are many issues which arise
from that, some of which I think we will develop as our inquiry
continues, but what we wanted to do this afternoon, although we
are doing it in a formal evidence session, but perhaps slightly
less formally than usual, was to take advantage of the knowledge
that has been built up both about the working of the system and
about public attitudes to it. In that respect, I think Professor
John Curtice is going to open for us with a presentation about
public attitudes.
Professor Curtice: Thank you very
much, Chairman, and thank you very much indeed for the invitation
to give evidence to the Committee. I was asked by your secretariat
to address three questions, so that is what I am going to focus
on. I am going to do it very briefly in that I am just going to
give you one or two headline findings and then doubtless you may
want to expand on it in questions and answers. The three questions
I was asked to look at were: first of all, what impact has devolution
had on national identity across Great Britain; second, what are
attitudes towards how Scotland and Wales should be governed not
just within Scotland and Wales, but also within England; and,
thirdly and conversely, what, if anything, does the public think
should be done about England, and again not just looking at attitudes
within England, but also looking at attitudes outside of England,
particularly in Scotland? I need to say a little bit about the
sources of evidence that I am using and also one or two limitations
about what I can present to the Committee this afternoon. In Scotland,
the Scottish Social Attitudes Survey has been charting attitudes
towards devolution and national identity on more or less a yearly
basis since 1999. However, some of the funding for this comes
from the Scottish Executive, now known as the Scottish Government,
and in particular some of the data for 2006 only enter the public
domain next week and that for 2007 will not be in the public domain
until next spring, so I cannot put that into the public domain
at the moment. The crucial attribute about this survey, along
with the others, is that we have kept on asking the same questions
from year to year, so whatever you might think about the merits
of the questions, their great advantage is that it gives us some
idea in analysing how attitudes have changed over time. The second
source of evidence that I am going to use is what is known as
the Wales Life and Times Survey which essentially has been done
at election times since the advent of devolution in 1999. Many
of the questions are actually similar, if not identical, to those
which have been asked at the same time in Scotland. The third
piece of evidence comes from the British Social Attitudes Survey
which has been asking a number of key items on attitudes towards
devolution in England again since 1999, with quite a lot of activity
between 1999 and 2003 and rather sparser thereafter. And indeed
here in a sense is the biggest hole of the afternoon which is
that we do at the moment have a further project on attitudes towards
devolution in England currently being conducted in the survey
that is still in the field, so I do not have the results for that
until some time next year and obviously, given that the debate
in England has in some ways taken off in the last 12 months, it
may be that that will show a somewhat different picture from what
I am going to present to you this afternoon. I am also quite happy
to talk about commercial polling data afterwards in questions
and answers, but these, I think, are the sources of evidence that
are best as far as looking at change over time is concerned. Let
me take the first of the three questions, what impact has devolution
had on national identity, which I am going to convert into: what
changes, if any, have occurred in the distribution of national
identity since the advent of devolution? Very simply, here is
one piece of evidence where we actually forced people to choose
one single national identity which would best describe how you
think of yourself. In Scotland, the headline is that basically,
whilst the creation of the Scottish Parliament may be regarded
as a consequence of an increased sense of Scottishness in Scotland
during the 1980s and 1990s, it is not clear that Scotland has
come to feel any more Scottish since the creation of a Parliament
in 1999; Scotland was already very heavily Scottish before that
happened and, in truth, it can hardly get much more so. There
are similar kinds of data for Wales. There, in fact, there is
not any evidence that the proportion of people who, when forced
to choose, say they are Welsh rather than British or anything
else has in fact increased even since 1979; it is around three-fifths.
Wales is less Welsh than Scotland is Scottish, but Wales remains
as Welsh as it ever has been. Intriguingly, the one part of the
United Kingdom where the distribution of national identity does
seem to have changed since the advent of devolution is that part
of the United Kingdom that does not enjoy devolution, England.
As you will see, prior to 1999, when given this forced choice,
people in England would prioritise their Britishness over their
Englishness, in 1999 the two tied and, although subsequently a
sense of Britishness seemed to becoming more predominant again,
it never went back to the status quo ante before 1999. Then of
course you will see, intriguingly, the figure for 2006 where all
of a sudden the proportion that say they are English outnumbers
those who say they are British. We are obviously, therefore, awaiting
the 2007 data with a degree of bated breath, although I should
say that the one caveat I should enter about the 2006 data is
that the fieldwork did take place at the time of the Football
World Cup, which may or may not have encouraged people in England
to feel more English than they previously had done, though perhaps
after the result maybe not. Let me then move on to the second
question I was asked to address which is: what are attitudes towards
how Scotland and Wales should be governed? Here, I have data through
to 2007, although the Scottish data, I should say, are provisional,
they are the first 1,300 cases of what will eventually be a 1,500
survey. The simple headline here is that there is no evidence
at all of a consistent secular increase in support for independence
in Scotland since the advent of the Scottish Parliament and support
tends to bounce around the 25 to 30% level; indeed, intriguingly,
in our most recent survey support for independence in Scotland
is at a record low in our 10-year series, and this is in tune
with all the commercial polling evidence in Scotland during the
General Election campaign earlier this year where every single
one of those polls which asked about attitudes towards the Constitution
more than once uncovered a decline in support for independence.
As you can see, support for some form of devolution is consistently
the most popular option and, equally, you can see that virtually
nobody in Scotland wants to go back to the status quo ante.
The position in Wales, however, is one of a degree of change and
it is one in the direction in which public policy in Wales has
been going. Here, by "Parliament" I mean essentially
a body that has legislative powers and by "Assembly"
I mean a body that does not have legislative powers, i.e. the
Assembly as it was constituted before this year's election. As
you can see, point one is that back in 1997, as reflected at the
time of the referendum, 37% were actually saying they do not want
it at all and that figure is now down to 16%. Meanwhile, we now
have 42% of people saying not so good, that they want an Assembly,
but actually that they would prefer a Parliament. Of course, the
issues of how Scotland and Wales should be governed are not just,
however, simply a question of whether in or out of the Union,
but, as indeed already the Welsh data indicate, also issues about
what should be the relationship between Scotland and Wales and
the rest of the UK within the Union. Whilst it may be true that
there is no evidence that in Scotland there is any increase in
support for independence, there is plenty of evidence that people
in Scotland may well back the idea of the Scottish Parliament
having more powers than it has at the moment. Asked more generally,
"Should the Scottish Parliament have more powers?",
around two-thirds of the people of Scotland tend to agree. If
you ask them whether or not, "Now that Scotland has its Parliament,
services that are provided in Scotland should be paid for out
of taxes raised in Scotland", as you can see, typically over
a half in Scotland agree with that proposition. Finally, and in
more detail, one of the things we did this time both in Scotland
and in Wales is to ask people which of the UK Government or the
devolved institutions should make the main, principal decisions
about four policy areas, two of which at least in Scotland are
devolved and two are reserved. These areas are the NHS, schools,
welfare benefits and foreign affairs. What I am showing you here,
first of all, if you take the first left-hand bar, it indicates
that 63% of people in Scotland think that the Scottish Parliament
should make the principal decisions about the NHS for Scotland
and 26% say the UK Government. The second pair indicates that
61% of people in Wales think that the Welsh Assembly should make
the principal decisions about the NHS in Wales and only 26% the
UK Government, as you can see. For the most part, public opinion
in Wales and in Scotland on all four issues is rather similar
and what you will also note is that both in Scotland and in Wales
it is only foreign affairs and defence where you get a majority
of people saying that it should be the UK Government rather than
the devolved institutions that should take the principal decisions.
As you can see then, there appears to be plenty of support in
both Scotland and in Wales for increasing the powers of the current
institutions. What do the English think of all of this? Well,
so far at least, and here this is where the data only go through
to 2003, the evidence appears to be that people in England are
quite happy certainly for Scotland to have its own devolved Parliament,
but, equally, they are not particularly keen on throwing the Scots
out, and only around 17% or so support the idea of Scotland leaving
the Union. That takes me to the third and final question which
is: what, if anything, should be done about England? What I am
showing you here are answers to a question that has been asked
fairly regularly which invites people in England to choose between
one of three options. The first is that the laws for England should
be made, as now, by the House of Commons; the second is that there
should be some form of regional devolution responsibility for
things like health and education, and it was designed to mimic
the Welsh Assembly as was, and the third is that there should
be an English Parliament. Now, it is one of those things where
you can decide whether the glass is half full or half empty and
the first thing to say is that, when asked in this way at least,
a majority of people in England would prefer to stay with the
status quo. On the other hand, it is only just over half the people
in England. And of course one of the complications about England
is that there is a debate about, even if you are in favour of
devolution for England, is it devolution at regional level or
is it devolution to England as a whole? So the devolutionists,
as you can see, are evenly split between those two counts. Together,
they come to about 40% of the English population, but between
them they are split. Of course, what you will also notice is that
now, as regional devolution seems to have gone off the English
agenda, so an English Parliament seems to have become the more
popular of the two options. There is now, however, one important
thing to say about attitudes in England which make them very different
from the attitudes, for example, in Scotland. I earlier showed
you how it appears to be the case that England is beginning to
feel more English and less British, but we should not necessarily
presume from that that, as a result, there is developing a wellspring
of potential support for some form of devolution in England. What
I am showing you here is how attitudes towards that three-pronged
choice for England vary according to whether or not you say you
are principally British or principally English, and what I invite
you to note is that, whilst it is true that those who say, "Yes,
I am English" when forced to choose, rather than saying they
are British, are somewhat more likely to favour the idea of an
English Parliament; the difference is not very big. Perhaps it
will make this even more clear if I do the equivalent analysis
for Scotland where again, taking the three options posed there,
it is broken down again by national identity. Now, even amongst
those who say they are predominantly Scottish, only a minority
support independence, but you can see that it is virtually only
those who say they are Scottish who favour independence. Attitudes
towards the constitutional question in Scotland are rather more
clearly linked to national identity. So one of the intriguing
things about England is that, although national identities may
be changing, so far at least it is not clear that even those who
feel English necessarily particularly feel that that Englishness
needs to be reflected in distinctive political institutions. That,
however, of course does not mean to say that England is necessarily
satisfied. There are our old friends of the West Lothian question
and the Barnett Formula or, rather, the Scots having too much
money allegedly, and what I am showing you here is just to give
you an indication of how opinion both in England and in Scotland
pan out on those two potential English grumbles. The first thing
to say is that certainly, if you ask people on both sides of the
border whether or not Scottish MPs should be voting on English
laws, people in England say that no, they should not, and people
in Scotland say, "Yes, we can think of something better for
Scottish MPs to do than voting on English laws", and there
is a majority of both sides of the Union that support that proposition—although
I should say that on both sides of the Union also it tends to
be agreement rather than strong agreement. On the other hand,
the other grumble in England allegedly, which is about public
spending is not as obviously a grumble or at least it is not obviously
as salient a grumble as perhaps you might imagine. What we have
done here with this question is simply to ask people, "Do
you think Scotland gets more or less than its fair share of public
spending?", and we asked it both sides of the border. We
do not tell people, as most commercial polling evidence has done,
actually what the difference in the level of spending is because
that leads people and that makes it obvious to them what the difference
is. Now, if you do not tell people in England what the difference
is and, therefore, you get the indication of saliency, what you
find is that there are 13% more people in England who think that
Scotland gets more than its fair share than less than its fair
share, but that is all it is, and most people in England, around
45%, say that it gets pretty much its fair share. Meanwhile, in
Scotland, yes, it is true that rather more people think that Scotland
gets less than its fair share than more than its fair share, but,
intriguingly, that number is getting less over time, and people
in Scotland at least as a result of the debate seem to becoming
more aware of the fact that they appear to be relatively well
off. Finally, what do the Scots want for England? This is in a
sense partly also another way of looking at Scottish attitudes
towards independence. For the most part, as it were, the three
left-hand bars are showing you attitudes in Scotland to what they
think should be the constitutional position of England and the
intriguing thing that is seen there is that basically, if I were
simply to give you the data without telling you whether it came
from Scotland or whether it came from England, you would find
it very difficult to tell the difference, i.e. opinion in Scotland
as to whether or not England should have its own Parliament or
not or should have regional devolution is virtually identical
to opinion in England, which is a majority, just, saying no and
slightly more saying an English Parliament than regional assemblies.
The two right-hand bars is a new question we asked this time which
is asking people in Scotland what they think would be better for
England, i.e. is it better for England to be in the Union or outside
the Union, and there is a clear overwhelming majority in Scotland
that believes that England should remain within the Union and
it is in England's interests so to do.
Chairman: Thank you very much, Professor
Curtice, for your wonderful gallop through that, and we have got
that material, I think, in paper form as well, so we can take
it away and think about it, but we will be asking you some questions
later arising directly from the public evidence and it is very
helpful background. We want to work through a number of issues
now.
Q2 Julie Morgan: The first ones are
on the legislative process itself. How do you feel that the legislative
process in Westminster has changed to accommodate devolution?
Professor Hazell: I thought you
might look at me! The short answer is not enough. It has got progressively
a little bit better. We wrote a book about this which was published
in 2005 called Devolution, Law-Making and the Constitution,
but I have not done any serious research on it since, so some
of my comments may be slightly dated. Our criticism then was that
the approach was far too fragmented and that, in order for devolution
issues to be properly treated in Westminster legislation, there
should be much stronger leadership at the centre of the UK Government,
preferably coming from the Cabinet Office and, in particular,
from the Legislative Programme Committee and that the Legislative
Programme Committee should be the main gatekeeper and should deny
Cabinet consent to introducing bills unless they observed some
consistent minimum standards in their treatment of devolution
issues. We also observed that it would help greatly if more bills
were published in draft, which is a general comment on the legislative
process, and that, if the Explanatory Notes to bills contained
more information about the devolution consequences at that time,
there was a requirement only to comment on issues relating to
Wales and no comparable requirement in relation to Scotland or
Northern Ireland. Since then, in Scotland the Scottish Parliament's
Procedures Committee has conducted its own inquiry, in particular,
into the operation of the Sewel Convention, the convention whereby
the UK Government and Parliament will not legislate on devolved
matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament, and they
published a report, from memory I think, in 2005 and recommended
tightening up the procedures in the Scottish Parliament and, incidentally,
renaming the convention where they said it should be called the
Legislative Consent Convention. There was a follow-up inquiry
down here by the Scottish Affairs Select Committee which, I think,
made rather fewer recommendations about the possible changes to
the procedures here and I do not know, forgive me, whether the
Explanatory Memorandum accompanying bills now does properly flag
up devolution issues relating to Scotland, whether it does properly
tag bills which are, or might be, Sewel bills so that everyone
is properly alerted, when a bill is first introduced or very soon
after, as to whether it raises devolution issues in Scotland.
In Wales, the difficulty is a completely different one and that
is, as you will all know, that the Welsh Assembly has no primary
legislative powers and that is going gradually to change under
the procedures laid down in the Government of Wales Act 2006 where
the primary mechanism for conferring legislative power on the
Welsh Assembly will be Legislative Consent Orders, but the UK
Government does not seem inclined to follow that primary mechanism,
although it is early days, but it certainly does still confer
legislative powers by ordinary legislation and indeed by a variety
of other means, and there too there is a need for much greater
consistency.
Q3 Julie Morgan: So you do not think
that the mechanisms and the conventions are entirely appropriate
at the moment, but is there anything that actually you want to
add in terms of how they should be improved in the future?
Professor Hazell: No, I think
I have offered as much as I want to at this stage about possible
means of improvement.
Q4 Chairman: Do you think there is
actually very much awareness, and perhaps we are in a better position
to answer this than you are, amongst MPs who are not from Scotland
of the whole Sewel motion issue and the need to consider it when
looking at the legislation in the first place?
Professor Hazell: No, for an understandable
reason which in effect you have suggested the cause of, namely
that somewhere between 80 and 85% of Members of the House of Commons
represent England and English constituencies, so it is only the
Scottish or Welsh Members who might have a special interest, and
that is why, in our view, the Explanatory Notes need to flag up
quite strongly the fact that there is a devolution issue in a
bill because, otherwise, it risks remaining hidden and being ignored.
Q5 Dr Whitehead: I was going to ask
you at this point whether your proposals solve the West Lothian
question, but perhaps that would take us well into next year!
The way I would couch that instead is to ask you whether you could
give us some of your thoughts on the strengths and weaknesses
of the various options that are really current which are proposing,
so they claim, to settle the English question, such as the question
of an English Parliament, such as the question of English votes
for English laws, an English Grand Committee perhaps and regional
devolution within England. What are your views on the strengths
and weaknesses of those various proposals?
Professor Jeffery: I am trying
to pass the responsibility to Professor Hazell! The fundamental
problem surrounding all of these proposals is the relative size
of England vis-a"-vis the rest of the UK, that 80
to 85% of one state requires special consideration of how that
part of the state is governed in itself, but also, and in particular,
how it impacts on the other parts. There are, I think, serious
reservations about a number of those proposals because of the
way that they connect with the other parts of the UK or impact
on the other parts of the UK with devolved powers. It would be,
I think, historically a unique situation to see an English Parliament
with an equivalent set of powers to the Scottish Parliament, the
Northern Ireland Assembly and, in evolution, the Welsh Assembly
forming a federation or something like it when one of the units
has 80 to 85%. There is a presumption in that type of political
system that there is equality of units and I suspect that entrenching
a sense of equality across units ranging in size from less than
two million to 50-plus million would be extremely difficult.
Q6 Chairman: Texas and Rhode Island?
Professor Jeffery: There are 48
others which range in between and which qualify that difference.
We have a very small number of units and one which is so predominant
would make the operation of that kind of system very difficult.
There are a range of other issues attached to proposals on English
votes for English laws or an English Grand Committee, in a more
recent iteration, which presume that you can disentangle business
for England from business for the other parts of the UK. Now,
I will defer to Professor Hazell on this in the detail, but one
of the issues is certainly that many of the bills considered in
this House are England and Wales bills and not just England bills
and produce various consequences for Wales, some of which Professor
Hazell outlined. There are a range of other issues as well, not
least finance. The financial allocations awarded to the devolved
administrations are based on decisions on comparable spending
programmes in England and I think, if you try to establish a situation
where only MPs representing English constituencies are voting
on such matters which have such consequential effects for Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland, there is a problem, there is a kind
of disconnect between the structure and the effect which points
to the fundamental problem and that is that decisions made for
England, because of its size, inevitably impact outside of England
and I do not think any of the proposals for an England-level solution
have properly addressed that problem. It would be less of a problem
if you went towards a regional assemblies solution. I am reluctant
to go into a full discussion of that, not least given the events
in the North East in November 2004 which appear to have knocked
that off the agenda for some considerable time. I really do not
think it is an option, given the scale of rejection then and,
remember, it took quite a long time for the rejection of a devolution
scheme in Wales by roughly the same margin to return to the political
agenda.
Q7 Chairman: I think the Committee
would still be interested in your views on such a possibility,
not least because someone might want to argue that, despite it
having been rejected, it may be the only way of dealing with a
particular aspect of the problem and to have certain weaknesses
which we ought to be aware of before considering it again.
Professor Jeffery: Well, I could
refer you to the report which I helped to draft by the then Committee
on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister which held an inquiry
on the draft Regional Assemblies Bill which I think dissected
its weaknesses in some detail. Let me draw out just a couple.
One of them would certainly be the weakness of identification
of the people of England with the regional units which were put
before them, as it were, not just in the North East, but more
generally. I think there is a problem of political mobilisation
around those particular lines on the map, even in the North East,
the region of England which, alongside London perhaps, is the
one which we tend to assume has a very strong sense of regional
identity. The other issue which I think really helped essentially
to scupper those proposals was the reluctance in Whitehall ministries
to consider ceding significant powers to the proposals for English
regional assemblies, and in fact only one Whitehall ministry at
the time did consider ceding significant powers and that was the
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, but no others did. I suspect
that is both a problem in terms of selling the idea to the people
of the North East, and there was a very strong perception in the
public attitudes data that we collected that this was going to
be an expensive talking shop which would not make any difference
because it had no serious powers, but I suspect it also says something
about governing mentalities in Whitehall and those governing mentalities
have not changed in the interim and I do not foresee any particular
change in the future, and that is the conception of governing
England in a regionally disaggregated way and that conception
is not there.
Q8 Dr Whitehead: Except of course
certainly a number of other countries in Europe have simply declared
regionalism, and I have in mind France, for example. Spain did
it in rather a different way, albeit not with the same sort of
double-lock referendum and consequent local government reorganisation
that was attempted as far as the North East referendum was concerned.
In the context of what we are discussing about the English question,
is it, or would it be, your view that the issue is so unresolvable
in terms of various democratic details that perhaps a resolution
by fiat is the only way forward?
Professor Jeffery: That would
certainly remove some of the obstacles. I suspect that we have
probably established, in the very British way that we do make
constitutional convention, that we have referendums on matters
which appear to have constitutional impact, and it may be difficult
to make that argument, but, if one were to take a very dirigiste,
Jacobin approach and copied the French, I am sure it could be
done by the powers of this Parliament.
Q9 Dr Whitehead: Do you think that
the proposals that are presently current for regional select committees
have any bearing on this issue or do you think it is in any way
a pointer in a particular direction of the further consideration
of regional devolution within England?
Professor Jeffery: Although I
think that the institutional solution of moving to elected regional
assemblies would be difficult to return to in short order, I do
not think some of the problems underlying the proposals to introduce
such assemblies have gone. We were able to do some detailed public
attitudes research around the North East referendum which showed
that, whilst people were absolutely unconvinced of the model put
to them, the people of the North East were, in a clear majority,
convinced that they were politically marginalised, that they did
not have a voice at the centre in Westminster and Whitehall, but
also that they were economically marginalised vis-a"-vis
other parts of the UK, and the lack of political voice and
the sense of economic disadvantage were clearly very, very important
issues. I think you could say much the same for other parts of
England, the North West, Yorkshire and certainly parts of the
South West as well, and I suspect that that kind of issue underlines
the need for a disaggregated consideration and I think regional
select committees offer one mechanism for doing that.
Q10 Dr Whitehead: Before I ask Professor
Hazell a question about representation, could I just return briefly
to your thoughts on the fact that England has 80 to 85% of the
population of what might in the future be the federation. Does
that mean, in your view, that ideas which relate to some form
of constitutional relationship of England to other countries in
the federation are inevitably swayed by that consideration or
are there formulae which you consider could overcome that and,
if you do not, does that inevitably, therefore, seem to point,
however unpopular that may appear to be with the population, to
some form of regional devolution within England?
Professor Jeffery: I think there
are other ways of addressing the question, and let me name two.
One would be to disaggregate in the working of government, not
of Parliament, but of Whitehall ministries, England-only and UK-wide
roles much more systematically and effectively than is currently
the case and, on that basis, pursue a more systematic approach
to the relations between the governments of the UK, that is the
UK Government acting for the UK and for England and the devolved
governments. I think there is a possibility of doing that and
it may be fairly remote, but in that sense of taking the UK Government
in its UK role slightly above the territories of the UK to perform
a kind of arbitration function, and that may be one way, though
it may be very difficult to achieve, but it may be one way of
accounting for the weight of England in policy-making across the
UK. One other route would be to pursue a solution which is not
that uncommon and certainly it applies in Italy, has applied in
Spain, although less so now, and also in some other places which
have further-flung island regions, and that is to continue to
govern England as we govern England now and, as we saw from Professor
Curtice's data, that appears to be what the English think should
happen and what the Scots think should happen for England, but
then treat the devolved territories in some form of special status
which disconnects them more systematically from the work of this
House and which in that way would control some of the spillover
effects that an 80 to 85% unit has on the rest. That may not be
an obvious consideration, and very few are proposing it, not least
because it would raise concerns about the disintegration of the
UK if you disaggregate it by special status in that way, but that
may be one way.
Q11 Chairman: Is the main reason
not the disproportionate role which the representatives of these
somewhat separated territories would have in the distinct Government
of England?
Professor Jeffery: In that case,
I guess they would not have—
Q12 Chairman: Sorry?
Professor Jeffery: If you were
moving to a situation of special status, I think one of the corollaries
is that you would reduce the input of representatives from the
non-English parts in the Government of the centre, including the
Government of England.
Q13 Chairman: So you are moving towards
the English votes on English laws position in that argument.
Professor Jeffery: But with additional
consideration of the distinctive needs of the devolved territories.
This would presumably mean awarding them further powers and further
fiscal autonomy beyond the very small amounts that are currently
available. That is one way of dealing with England, and that is
more comprehensively to demarcate the Government of England from
the rest.
Q14 Dr Whitehead: Professor Hazell,
the technical issue or one of the technical issues that has been
put forward as a counter to the English votes for English laws
is, as it were, the unitary status of the UK MP, the fact that
it is difficult to have, as it were, a two-tier membership of
the House of Commons. Would that in any way be met by securing
the end of the alleged under-representation of England in the
UK Parliament, in your view?
Professor Hazell: Yes, in terms
of the electoral quotas I do not think it is quite right to say
that England is under-represented. The territory which is over-represented
is Wales. Since the changes in 2005, Scotland, which was over-represented
with 72 MPs and now has only 59, has come down into line with
the English quota, but Wales is still over-represented with 40
MPs when, if it were in line with the English quota, it should
have only about 33. So at the very least, I think, Wales should
have the same electoral quota as the other parts of the UK. However,
there is an argument for going further, the precedent being what
happened during the first Northern Ireland Parliament in Stormont
between 1922 and 1972 when, as you all know, whereas Northern
Ireland in population terms was entitled to 18 MPs, in practice
it had 12, so there was a discount of one-third to take account
of the lesser interest and workload which Members from Northern
Ireland at that time had at Westminster because of the devolved
Parliament sitting in Belfast, and similar arguments could now
be deployed. We have done a little work on the reduced workload
now of Scottish and Welsh MPs post-devolution and, no surprises,
and there is nothing wrong in this, nothing shameful, they do
on certain indicators have less work to do, and that is entirely
what one would expect. They have significantly less in terms of
incoming and outgoing correspondence, and we can show that in
terms of the volume of their postbags, faxes and emails and in
terms of the amount that they spend on postage going out, and
they have less work in terms of constituency caseload, and no
surprises there because many of the constituency cases involve
devolved issues which their constituents now take up with their
devolved representatives. I think that is an issue which arguably
should be addressed and it was not generally noticed, but it was
in fact Conservative Party policy at the last General Election
in 2005 to reduce the number of Scottish and Welsh MPs at Westminster
by around about a third. If that were done, there would be about
40 Scottish Members and there would be about 22 Welsh Members.
Q15 Chairman: Surely the issue there
is not just one of workload though, is it? I can imagine, especially
having three Welsh Members of Parliament sitting here with me,
that one could get into an argument about that! Was it not, by
those who advocate that, a desire to reduce the influence of the
representatives of areas where there is devolved power on the
Government of England? Was it not quite explicitly for that purpose?
Professor Hazell: Well, it is
a partial answer to the West Lothian question. The reason why
the West Lothian question bites sharply in political terms is
a two-fold reason, one of which is the number of representatives
that Scotland and Wales should have, but the second, because of
the way the first past the post operates, is the very heavy over-representation
of Labour in Scotland and Wales in terms of seats to votes, so
one answer to that, a generic answer which your Party, Chairman,
might support and the other parties might not, would be to introduce
a more proportional system of representation for this House. Another
answer which occurred to me at a seminar we were all attending
this morning would be to try and revive the fortunes of the Conservative
Party in Scotland and Wales and I—
Q16 Chairman: Well, we did by giving
them proportional representation!
Professor Hazell: Well, I have
a proposal in relation to party funding which is that Lord Ashcroft's
fund should be increased and it should be especially directed
towards Scotland and Wales and it should be called the "West
Lothian fund"!
Q17 Chairman: You forget the Laidlaw
element in Scotland! Professor Curtice was shaking his head at
me.
Professor Curtice: Yes, can I
just make one technical caveat about the Scottish representation
in this House. Scotland is in fact still over-represented in this
House and there are two reasons, one, arguably, legitimate and
one less legitimate. At the last Election, the average electorate
of the average Scottish constituency was around, if I remember
rightly, 65,000 and that of the average English constituency was
around 70,000. Now, part of that is to do with the Northern Isles
and the Western Isles and you may say, "Well, that's fair
enough", but, beyond that, the problem is, because the population
of England is growing more rapidly than that of Scotland, that,
therefore, during the course of any redistribution the constituencies
in Scotland are gradually getting smaller relative to those in
England. There is also, however, a bigger issue here. The Scotland
Act was, frankly, technically deficient in the way in which it
cut Scottish MPs. What it did was to introduce a once-and-for-all
cut in the number of Scottish MPs and under the rules of redistribution,
as amended, the quota in Scotland at the next redistribution will
be whatever is the electorate in Scotland at the date of the next
redistribution divided by 59. It will not be the English quota,
and, given the way in which the Scottish Boundary Commission is
now interpreting the rules for redistribution, actually you can
probably anticipate that the number of Scottish MPs will gradually
increase by one or two in the course of the next few redistributions
and, therefore, the gap will re-emerge. The Scotland Act failed
to say that the quota in Scotland should be the same as that in
England at each and every redistribution and you have to do that
to at least ensure that you catch up with what is, frankly, something
which, because of population movement, you are constantly catching
up with to reach equality.
Professor Hazell: Just to go back
to some of the matters which Professor Jeffery was raising in
answer to Dr Whitehead, as you will all know, there is no perfect
answer to the West Lothian question. The closest to a complete
answer would be to have an English Parliament. There is no significant
public demand for that, as Professor Curtice's data already have
shown, and no heavyweight politician of any party has come out
in support of an English Parliament, which is a huge contrast
to the position in relation to devolution in Scotland and Wales
10 or 15 years ago. It would, as Professor Jeffery has said, lead
to a terribly unbalanced federation of the four nations of the
UK and, finally, an English Parliament serving a population of
50 million people would, arguably, be perceived as being as remote
and distant from their concerns as the Westminster Parliament
is, so it would not necessarily be a solution in devolutionary
terms. Secondly—
Q18 Dr Whitehead: Presumably, you
could, in theory, have a combination of both, that is, an English
Parliament with devolution within that English Parliament structure?
Professor Hazell: Yes, and, if
I may, I will come on to the other two possible solutions. On
English votes on English laws, and again we have touched on this,
it seems only logical and fair, and Professor Curtice's data show
that it is quite strongly supported in England and, interestingly,
in Scotland, but there would be huge, technical difficulties in
identifying what counted as an English law for the reasons that
Professor Jeffery has referred to and I think it could draw the
Speaker into quite sensitive areas politically in giving rulings
on what was and was not an English law when clauses in bills were
being voted on, and there are very major political difficulties
which we have also touched on in terms of the effective majority
within this Parliament. I am in no doubt that over time what was
introduced as, seemingly, a modest procedural change could lead
to a Parliament within a Parliament and no one should be in any
doubt that this would be a very big change indeed with potentially
very grave, long-term consequences. Lastly, on regional government
in England which you also asked about, as Professor Jeffery has
said, following the defeat of the referendum in the North East
in 2004, that is clearly dead for the time being, but I do not
think it is necessarily dead for ever. Let us not forget that
in 1979 the people of Wales voted by four to one against the then
proposals for devolution, exactly the same ratio as defeated the
proposals for regional devolution in the North East, but just
under 20 years later the people of Wales changed their minds,
so do not write off regional government in England for ever. As
you will know very well, because I know some of your own academic
work was on this subject, there has been a form of creeping regionalism
over the years and over the decades and I suspect that it is likely
to continue and in time growing public awareness of those regional
structures and the powers which they hold over people's lives
may lead to re-emergence of the demand to democratise those regional
structures.
Q19 Chairman: Would it be fair to
say that successive governments have felt it necessary to create
regional structures for the purposes of administration, whatever
view they may have about whether there should be any democratic
element in that structure?
Professor Hazell: Yes.
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