Re: The West Lothian Question- The Tory proposals are no answer

In message <2008070218554150073-thecroft@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, Andrew 
<thecroft@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes
>On 2008-07-02 13:29:19 +0100, Robert Henderson 
><philip@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> said:
>
>>   Ken Clarke's "remedy" for English anger at a lack of representation 
>>is no remedy at all.  There are four reasons for its failure:
>>  (1) If adopted, there would be endless wrangling over what was an 
>>English only issue.
>>    (2) the position of Wales and N Ireland is not addressed - they 
>>already have large subsidies and powers which allow them to determine 
>>im****tant areas of policy such as health spending.
>>    (3) all the majority party whether having a majority of English 
>>MPs  or not, would  still have the power to initiate all legislation, 
>>all  MPs would be allowed to vote on the first and second readings and 
>>there  would be no legal bar to overturning English amendments made 
>>during the committee stage .
>>    (4) there appears to have been no consideration of the position of 
>>the Lords,  which it seems would still be allowed to vote on all 
>>legislation despite being a UK wide assembly. RH
>
>You're probably substantially right here. The only real solution I can 
>see that would work (other than dissolving the Union altogether) is for 
>England to have its own Parliament, just as Scotland does. Ideally it 
>could be based away from London. Westminister is the UK Parliament, and 
>creating 2 cl***** of representative there would, I think, be corrosive 
>to its stability.


Simple solution: exclude all non-English seat MPs from the Commons and 
that becomes the English parliament once more. The members of the four 
national parliaments then sit in the federal parliament. The Lords would 
be abolished. RH
-- 
Robert Henderson
Blair Scandal website: http://www.geocities.com/
blairscandal/
Personal website: http://www.anywhere.demon.co.uk