Procedure Committee
Oral evidence: English Votes for English Laws Standing Orders: Technical Review, HC 189
Wednesday 2 November 2016
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 2 November 2016.
Members present: Mr Charles Walker (Chair); Patricia Gibson; Helen Goodman; Patrick Grady; Mr Alan Mak; Mr David Nuttall.
Questions 52 - 78
I: Paul Flynn MP, representing the Shadow Leader of the House, Valerie Vaz MP.
II: Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg MP.
Witness: Paul Flynn MP.
Q52 Chair: Mr Flynn, because we have had to bring forward our meeting, there are three colleagues who will join us as we progress, but we want to crack on. You do not want to make an opening statement, do you?
Paul Flynn: Not particularly, no. I am very happy to listen and answer your questions.
Chair: As a former Shadow Leader of the House, you will know a lot about EVEL.
Paul Flynn: Yes.
Chair: I understand the Opposition does not take part in any debates that occur in the Legislative Grand Committee. Is that correct? If it is correct, why is that the case?
Paul Flynn: You are telling me something that I do not know, I am afraid. I was not aware that we had taken that stand.
Q53 Chair: Okay, let us move on. That is absolutely fine, because there have not been many minutes of debate in Legislative Grand Committees.
What is the Labour Party’s view? What is your view as a former Shadow Leader of the House on EVEL, its successes and potentially its failures?
Paul Flynn: Its successes would not take long to enumerate because there aren’t any, I do not believe. The only people who regard it as beneficial are those who do not understand what it is. It was put together in panic and self-defence after the Scottish referendum, when there was a feeling that the great sleeping giant of English nationalism needed to be tossed a few bits of raw meat in order to placate the feeling—I think this is generally a false one—that English MPs were deprived in some way because of the existence of the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Ulster Assembly.
I believe that it cannot possibly work because of its limited scope. It cannot satisfy those who are asking for an English Parliament because it has such limited effect. It is not English votes for English laws; it is an English veto that can be applied to laws introduced by others in the place. It does not have that effect.
It has the grave danger of driving a wedge between the four nations of the House, which is probably likely to accelerate the break-up of the United Kingdom. It does not help the enormous problems that we have with the constitution now and there are other things that should be tackled. The view of the Labour Party is that it should not be tackled in a piecemeal way with changes like EVEL itself and getting rid of 50 MPs. The most serious problem, I believe as a Welsh MP, is the shortage of Members in the Welsh Assembly, but it is impossible to address that problem in isolation. The Welsh Assembly has 60 Members, 30 of them from one party, so in the ruling party everyone is either a Minister, a Deputy Minister or chairs a Select Committee. There is no Opposition. There is no Second Chamber there, which again is urgently needed.
We have all kinds of problems with the bloated nature of the House of Lords and all these should be tackled by a constitutional convention. This was taken very seriously by the First Minister of the Welsh Assembly and by Ed Miliband, and it is our party policy now that we must look forward to a constitutional convention, which can tackle all these problems that we have, and counter for the fact you cannot get more people in the Welsh Assembly—more politicians; you cannot sell that to the public—unless there are some compensatory decreases elsewhere. That can be done as a package; it cannot be done in isolation.
Q54 Chair: Can I ask you a question though on EVEL? How would you give English Members of Parliament a voice on legislative matters?
Paul Flynn: This idea that they do not have a voice already! Of the elections since 1945, nine out of 10 have produced a Parliament that is the same party that England voted for—nine out of 10 of them. Less than half of the Parliaments that we have had have had parties that are voted for by Scotland, and Wales less than a quarter. In fact, the British Parliaments, the UK Parliaments, have been very much the choice of the English voters for all that period since 1945. There already is an English Parliament, but people seem to be unaware of it because it appears to be a UK Parliament.
The whole problem has been through devolution in the grants on the basis of a grudged gift. I’m afraid that, like most institutions, Parliament is power retentive and does not want to part with any power, and if it does part with power, it wants to take a bit back. We have had this process of a reluctance, particularly from the people in my party, the Welsh MPs, to give away power. The result is that we have come to a position that is unsatisfactory to almost everybody.
I believe that the advantage has been the growing status of the Welsh Parliament, its popularity. For the people of Wales, only 20% of voters wanted it in 1979; it is up to 65% in the latest poll. I believe we will see a development of the other nations of Britain, but it has to be done on a proper basis—a basis that I believe should include the Republic of Ireland in this. They should be taking part, because there has been a great change in recent years in the attitude of the Republic of Ireland towards the constitutional status of the British Isles. A great effect of this was when the Queen put on her green gown and stood in penitence in Croke Park and bowed her head and said a few words in Irish.
We cannot get rid of 200 years of history, but I believe that we could come in the end to a federal system that would recognise the Republic, Ulster, Scotland, Wales and England. I believe what Brexit is doing has accelerated the need for this process when we see now the Celtic nations objecting very strongly to what seems to be a Little Englander attitude from the present Government to dealing with Brexit.
Q55 Chair: I think Wales voted predominantly for Brexit though as a Celtic nation.
Paul Flynn: It did, yes. There was a—
Chair: But I do not want to go into Brexit.
Paul Flynn: It has changed its mind since.
Q56 Chair: Can I ask you this question on a technical point? I am going to read this—it was something I was very keen on, but I want to get it right. In our report in October when we were looking at EVEL, we recommended that the consent of MPs from England or England and Wales should be given at Report stage by double majority rather than in the separate Legislative Grand Committee stage. That stage would be reserved for resolving disagreements if they arose at Report stage. It is mind-numbingly complicated, EVEL. It is how many Standing Orders? Whisper in my ear, Mr Clerk. Fifteen Standing Orders over many pages. In fact, it counts for a sixth of the pages now of the Standing Orders we have in place and that is a lot. I want you to answer the question on how we could do it better at Report stage.
Paul Flynn: I think it is reminiscent of a chicken shed someone might build in the garden. You take a few bits of wood here, then some asbestos that might be lying around and a couple of tarpaulin sheets and you build this chicken house. The roof leaks and the chickens escape. The result is dreadful, in that it is immensely complicated. I think Sir William McKay said that it was like a dense forest in which he would get lost and we have seen the flow charts that came out. The whole point of improving legislation is to make it simpler, to make it more coherent and this has not; it has made it denser. Members of this Committee have said that they find it opaque and almost impossible to understand.
I believe it is a succubus that we have created on the body politic that we should get rid of as soon as possible because it is not serving any useful purpose. It does not satisfy the English nationalists and it does not improve legislation here, but it gives an appearance of English power when that is not the result. It annoys the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland MPs for being excluded and being treated as second-class MPs.
Q57 Chair: In a nutshell, you are not too keen on EVEL?
Paul Flynn: You have that impression?
Chair: I have that, yes.
Paul Flynn: It is the most appropriate acronym that we could possibly have.
Chair: I want to move on to Estimates with you, so I am going to give five more minutes on EVEL because I do not think there is much more to be added, given your position, Mr Flynn. Does anybody else want to come in on EVEL? Does anybody want to continue with EVEL?
Q58 Patrick Grady: Is there anything that could be done in the short term, do you think, that would make it more tolerable or reasonable? Does it have to apply to every single piece of legislation, for example? I think sometimes we have discussed with witnesses and among ourselves that the Government could look at non-controversial or reasonably non-controversial legislation and say, “We are just not going to apply the procedure to this.”
Paul Flynn: It is such a rare event when England and the MPs representing English constituencies do not get their own way here. I could only find one example when it happened, which was under Harold Wilson, with the renationalisation of the steel industry. It is extremely rare when it does not happen, so it is the perception of the English MPs that there is some disadvantage when there is not. They are at an enormous advantage in this.
It has ended up pleasing nobody. I saw an e-mail from the English Parliament party this morning listing the ways that they disagreed with it. I think it was during that panic period at the end of the Scottish referendum when the Vow came out. It was terrifying to the English-centric establishment that there was going to be a vote for independence in Scotland. The Vow appeared—again framed in haste—and then the statement was made after the result came out. This is not the way to make sensible legislation. It is a way to create ways that distort our House and waste time, annoy the great mass of MPs and achieve nothing.
Chair: I am going to take one more question on EVEL from Helen.
Q59 Helen Goodman: Mr Flynn, our colleague, Susan Elan Jones, has suggested that in the Welsh Grand Committee the Welsh language can be used. Do you agree with that?
Paul Flynn: I represent a group called the Welsh Parliamentary Party that was formed in 1888. It meets irregularly, but the last couple of times we met were about this subject, when John Major decided to bring the Welsh Grand Committee into Wales. I summoned the party, which is all Welsh MPs, to meet, and we decided that we have this injustice of monolingualism in this Parliament that the ancient language of Wales has the same status in this House—in the only Parliament we had at the time—as spitting on the carpet. It is disorderly behaviour.
It is unnecessary and many Parliaments cope with several languages. Yes, it should be used; it should be used in all forms of life. If you are going to keep a language alive and vigorous, it has to be used on “Peppa Pig” and in Parliament and I believe that it should be used here. The Welsh Assembly has used it with great success. While it would not be reasonable to suggest it could be used just when anyone felt like it in the Chamber, I think it could be started up easily with Select Committees and the other Welsh committees. A translation crew can be brought in, there would be no problems.
Q60 Helen Goodman: You are suggesting that we would have simultaneous translation as, for example, we do in meetings in Brussels?
Paul Flynn: Yes, indeed. There is a convention—I was in Paris last week at a meeting of a monitoring committee on this—the framework convention as a key to managing diversity through minority rights. Very few understand. I have spoken in Welsh at the Council of Europe and people speak at the European Parliament in Welsh without difficulty because the translation can be provided. It does seem extraordinary that we have gone all this time without Welsh getting the status that it deserves.
Q61 Chair: Now I want to talk about Estimates because our colleague—not in my party—the Chairman of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee, went to an Estimates debate and tried to talk about Estimates and was ruled out of order. Do you think that the way we discuss Estimates in this House—in fact, we do not discuss Estimates, but if we did—is fit for purpose?
Paul Flynn: No, it is not. This involved the Barnett consequentials and the Scottish National Party Members. I think it is absolutely right because it applies to others as well. As a Parliament, we do bother ourselves about matters that are relatively minor and get very excited about this, but this all-important issue of Estimates, MPs are excluded from in certain circumstances. It is certainly wrong when we look at the links that there are between what decisions are taken overall on the United Kingdom, or possibly just for England, when they do have consequences elsewhere and we should do it in a better way.
Q62 Chair: One of the things we are looking at is improving the quality of financial information made available to Members of Parliament. When I say “quality”, presented in a way that people without accountancy degrees or City backgrounds can penetrate it, interrogate it and understand it.
The other thing we are seeking to do is to go to the Liaison Committee and exchange three Backbench Business days with the Liaison Committee for their two Estimate days and one supplementary day, so at least—even if it is just an experiment for maybe a couple of years—we can try to talk about Estimates for three afternoons, or mornings and afternoons, a year in the main Chamber. How do you feel about that revolutionary idea?
Paul Flynn: Mildly enthusiastic. I do praise your ambition on this, of getting there, but I think it is an issue like many in the House, and we look forward to this Committee turning this place into an institution that is sensible in so many other ways as well. I think Professor Gallagher gave evidence to you that suggested this was not a major problem, but I believe it is as far as non-English MPs are concerned. The Barnett consequentials have become increasingly significant to the funding of projects in Wales and again it needs the attention of Scottish and Welsh and Irish MPs.
Chair: Would anybody like to follow up on Estimates?
Q63 Patrick Grady: Yes. The particular issue, as you touched on at the start, and one of the reasons we are looking into this is because we were told during the EVEL process that this is how we would have our say, but it is increasingly proving that indeed it is not the case. I wonder if you have any views on that—to tie the two lines of questioning that we have had—or if you can see any way in which Members from Scotland, or indeed Wales or Northern Ireland, depending on the issue, can have an influence over the Barnett consequentials and the budgetary implications of policy decisions that are taken under EVEL procedures.
Paul Flynn: There is certainly a serious issue involved here. We know the problem of the feeling of resentment among English, Welsh and Scottish MPs anyway to the whole existence of EVEL. This is an extension and result of it, but we have a change and alleged reform in Parliament that has a very limited life, I believe now, because it has not been used to that extent. It is excessively complicated. It is almost entirely friendless, EVEL, as a concept and we should get rid of it one way or the other.
We do need to look at the whole picture. It comes back to the position of my party. We do need a major constitutional convention because there are a great deal of problems coming down the line. There is deep unhappiness in the House of Lords, which I think operates brilliantly as an institution, as a Second Chamber. Their debates are of far higher quality than ours usually and they are much more sensible in the way they deal with the laws there, but there is deep unhappiness about the numbers which mean that they are limited to speaking in perhaps a minute nowadays. There is great resentment there. There have to be profound changes in the structure of the House. This Committee will lead, I am sure, but it has to be done on a basis of a major balanced reform, not on piecemeal changes.
Q64 Chair: You would like to see a constitutional committee formed?
Paul Flynn: I would like to, yes, based on the great success of the House of Lords Constitutional Committee now. I believe that we could do that permanently—have an overriding committee looking at this—because the constitution is in a mess. There was a great deal done by the Committee chaired by Graham Allen, which sadly no longer exists. It produced many splendid documents. I served on that Committee during its entire life and I regret its disappearance. We came up with a great deal more problems than answers, and I believe that job has to be done if we are going to make this place a rational, transparent institution that makes sense not only to ourselves, which it often does not, but to the public outside.
Q65 Chair: Can I just conclude, going back to Welsh language, just to be clear, as far as Welsh language and the Welsh Grand Committee is concerned, when that Welsh Grand Committee is meeting in the Palace of Westminster, House of Commons, you believe that you should be able to speak in Welsh and there should be a translation service?
Paul Flynn: Yes, that is right, and the Welsh Affairs Select Committee as well. The Welsh Affairs Select Committee I think has got round this, but it is just the general idea. They have a similar problem in France, where the constitution says you cannot use any language but French, so it is unfair to Breton and Provençal and the other languages. We are the least welcoming of bilingualism or multilingualism of almost any Parliament in the world.
Chair: Mr Flynn, thank you very much. I will say, as someone who has known you for a number of years and served with you on the Public Administration Select Committee, you are a truly great parliamentarian. You are clearly ageing backwards, and I was absolutely delighted to see you appear as Shadow Leader of the House. I know it was only a cameo appearance, but hey, you made it—many congratulations—to that Front Bench.
Paul Flynn: I am told that the Leader of my party was so pleased by the success of providing opportunities for geriatrics on the Front Bench he decided to open up new opportunities on the Back Bench. I have benefited from both. Thank you very much.
Chair: Thank you very much, Mr Flynn.
Examination of witness
Witness: Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg MP.
Q66 Chair: We now have Mr Rees-Mogg, a former illustrious member of this Committee, who has gone on to ply his trade on the Treasury Select Committee in this Parliament. You know there is always a place here for you if you choose to come back, Jacob. Unfortunately, our two Committees meet at the same time on most occasions, which makes it difficult. Jacob, I am not going to go through the whole preamble. You heard the questions I asked of Mr Flynn.
EVEL, what is working; what is not working? It is fiercely complicated and I think that is accepted by most people. I have talked to many Clerks who are still struggling to get their head around this. I do not want to put words into your mouth: please tell the Committee your view.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: Thank you very much. Thank you for your kind introduction. I miss this Committee greatly. I think it is one of the most interesting Committees in the House.
I think if you look back to your report from just over a year ago, there were some things you were worried about that are working and other things that you highlighted that are not working. The Speaker certification has not been a problem, I think that is fine and has not brought the Speaker into party political controversy.
There are two paragraphs I wanted to highlight, if I may: paragraph 70 and paragraph 88. Paragraph 70 shows all the potential stages that you could have. There are nine stages in EVEL. This is, to my mind, absurd over-engineering and a real problem in getting anybody to understand it. Paragraph 88, which slightly ties in with this, because the procedures are so complex you whiz through them without stopping at any of the stages, which just looks faintly ridiculous. We should not have Standing Orders that do not have an important stage that we need to use. If we suspend for a minute, we come back, we pretend to have a committee, which then disappears and then we vote. It makes our procedures look impenetrable but also as if we are slightly playing games. I think the criticisms or the concerns you raised a year ago have been borne out and that the aim must be for simplicity.
I am very sympathetic to what you say about moving it to the Report stage or possibly even further. There is one thing that is worth noting. The Committee stage on a Bill that has been decided to be entirely English is in fact completely irrelevant, because the Committee will be made up—and I believe I have checked this correctly, but it is so complicated that I hope you will forgive me if I make any errors—in the normal way that Committees are made up so that the Government will have a majority on the Committee. If you have an all-English Bill, at the Committee stage, yes, it will have all-English MPs, but the Government will have a majority that comes from having non-English MPs if you are in that circumstance where a Government’s overall majority is dependent on Scottish and Welsh MPs. Therefore the business of that Committee will get through in the ordinary way of all Committees and having all-English MPs is irrelevant. It makes no difference and therefore I would scrap that.
I would develop instead a convention that on all-English Bills you would have English MPs, which it would be sensible to observe, but would recognise that still the Government would have a majority and would get its way on that Committee. Then I think if you simply operate by convention, which is a lot of what the House does, a Committee of Selection could purely as a matter of routine tend to pick English MPs. If you look at the vote we had in the House on Monday night, we are quite good at voting through the conventions even when there may be some discomfort in doing so. Therefore, that convention I think would reduce the 15 Standing Orders.
Then I think you could look at the Sewel convention and how we work on legislative consents from the Scottish Parliament, which became a matter of considerable interest to me over the last few days.
Chair: We understand.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: That is very straightforward. The Sewel convention is that the Scottish Parliament writes out a minute from a meeting that it has had setting out where it is giving consent for powers that may or may not be devolved to it to be considered by this House, and then we proceed in accordance with that. I think if you moved to a Legislative Consent Motion from the English Grand Committee, but immediately prior to Third Reading say, “We give our consent to all that has been in this Bill or what is in this Bill with the exception of—” and then you allow Speaker certification beforehand to decide what is English only or what is English and Welsh or what is English, Welsh and Northern Irish et cetera, then that consent could be given or refused.
You then have to have a similar thing, regrettably—I wondered if you could get rid of this, but I do not see how you can—on Lords amendments and amendments in lieu. I think it could be done relatively straightforwardly, but you might on Lords amendments and amendments in lieu simply want to have it if a motion is put forward in the way—not a motion, but the Speaker would be able to proceed with business unless one Member objected, as with a Minister both winding up and beginning a debate. If a single Member objects to “by leave of the House”, the leave of the House is not given and then you would move to the Committee, so that you would have a process of not doing it that was very, very straightforward, but that if one English MP wanted this Committee to sit, you would not rule out the opportunity.
I would do that on Lords amendments and Lords amendments in lieu, because most of the time you would find Lords amendments were not going to be controversial. You could probably get down to two or three Standing Orders on this basis rather than 15, and you might get to a situation where people had a faint idea of what was going on. I confess that prior to preparing for this meeting I was very vague on precisely what was going on. I like to pretend that I know about these sorts of things, so I am very grateful you invited me, because I did my homework.
Chair: You have given a stunning tour de force there. They are mind-bendingly difficult and you seem to have analysed them particularly well.
Q67 Patrick Grady: I wonder if you could clarify a little bit your suggestion of how an English legislative consent motion, or Sewel Motion, as we have had in the Scottish Parliament, would work and how that would be different from what happens just now. My understanding of what happens just now is the Legislative Grand Committee gives its consent or otherwise to the whole Bill or parts of the Bill, so how would granting a legislative consent motion be different from just approving the Bill?
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: It would basically be a simplification rather than getting rid of everything that is there. Currently the Speaker is certifying at Second Reading, then you are having a certification at Report stage, and then you are having—it is the constant need for recertification, whereas I think if you just brought it in immediately prior to Third Reading when no further amendments were available in the House of Commons, that would be sensible. I would simply scrap all the Standing Orders on the Committee stage because they are completely irrelevant.
Q68 Patrick Grady: We have argued that this is creating a de facto English Parliament at the Grand Committee stage. That is what we have said, pejoratively or otherwise. This is now the English Parliament, as we say, when the Grand Committee is formed. Do you think that perception might be heightened if we went down that line? We, as Scottish National MPs, do not necessarily have any problem with that, but do you think that perception might be heightened if you gave an English Grand Committee rather than the Legislative Grand Committee power to move something that is the equivalent of what the Scottish Parliament does in terms of legislative consent or Sewel motions?
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: I think it is what is already done, so I do not think there would be any worse presentation than there currently is. My personal view is that I am not in favour of an English Parliament; I am in favour of the United Kingdom Parliament. If it had been up to me, though this is not really what you are interested in, I would never have gone down the EVEL route because I think the devolutionary imbalance is a price worth paying from an English point of view for the United Kingdom. It is a price I am more than happy to pay and I think the same applies to the Barnett formula. I agree with a lot of what Mr Flynn was saying. There is very little narrow English nationalism in this country that wants precise parity on every aspect of what happens in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There is a little bit of it, but it is not my view of the country. I therefore felt that EVEL was answering a problem that, as indeed Mr Flynn said, was heightened around the time of the Vow, but six months later most people had forgotten about. There is a very small but slightly noisy group who are obsessed by it.
Q69 Helen Goodman: My question flows from what you have just said. I was going to ask you, do you think the public are conscious of this change and do you think that those people who did feel some English nationalist resentment against the Celts are satisfied by it?
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: I think they have not noticed the change. I think they will not notice the change when there is a Government that has a majority in England as well as a majority in the rest of the United Kingdom, because the circumstances where the English Committee or whatever it is called votes down a part of UK legislation simply will not arise. It only becomes important if the Conservatives are not in office basically, because we are only ever in office with a majority in England, and the English start blocking things at the legislative consent stage. Then people might notice, but the risk of that—which is why I am very glad it was done through Standing Orders rather than legislation—is that you simply make government impossible because so much of what a Government do has a specific English effect. Therefore you just override the Standing Orders, which is why it is not—to answer Mr Grady’s question—an English Parliament because the whole Parliament can just say, “We are suspending these Standing Orders for the next five years.”
Q70 Helen Goodman: You think the public have not noticed it, but you are not clear on whether or not they are satisfied by it?
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: I think it is too early to tell whether it satisfies those who mind because so far it has not had any effect.
Helen Goodman: That is not what we hear from Scottish and Welsh colleagues, but I know what you mean. They think it has had effects.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: Yes. I do not think there is any legislation that has become legislation that would not have become legislation had these processes not been around, because the double majority, that is only a veto. It is not a power to insist. That is very important. It makes it much more acceptable from my point of view that it is only a veto.
Q71 Patricia Gibson: You started in your comments talking about some of the concerns that were raised initially about the Speaker potentially being put in a difficult position have not been realised. Do you accept that in the future that is an issue that we may have to grapple with?
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: I think the concerns over the Speaker taking things on is something that one tends to raise—and I am giving a hostage to fortune here because I may raise it in future—when one is broadly opposed to something and thinks it is a good tool to use to oppose something at an early stage. I think there is sufficient confidence across the House in the Speaker’s impartiality and the authority of the office of Speaker that we accept his decisions even when they go against us. I think you see that in the wide range of his day-to-day rulings, that people just routinely accept his responses to points of order and so on because it is recognised that he is impartial. I do not think this certification makes it more or less difficult. I think it is unlikely to become more or less difficult.
Q72 Patricia Gibson: Could I follow up on that with something a wee bit different? There appears to be very little support for these proposals outside the Conservative Party, and that has been noted by a number of commentators. Because this is regarded as a constitutional settlement that will not endure, do you think it is perceived outside this place as something that is party politically motivated?
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: Yes, I think it is party politically motivated; most things are. I think this is and most constitutional reforms are party politically motivated. I happen to be very cautious about it. I do not think it has universal support within the Conservative Party, because I think a lot of Conservatives are Unionists as much as they are Conservatives and that this is not necessarily a very unionist proposal or activity. It would have its greatest effect, to be realistic about it, if the last election had been lost by the Conservatives and there was a Labour/SNP coalition, at which point its whole purpose would be to bung up the Government in England or to require a political price to be paid to suspend the Standing Orders. That is what would happen if the next election came up with that result or a Labour majority dependent on Scottish Labour MPs.
Q73 Helen Goodman: Absolutely, that is spot on, isn’t it? Either we have a Tory Government, in which case, as you have been describing, it does not have any impact on the form of legislation, or we do not, in which case you have other parties who command a majority in the Chamber who repeal the Standing Orders so it does not happen at all. The question as to how much of a political price would be paid is a matter of speculation. Would you agree with that?
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: I agree with you entirely. I think in the circumstances of 1997 it would have been amazingly easy to repeal the Standing Orders without anybody noticing or minding at all. In the political circumstances of 2015 it would have been a high political price to repeal the Standing Orders. It would at any future election vary between those two extremes, I guess.
Q74 Mr David Nuttall: Further along those lines, it seems to me that the whole EVEL Standing Orders were introduced earlier in this present Parliament. The origins of them being introduced can be traced back to the 1997-2010 period, when there was a sense of grievance that laws were being passed on the back of Scottish Labour MPs imposing legislation on England. The Conservative Party said, “When we get into power we are going to change this so there will be English votes for English laws.” That is not what we have delivered. It is English veto. I think you accept that that is what it is. In some ways, from a Unionist point of view, that has made it more acceptable to you, for one. Consequently, we are now in a Parliament where in the 2010-15 Parliament the Conservative Party were not able to do anything because of the coalition on this particular issue, or they set up an inquiry and all these sorts of things, but nothing was done. Then after 2015, because it was in the manifesto that something would happen, am I right in thinking that we are only in this position because we need to tick that box to say, “It was in the manifesto and now we have done it”?
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: I was never too taken with the argument that between 1997 and 2010 lots of things were done to England on the back of Scottish votes.
Mr David Nuttall: One or two Bills were carried on that basis.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: Yes, but between 1979 and 1997, as our friends from the SNP will happily point out to us, there was never a majority of Scottish MPs for the Conservatives, so all the legislation that we put forward that affected Scotland was done on the back of English and Welsh MPs. Either we are one country or we are not, and in my view we are. I do not deny there is a very respectable argument that we are separate countries, but I think we are one country. If we are one country, you accept the democratic result of an election across the country.
However, I also agree with you that it has been done because it was in the manifesto and a box is being ticked. We discovered recently how some promises get put into manifestos—there is a blank in the grid and therefore something has to be thought up. I do not think this was quite in that category. I think immediately after the Vow was made there was a concern that this issue might become more important and in the end it did not.
Q75 Patrick Grady: Towards the end of the questions we had with Mr Flynn, we were looking at the confluence of EVEL and the Estimates process. I know we have not said to you we wanted to speak about Estimates in particular, but I wonder if you do have any reflections. We were consistently told that Estimates were how we, as Scottish MPs, would be able to deal with the lack of Barnett consequentials within the EVEL procedure, so I was wondering if you have any observations or views on to what extent that has proven to be the case or otherwise.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: Very clearly it has not. I think that looking at Estimate days is a really important task for this Committee, because it is one of the most important things Parliament ought to do. The raising and expenditure of money is absolutely at the heart of what a Parliament does. We are quite good on the Finance Bill—quite good—but on Estimate days nobody knows what is going on. We never seem to end up with a vote. I do not quite understand why the Opposition never really seems to oppose Estimates; they just go through. Lots of people are not here, the Chamber is empty, and yet it is absolutely at the heart of a Parliament’s function. I think to get that back to being really, really important would be a great achievement for this Committee.
Can I say one thing, slightly taking the initial questions onwards? I think the Sewel convention ought to become a parliamentary one rather than a governmental one. Currently the Sewel convention is dealt with by Ministers as they bring forward legislation, and I think it should be this Parliament saying to the Scottish Parliament, “Are you happy that we are treading on your territory?” It should be an interparliamentary discussion, not the Government asking on behalf of Parliament. I think this would be a good balancing with EVEL, which is obviously a parliamentary issue. It would be best done through our Standing Orders and it would mean that there would be a similar procedure and a formalisation rather than just accepting Government assurances, which I think as a Parliament we should always be a bit nervous of doing.
Q76 Patrick Grady: Is there not something in the latest Scotland Act that formalised the Sewel process?
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: The Scotland Act refers to what will normally be done, I think, rather than setting out precisely how it should be done. I think it would be a good idea if our Standing Orders set out precisely how it should be done. Otherwise, though I always quite enjoy this, we get into the situation of it being arguable and that allows people like me to make lengthy speeches and points of order on whether or not things are being done properly. It would be much simpler and better if it were a clear parliamentary procedure. I think this ties in with EVEL and therefore may be something your report could look into.
Chair: I think it is something we want to look at. One last question and then we will let our witness get on.
Q77 Helen Goodman: You are right, there is an imbalance between the thoroughness with which we look at tax-raising and the absence of the way we look at spending. This is always particularly evident in the way we have five days of debate after the Budget speech and we have three hours of questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he gives his autumn statement and a great frustration that there is no follow-through. Would it be sensible if we were to change the use of Estimates days to timetable one or two of those immediately after the autumn statement, while people do have in their minds what the overall pattern of public spending plans would be?
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: That sounds extremely sensible. I think Governments like to use the parliamentary timetable to use up a lot of time with as little scrutiny as possible. The job of the Procedure Committee is to try to grab that time back to use it for scrutiny. If you look at how time is currently being allocated and some of the things that we are debating, when the Government is doing really important things that we are not debating, anything that focuses the mind and focuses the use of time is very valuable.
Q78 Chair: To conclude, if we do improve the Estimates process or try to improve it in a small way, it will be incumbent on the House, our colleagues, to rise to the challenge as well, will it not?
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: I think they do. If you look at the Budget days and the five days of debate, I do not think the Whips are going around desperately saying, “Please will you speak on the Budget debate?” I think we are all putting in and you are down to five-minute speeches on the last day. If you had three days of debate after the autumn statement on expenditure, we all have issues in our constituencies that we would probably like to raise. I think it would be absolutely full.
Chair: Brilliant. Can I thank Mr Rees-Mogg for coming here? It is nice to hear his Rolls-Royce mind going through the gears. I do not think we ever got it out of fourth, he did not need to go to fifth, but it was a fantastic tour de force. Thank you very much for giving up your time today to come and give us the benefit of your wisdom.
Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg: Thank you for inviting me.