A start on a serious problem

I was interested to see Ken Clarke's proposals for reform of the current unfair treatment of England as a result of Labour's badly thought through devolution acts.

Both Ken and Malcolm Rifkind have made some interesting points - basically they propose that where legislation only affects England (or only affects England and Wales), a majority for the details will be required among MPs representing constituencies in England (or English and Wales) as well as a majority for the whole package being required for the Commons as a whole. (Rifkin wants a majority among MPs representing England and the UK for the legislation as a whole.)

I suspect there may be a number of comments from supporters of an English parliament who think these proposals do not go nearly far enough. Let me be completely honest - I think those who believe this will be able to produce some cogent arguments, for which I have a lot of sympathy, to back up their case.

We need to produce a system which is fair to England, as the present arrangement clearly is not, without either creating lots more politicians or appearing to bash Scotland and Wales. (Actually it is Scots and Welsh politicians and the Labour party, NOT the people of Scotland and Wales, who benefit unfairly at the expense of democracy for the people of England, but that point is too subtle to easily get through in the mass media. Not that this is a reason not to try.)

The Clarke and Rifkind ideas will not satisfy everyone, but they are at least a start on addressing the problem.

Comments

Anonymous said…
As the Conservatives now have a majority of councils in England, can they not abolish un elected regional assemblies or do we have to wait for a conservative government to do it?
As I understand it some conservative councils in the past have been overuled by NL majorities in councils on the abolition of RA's. England is technically divided whilst these assemblies exist and I think it would be a show of good faith by the conservatives to abolish them now.
1:30 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
Very interesting idea. When the present regional assemblies existed informally but did not yet have a statutory basis, the council of which I was then a member voted not to take part in EERA. Unfortunately when the regional assemblies were then given statutory powers over things like Regional Spacial Stategies, this became impractical.

Labour have themselves been talking about scrapping the regional assemblies. I suspect that in practice it will take a Conservative government, but if we can do it before that, we should.
7:43 pm
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