Ed Milliband’s refusal to accept “English votes for
English laws” will rightly be seen as party political bias of the worst kind
and should be condemned by all fair minded people who believe in democracy.
Now that more powers are to be devolved to Scotland
the same powers should be devolved to an English parliament made up of English
MPs at Westminster. There should be an
English First Minister and government, just as in Scotland. The costs of this extra bureaucracy would be
offset by reducing the salaries of Westminster MPs as they would only need to
work for say two days a week.
All the above could be done very quickly but there
are consequences. To deal with these a
constitutional convention should be set up immediately with a period of one year
in which to report. The convention
should consist of one third MPs and two thirds members of the public. It would need to examine House of Lords
reform, necessity for a written constitution, revision of constituency
boundaries and number of constituencies, over representation of Wales at
Westminster and funding for the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. One
further consideration should be to look at the system of elections as it is
quite clear that First Past The Post has broken down.
With goodwill all this can be achieved relatively
quickly and we can create a democracy for the 21st century. All we need is the will to get on and do it.
