Glasgow Herald
Lord Falconer wants to write England out of existence
Your Letters April 06 2006
LORD
Falconer promises more Scots in the House of Lords (April 4): "We need to have
an arrangement whereby the regions, and Scotland and Wales and Northern Ireland,
are better represented in the House of Lords."
I wish to suggest that he is displaying incredible political
insensitivity and arrogance. On March 10 on the Today programme he arbitrarily
ruled out an English Parliament "for all time" without even the slightest
consideration of
asking the opinion of the English people in a referendum which his fellow
Scots got in 1997-98 for a Scottish Parliament.
Now
he wants to increase the number of Scots in the Lords; and he uses language
which terminates England.
Has he never heard of the West Lothian Question? We already have
over-representation in the Commons of Scottish MPs in proportion to Scotland's
population.
We already have Scottish MPs voting on issues concerning England which English MPs cannot vote on for Scotland. We already have Scottish members of the Lords voting on the same issues without any English members of the Lords able to vote as regards Scotland.
Now
Lord Falconer, who occupies one of the most ancient of English offices,
predating the Act of Union by many centuries, that of the Lord Chancellor, wants
even more Scots able to debate and vote on English matters without reciprocity.
Even worse, while he upholds – rightly so – the existence of Scotland and
Wales as distinct nations within the UK, he denies the existence of England as a
nation.
He speaks of "regions" instead of England. He and his party are engaged in a deliberate policy of writing England out of existence and substituting "regions", which, as Lord Bassam of the Department of the Deputy Prime Minister agreed in debate only last week, are of EU invention.
In this he is strongly supported by his fellow Scot, Gordon Brown who first introduced the phrase "the regions and nations of Britain" expressly meaning Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and "regions" in place of England.
He is
supported likewise by Charles Kennedy, MP for Ross, Skye and Inverness West,
who, when he addressed the Scottish LibDem conference in Dunfermline in 1999,
stated the regionalism south of the border "is calling the very existence of
England into question".
I know this is a hard thing to say, but the time has surely come for it
to be said. Lord Falconer and his compatriots would be advised to exercise
sensitivity and respect when speaking of England, what concerns England, and the
ancient political institutions of England.