Where does EVEL lead?

The proposed system will see the Speaker certifying bills or parts of bills that “relate exclusively” to England (or England and Wales) and where the equivalent legislative competence has been devolved to Edinburgh and Belfast. These bills, clauses or schedules will then have to receive the explicit consent of English (or English and Welsh) MPs in a new Legislative Grand Committee, and wholly English bills will also be scrutinised and amended in an England-only bill committee. England-only legislation introduced by the Government (though not by private members) will therefore require a “double majority” – among English MPs and across the House as a whole. Similar rules will apply to secondary legislation, and to votes on tax and spending decisions where equivalent powers have been devolved (such as income tax rates and the Revenue Support Grant to local government). As the process of devolution to the three devolved capitals continues, the list of issues subject to the new rules will grow correspondingly longer. The decision to introduce EVEL via standing orders rather than legislation reflects a desire to avoid judicial reviews of internal parliamentary matters. But as a result there will be far less opportunity for scrutiny than an Act of Parliament would receive. The government is allowing less than two weeks for consideration of the plans, during which the Commons Procedure Committee will carry out what its chair described as “a quick and dirty technical review”. Creating a system in this short timeframe risks unanticipated consequences, of either a procedural or broader constitutional nature. But having made a clear manifesto commitment to tackle this issue, and won a surprise (but narrow) majority in May, the Conservative government has both the mandate and the political incentive to press ahead. And while it is debatable whether England has ever suffered from a lack of voice at Westminster or in British politics more widely, there is increasing evidence that English voters do object to the anomalies of the post-devolution constitution and back EVEL as a solution. The new system is thus set to come into being straight after the summer recess, subject to a vote in the House on 15 July. With a majority of just 12, the government is vulnerable to a backbench rebellion, but the most common critique from the Conservatives backbenches is that the plans do not go far enough, since all MPs will still be able to vote on all legislation. Potential rebels are therefore likely to back the plans and then push for a more radical system down the line, after the Procedure Committee carries out a review into how the system works in practice at the start of the next session. There are nine government bills before the House of Commons. Four (on education, childcare, local government and charities) relate to England or England and Wales only. In practice these bills may have cleared second reading before the new process comes into effect and would therefore not be affected, but the government has plans for major legislation in areas such as police reform, energy and housing that may pass through the new process. What does this all mean for the constitution? Increasingly we are hearing the F-word mentioned as a model for a new reformed Union. And arguably, EVEL does move us closer to a federal settlement, in that it starts to delineate the English from the British elements of what Westminster and Whitehall do. There will, for the first time, be four nations (if Northern Ireland can be so described) visible in the design of our constitutional structures as well as in our political culture. This will be a long way from a fully federal system, with a written constitution, courts to rule on disputes between tiers of government and a formal end to the doctrine of unrestricted parliamentary sovereignty, which implies the right of Westminster to overrule devolved bodies. Nor will there be a separate English Parliament. However, if a future UK government is in a minority in England, we may then see English MPs challenge the supremacy of the House as a whole. An Opposition with an English majority might claim a mandate to determine domestic policy and spending or even to run departments such as health, education and communities and local government. A future UK government could seek to repeal EVEL and abolish the new legislative consent requirements, but it might find this politically difficult if the reforms bed in over the coming years. And since the Government has a majority across the UK as well as in England, the intention is for this bedding in process to take place at a time when it will have a limited practical effect on the government’s ability to get its business through the House. A further interesting contrast with ‘proper’ federal systems is that the House of Lords will be untouched by EVEL, on the grounds that there are only UK peers. Federal systems such as Australia, Canada and Germany typically make the upper chamber the representative body for subnational governments and regions, while the usually dominant lower house speaks for the nation as a whole. The UK has an inverted model, which EVEL will reinforce, in which the stronger lower house is the more likely to divide along territorial lines. The EVEL reforms are in the end an odd combination. At once narrowly technical, in their reliance on procedural tweaks to address a serious constitutional issue, but also radical, in the potential they create for a transformed relationship between the four nations of our rapidly changing Union.