Sauce for the gander
So Parliament has finally voted to ban fox hunting. Amazing that it has taken it so long to do so — or am I mistaken in thinking that a long time has elapsed since bear baiting and cock fighting were outlawed? Could the tardiness possibly have anything to do with the fact that fox hunting is definitely a sport of (though not solely of) the upper classes? Anyway, that’s not really the point here.
An interesting feature of the debate yesterday was that a number of English MPs were exercised over the fact that fox hunting might be banned as a result of a number of Scottish MPs voting for the ban, which only applies to England and Wales (hunting in Scotland comes under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Parliament).
The first point that has to be made is that Scottish MPs, at present anyway, have an absolute right to vote on this (or any other matter affecting England and Wales). In constitutional terms, they are members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Any vote before the House can be voted on by any member.
It also has to be said that there is a good argument for them not doing so. Many matters are now devolved to the Scottish Parliament. English MPs have no say in any of these areas in regard to Scotland. There would be some sense of fairness should Scottish MPs decide not to take part in voting on measures in these areas. One English MP complained that a Scottish MP could vote on matters affecting English counties, whereas he could not vote on matters affecting Scottish counties. This does seem unfair.
However, in the years when there was no Scottish Parliament English MPs showed no compunction on voting on matters which only affected Scotland. Had English MPs not taken part in the voting which brought the Poll Tax to Scotland — one year before it was inflicted on England — it would never have been introduced, at least not before it was applied to England and Wales also.
Then, too, there is the matter of oil taken from Scotland’s seas to fill the coffers of the UK government (and largely finance Thatcher’s war with the miners). During the Eighties, Scotland got poorer and poorer while oil money flowed to London — how many oil-producing countries are worse off when production is at its peak than they were before it was discovered? Scottish MPs, had every single one of them been minded to demand the revenue be spent in Scotland, could never overcome the huge numerical superiority of the English MPs. This simple fact, of there being hundreds of MPs from England and only seventy or so from Scotland, is why the Poll Tax example could not work in reverse.
But now, suddenly, Scotland’s Parliament is reborn. Many in England did not want it to happen, many in England could not even understand why Scots wanted it. It is worth remembering that the 1970s attempt to establish a Scottish Assembly failed because of an amendment which wrecked any chance the effort would succeed. This amendment insisted that 40% of the electorate had to vote for the Assembly for the Bill to pass — and which therefore meant that every one of the people who had died in the lengthy gap since the electoral register had been drawn up would effectively be voting “No”; this amendment was moved by a London MP.
It is difficult to describe the disbelief many people in Scotland felt when we voted “Yes” and did not get the assembly we had voted for. As far as I could tell — I spent much of the 80s in England — this was for the English the end of the matter. But in Scotland the matter never went away. When I returned to Scotland it was almost a different country: more confident, more assured, more determined to grab the first chance to get some control over itself. It did not surprise me, then, that at the last devolution referendum we would have got our Parliament even had the bill included the amendment which wrecked the last attempt.
We have a Parliament, even though it could have been better organised — but still, it is far better than the assembly on offer in the 1970s. The arrival of devolution has meant that the English have had to face up to the fact that “the UK” is not synonymous with “England”. One aspect has been that a vote to ban fox-hunting has been passed, possibly with some Scottish MPs voting for it, although the huge majority of the vote suggests that they were not crucial to its being passed. [A very quick glance at the list of Members who voted suggests that 3 MPs for Scottish constituencies voted against it and 32 for it; the ban was passed by 387 to 174 votes.] They might have been, though.
So Scots can help pass legislation on England — and the English cannot reciprocate by passing (or blocking) legislation on the same area in Scotland. Some are upset by this and see it as deeply unfair. There’s only one response to that: tough. Deal with it. We had to, for 300 years.
© DC 2001. All rights reserved.