It’s not always easy to work out what is or is not an English vote.
So it became apparent surprisingly quickly that the Union side of the Scottish referendum had no Plan A for if they won. The panicked offer given to Scotland has stirred up the demand for EVEL, English Votes for English Laws. EVEL is interesting because it highlights the problems there are with the union. The basic demand, for English representation for English-only affairs, is utterly reasonable. The problem is that no one really knows what the relationship is between England the UK.
There are a few problems with EVEL in practice. For a start it might be very difficult to find an English-only law for EVEL to apply. Roughly, funding for the Celtic nations in the UK is percentage of funding for England. If £100 is spent in England then Scotland is allocated £6, Wales and Northern Ireland £3 each, as a very rough approximation. That money is a grant from Westminster and the devolved parliaments decide how to spend it. But for England the budget for a service is allocated directly from Westminster. So here’s a hypothetical problem:
The government decides to abolish direct public funding for the NHS in England. Instead they set up a scheme for personal insurance with some tax credits for the poor, so NHS funding is cut from the public purse. Health is devolved so Celtic nations make their own arrangements, and can continue to publicly fund the service if they wish. Should Celtic MPs get a vote?
From one point of view this is an English matter, so EVEL applies. However, if it passes, there will be a massive cut to the Celtic nations’ budgets, because if England’s funding drops, so too does theirs. BUT it doesn’t follow that it’s their NHS that gets cut. The devolved governments could save their NHS at the expense of something else, like education.
This is an extreme example, but bear in mind England has defunded higher education study, which the Celtic nations have tried to preserve to some extent. It’s difficult to find a purely English issue that won’t have financial impact elsewhere because England hasn’t been uncoupled from the UK the way other nations have.
Another issue is that the current system embeds some English privilege and EVEL will fossilise it. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Minister for England, is in the UK cabinet. The Health Ministers for the other nations are not. So England gets to influence UK policy in a way that is shut to the rest of the nation. The same for education. The parochial education minister Michael Gove was inflicted on the rest of the nation on a regular basis, and steered national policy, despite speaking only for England.
Also if we have EVEL then why not WVWL, Welsh Votes for Welsh Laws? A lot of Welsh administration is from Westminster. For example S4C, the Welsh Channel 4, has been gutted from Westminster. Should English MPs have been barred from voting on that? Should votes on Justice and Tax for purely Welsh issues be limited to Welsh MPs?
Depending on how it is implemented EVEL is either so diluted that it makes a mockery of English representation or else increases the democratic deficit in the devolved nations. There are alternatives.
John Redwood has proposed an English Parliament. I’m surprised it’s suggested by someone inside Westminster, because an English Parliament would be a headache. It would represent 85% of the UK population and the relationship would be similar to that between Russia and the USSR. It’s easy to imagine a Labour government in one parliament at loggerheads with a Conservative parliament in the other. However, given the Conservative habit of infighting, even a Conservative PM and Tory First Minister could get into a major spat.
The other solution, to balance England against the other nations would be to divide it into nine or so regions of about 6 million people each. Might seem tidier, but maybe even less workable than an English Parliament. It wouldn’t make sense to divide London, so you’d have a massive urban state, much wealthier than the rest. A London first minister could cause almost as many problems for a PM as an English one, given the lack of interest from Westminster in places beyond the M25.
It would also be a thankless task to divide the regions. Even what look like easy divisions Lancashire & NorthWest and Yorkshire would be controversial because do you use the current division, or the historic division? There are a lot people unhappy that the modern border does not follow the traditional one. Does Lincolnshire belong with a Yorkshire authority, a Midland Assembly, or a Fenland parliament? Opinion in the county might vary depending on where you ask the question.
Even then there would be a divide between urban and rural needs in most of the regions. Birmingham might be geographically closer to rural Shropshire than London, but maybe not so much more culturally.
The killer would be when the Daily Mail discovers the effect being on the wrong side of a regional border has on house prices.
Sorting out English devolution is not a simple question. The answer you get will depend to a large extent on what you think English devolution is for. Is it about bringing democracy closer, or is it just a matter of keeping up with the McJoneses? This is something that Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have been discussing for 15 years. It’s unreasonable to expect parties that have been committed to centralising power to develop a coherent policy for devolution in a few days.
EVEL isn’t an intentional slight any of the nations. It’s simply a symptom of an establishment that has ignored the world beyond Westminster and now is exposed as being unprepared for events that happened decades ago.