The occasion gave Mr Wishart the opportunity to describe the new procedure colourfully as “this absolute mess, a bourach guddle” which could best be solved by having a separate English Parliament within a federal UK.
But supporters and opponents alike referred to the day as constitutionally historic. Housing Minister Brandon Lewis opened by declaring: “As we all know, the history of this House goes before us, so it is quite rare to see a true first. I am very proud to be the first Minister to stand at the Dispatch Box to address the very first Legislative Grand Commitees for England and Wales and for England only.”
He added: “My department is responsible for local authorities, communities and housing associations in England. In many ways, we are the Department for England. It is therefore fiting that the majority of the clauses in Mr Speaker’s certification before this very first Commitee relate to England only.”
Totnes Conservative MP Dr Sarah Wollaston said that to her Devon constituents it felt like “an historic injustice had been righted.”
Mr Wishart’s response was caustic: “So, this is what an English Parliament looks like. It looks prety much like the unitary UK Parliament to me. This is a remarkable day. It is worth noting how significant and historic this is. “For the first time in the history of this House and this Parliament, Members of Parliament will be banned from participating in Divisions of this House, based on nationality and the geographic location of their constituencies.
“What it feels like to me is that we are on the wrong side of a banishment and a bar that denies us our right as legitimately elected Members of Parliament from participating fully in the House today.”
Alberto Costa, the South Leicestershire Tory, said Mr Wishart’s constituents in Perth and North Perthshire would “surely
“As we all know, the history of this House goes before us, so it is quite rare to see a true first. I am very proud to be the first Minister to stand at the Dispatch Box to address the very first Legislative Grand Committees for England and Wales and for England only.”
Housing Minister Brandon Lewis 6 February 2016
: Brandon Lewis Housing Minister
Peter Wishart MP
see this as a very fair motion to safeguard the United Kingdom by having a fair devolution setlement.”
He responded: “If he thinks that going down such a route as this, whereby Scotish Members of Parliament are banned from voting on certain issues that are considered English only, will save his Union, he has another think coming. Nothing has infuriated the Scotish people more than the measures on English votes for English laws.”
Given that Mr Wishart had once declared that Scots couldn’t have cared less about the issue, the outrage sounded contrived. The irony was that SNP members would not have participated in any of the votes on this Bill anyway. Although Shelter Scotland had expressed concerns about potential knock-on effects of the Bill the Nationalists had decided it was basically English legislation on which they would recuse themselves from speaking or voting, as has been their usual practice.
The same would happen later in the month when it came to the Social Care Bill. Their objection was not to the content of the Bill, or their own convention not to participate, but to the forcible creation of two tiers of membership of the House of Commons, some of them barred from voting in these circumstances.
Was it simply synthetic SNP anger? Not if you listen to another trenchant critic, the independent MP for North Down, Lady Hermon who was quicker to object even than the Scots.
She asked at the outset of that first debate: “Since so many of the clauses in the Bill have been designated as applying exclusively to England or, indeed, to England
Lady Hermon, Independent MP
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