IT is difficult to understand the angry reaction of Peter Wishart and the other SNP MPs at Westminster to the UK Government’s proposals on processing legislation considered relevant to England alone (“Evel block on votes of Scots MPs ‘puts UK under threat’”, The Herald, October 23). He and all the other Scottish MPs are members of the Scottish Grand Committee. This has existed in some form for over a century to consider legislation thought relevant to Scotland alone at Commons Committee stage. English, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs are barred from this body without any diminution of their status or effectiveness as Westminster MPs. So why is Mr Wishart so angry that other MPs might have the same rights in respect of their part of the UK that he and his SNP colleagues have in respect of Scotland? Because the Scottish Parliament can now process most Scotland-only legislation, the Scottish Grand Committee has not needed to meet for 12years, but it still exists and Peter Wishart and his colleagues are members.
It is, though, also difficult to understand why the UK Government has proposed such an extraordinarily clumsy formula when they could simply have created an English Grand Committee on exactly the same basis as the Scottish Grand Committee. They would thus have had a constitutional precedent and an established procedure to follow. Just as with the Scottish Grand Committee, which meets in Edinburgh, an English Grand Committee would not have had to meet in the Commons chamber, despite its size. There are two venues capable of handling meetings of 500+ within two minutes’ walk of Parliament and dozens of other venues throughout England, thus avoiding the awkward presentation issue of seeming to bar non-English MPs during “England-only” sessions from a place where they would otherwise have every right to be.
Russell Vallance,
4 West Douglas Drive, Helensburgh.
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