WE HAVE never been blind to the West Lothian Question, famously enunciated by Tam Dalyell.
He was, as always in his rigorous, cantankerous way, right. Why should a Scottish MP vote on matters affecting England, when English MPs, post-devolution would be unable to vote on Scottish matters? But Mr Dalyell was more right in theory than in practice, and his diktat would really only have applied between two equal polities and within some clean settlement of powers between Westminster and Holyrood.
Even Mr Dalyell would know that this does not and never has applied. Virtually no Holyrood votes have an impact on Westminster, certainly not on finances and only occasionally in terms of political resentment, such as in the case of personal care or university tuition fees. But every single vote on a spending issue at Westminster has a direct financial bearing on Holyrood because of the nature of the funding formula and that is about to be tweaked but not eradicated.
So research showing that in the last 13 years the impact of Scottish MPs would have made a difference in just 22, or 0.6 per cent of the cases, does not surprise us. English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) has always been a constitutionally recondite issue, full of nuance and complexity, not given to black and white pronouncements.
But that is what we got on the steps of Downing Street on the morning of September 19 when, after almost a year in the embrace of his cross-party Unionist allies, David Cameron decided to shun their advice and turn EVEL into the price to be paid for the "Vow", no matter the lack of actual linkage between these issues. Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown are said to have tried to counsel against this manoeuvre but, by then, they were part of the problem.
EVEL was a crude prospectus on the morning of September 19, hugely damaging to the intelligent political management of the referendum aftermath, and it remains wrong-headed now. By yoking the issue to Holyrood powers it asks questions that beg inevitably wrong answers, pulling in allies such as Ukip and Tory backwoodsmen who will never be satisfied.
In this regard, the issue is like Europe, where nothing the Prime Minister can ever do can appease the increasingly baying mob. Nothing, in terms of stripping Scottish MPs of their power, will ever satisfy that contingent, which is almost amusing as it puts them ultimately in the same position as the SNP who, when asked for the correct number of Scottish MPs at Westminster, can say with hand on heart, none.
EVEL should be a smaller issue within the much wider debate about much-needed Westminster reform; about English regional devolution; about what to do with the absurd topsy-like unelected Upper Chamber; about voting systems; and about the "dark star" effect of London's massively unbalancing effect on these islands.
The Mother of Parliaments needs to take a good look at herself but the longer Tory ministers, pandering to their backbenchers, dwell on something that has affected 0.6 per cent of their votes in recent years, attacking Scottish MPs and obsessing about the aftermath of the referendum, the less chance there is that they will devote attention to the real reforms needed at Westminster.
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