Letter to Shropshire Star re English Parliament

THE CAMPAIGN FOR AN ENGLISH PARLIAMENT

SHROPSHIRE BRANCH Rea Bank
Hanwood
Shrewsbury
Shropshire
SY5 8LA

Telephone: 01743 860140
3rd February 2006 Email: ehigginbottom@themail.co.uk


The Editor
Shropshire Star

English Parliament

I am pleased to see John Thornicroft (Shropshire Star 2/2/06) agrees with me regarding the need to address the Barnett Formula but then raises the usual red-herring about the creation of an extra layer of bureaucracy. This was not a consideration when the Scottish Parliament, Welsh National Assembly (soon to be upgraded) and Northern Ireland Assembly were created. Why therefore should it be used to browbeat the people of England into accepting the continuance of being treated like third class citizens?

When the Scottish Parliament was created, responsibility and administration for things like health, education, transport, police and fire services were merely transferred from the UK Government to them. The same would happen for an English Parliament.

This would leave the UK Parliament only responsible for Tax raising, Foreign Affairs, Defence, some international matters and migration. On the latter point you could make a case for that to be transferred to an English Parliament too, seeing that practically all immigrants actually arrive and stay in England.

The idea that only English MPs in a UK Parliament should vote on English matters is flawed. It will rely on the Speaker declaring that the legislation relates to England only. Any good Celtic MP would surely be able to find some reason why it impacted on their homeland, regardless of how spurious. The current Speaker is Scottish, so how keen will he be to declare a Bill as English. On top of which, having so ruled, does he then have to leave the Chamber so as not to be considered an undue influence.

The current Transport Secretary is a Scottish MP (most of his work these days is to do with England) but would he be unable to introduce, explain and debate a Bill relating to England? If so how could he do his job? Or are we going to insist that all UK Government ministers are English MPs, but then how could they be seen as UK ministers.

Tony Blair is a Scot, representing an English constituency. Should he be allowed to be in the Chamber for an English only Bill? After all, he might have a conflict of interest, for what was being discussed could be disadvantageous to Scotland and/or against the UK Governments wishes?

No man can serve two masters. An MP elected to an English Parliament would be there to serve England; one elected to the UK Parliament there to serve the UK.

The Campaign for an English Parliament has no fixed idea as to the shape and size of an English Parliament. Personally I see no difficulty in transferring 500 MPs from the UK Parliament to the English Parliament, keeping say 90 MPs in a UK Parliament and thereby making 50 or so of the current number redundant.

To my mind, there are only two ways to go on Devolution. Either: scrap it (which is most unlikely) or create an equitable and coherent system for all.

Yours faithfully,

Edward Higginbottom
Shropshire Co-ordinator, Campaign for an English Parliament.