English Parliament

The slightly odd proposal not to have an English Parliament, but to have a sort of English pseudo-Parliament made up of existing MPs, is "debated" on the BBC's Jerk Your Knee message board, where a lot of angry loners passionately agree that they want English independence (even if they can't spell it).

I think I've said this here before: there's a perfectly rational case for an English Parliament as part of a wider constitutional settlement - reserve Westminster for UK-wide federal issues, and have an English Parliament in Birmingham or somewhere that, on the Scottish model, dealing with the elements of domestic policy that seem to be done best at that level. Of course, the sort of people who are proposing an English Parliament (or worse, a first-past-the-post English pseudo-Parliament) are not doing it for any rational reasons - they are doing it because they hate Blair/Brown/the Scots/the EU/black people and think that in some way having a more right-wing Parliament (which they assume it will be) will deliver for them.

Actually, I should exempt Sir Malcolm Rifkind and his task force from this - they seem to be in this argument purely for party advantage rather than anything more nasty.

Comments

[Andy]

John Major said that if the answer is more politicians, we're probably asking the wrong question.

I don't see that we will make better policy with an English parliament and in London it would leave us with four tiers of government. (Boroughs>GLA>English Parl>Westminster(+>Europe))

Is there any way we can have a system that doesn't leave us with another layer of potentially expensive, ineffective and unaccountable bureaucracy?

[Anthony Zacharzewski]

I see your point, but the tiers are not like a management chain - each level has different remits and mandates. So hospitals are an NHS service, but strategically planned by the Scottish Executive. Westminster doesn't have anything to do with them. Similarly, there are no Scottish bureaucrats dealing with income tax, as it's a UK function and dealt with by UK bureaucrats.

I like the John Major quote: interestingly, the Conservatives opposed some recent moves on local government reorganisation (merging authorities and so on) by claiming that we didn't have enough councillors compared to other EU member states.