The ‘West Lothian question’ was named for Tam Dalyell, the former member of parliament for that constituency.  His 42 years service in Parliament was marked by his irritatingly insistent integrity. Why, he asked, was a Scottish member like himself able to vote on health and education issues in England when an English member had no say on similar policies in Scotland, since they had been devolved to the Scottish government?

Forty years after the West Lothian question was first posed, the UK government has announced a scheme for ‘English votes for English laws’. (EVEL). Bills or clauses of bills which the Speaker asserts affect England only, will require the legislative consent of a majority of English members.

The logic of English Votes for English Laws is irresistible.  The problem lies in determining what are English laws.  Suppose Parliament decreed that all classrooms in England should display the flag of St George, and the images of slain dragons were financed by an increase in the English income tax rate (Overlook, for a moment, the impact of this on Wales and Northern Ireland, although Welsh and Irish members and the governments in Cardiff and Belfast will not).  The measure has no effect in Scotland and would clearly be an example of an English law.

Wrong.  Under the Barnett formula, a complex grant formula first put in place in 1978, Scotland would automatically receive funding to fly Saltires in every Scottish school, since the spending allocation is based on UK wide expenditure on devolved services.  Although a deduction from the block grant arises from the new power for the Scottish parliament to impose and receive its own income tax, that deduction is linked to the income tax base in the UK (rather than the amount actually collected from that base).

The issue becomes most seriously contentious when the change is in the other direction.  Suppose the UK government decided to roll back the National Health Service in England through privatisation and copayment by patients, with lower (English) taxes in consequence. The formula  forces Scotland to increase its own taxes to maintain spending and service levels in Scotland.

And these are simple cases.  The UK Treasury is for good reason adamantly opposed to hypothetication – the matching of specific taxes to specific expenditures.  In general, it is impossible to tell whether England only measures are financed by English only taxes, where either English or UK wide taxes go, and whether UK wide expenditures are financed by UK taxes or England only taxes.

The White Paper on devolution published earlier this year, which was entitled – with Walter Mittyish optimism –  ‘An Enduring Settlement’, suggests these funding issues can be resolved through the application of a principle of ‘no detriment’. There should be compensation when actions of one government have financial consequences for another.  With sufficient mutual goodwill, adjustments could be made, compromises found. 

       But there is little goodwill, as heated exchanges in the last week have already demonstrated.   Scottish Nationalist members of parliament at Westminster are not there to make the ‘enduring settlement’ work, but to demonstrate to their constituents that it does not.  And the re-elected Conservative government, with little support in Scotland, must pander to its own (overwhelmingly English) backbenchers. Even if ignorant of the intricacies of the Barnett formula, they have been made restive by the revelation in the independence debate that grumpy Scotland gets a very good financial deal from the Union.

A more rational funding formula than Barnett might facilitate a more coherent debate.  But  the core issue is that it is genuinely difficult to identify purely English issues within a United Kingdom of which England constitutes 85%.The best answer to the West Lothian question is, as it always has been, to ignore it.