Maybe I misunderstand, but I think Parliament is the legislative body of the UK. And the UK is made up of the countries of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Do those countries have their own legislative governing bodies? I’d expect that they would, but I never hear of them.
Scotland has a parliament, Wales has an assembly. Northern Ireland has an assembly but it’s pretty dysfunctional
England has such a large share of the population that it is well represented in the British Parliament and doesn’t need a local assembly for itself.
Do the England MPs ever assemble without the other MPs for the purposes of deciding legislation for issues which relate only to England?
No, not really.
For a short period there was an “English Grand Committee” composed of all the UK MPs who sit for English constuencies. When legislation that applied to England only was before Parliament, certain stages of the legislative process were held in the English Grand Committee. At the risk of oversimplifying, this meant that the English MPs could modify the draft legislation, or they could vote it down. But they couldn’t enact legislation affecting England only without Parliament as a whole having a say.
And, of course, there was never any separate English government, English ministers, etc, accountable to and dependent on the English Grand Committee in the way that there is, e.g., a Scottish government accountable to the Scottish Parliament.
The Grand Committee never really caught on. It was established in 2015, ceased to function in 2020 and was abolished in 2021.
The truth is that the UK union is massively skewed in favour of England, which in terms of wealth, population, influence, etc massively outweighs the other three parts of the union put together. The English have always been confident that, by and large, Westminster will devote time, attention and resources to anything that matters to England, and will not make decisions unacceptable to England. As a result there has never been much political or popular demand for separate legislative or governmental structures for England.
Thank you very much for that excellent explanation. It leads to me to ask another question. What do most people in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland consider themselves, British or Scot, etc.?
That’s a really vexed question. My husband’s response to that is still:
- Welsh
- European
- British
in that order. Lots and lots of people are British first, whatever their nation is second.
I have also heard people in Wales casually refer to the UK, including Wales, as “England,” without being much bothered. As far as I can tell, British people have a different mix of residence, where they grew up, and family heritage than North Americans do, but all are still in the mix. For instance, nobody questions that Shirley Bassey is Welsh, and Welsh people are very proud to count her as one of their own: she was born and raised in Wales, but neither of her parents was from Wales or of Welsh heritage.
Welsh attitudes to their Senedd (Assembly) are mixed, as well: some want to give it more power, and make it a real parliament. Others think the whole thing is a boondoggle and should be disbanded altogether.
Each of the three other nations also has a different history with England: Wales and N. Ireland were conquered, and the indigenous languages and cultures harshly repressed,* but Wales a lot earlier than Ulster (as it was then), and while Wales was colonized, it did not experience the systematic colonization via plantations that Ulster did. Scotland’s separate-nation status means its institutions were left more intact, but there’s a very heavy cultural pull from England (leaving aside issues specific to Gaelic Scotland).
*This needs a footnote, because at least for Wales, it was the cultural institutions such as the poets and their patronage system that were repressed in the Middle Ages, but the language didn’t come under real sustained attack until the 19th century.
It’s an even more vexed question in Northern Ireland, but we do have good information about the answer, since a question about national identity is included in the census. Per the 2021 census, people in NI identify as follows:
British: 32%
Irish: 29%
Northern Irish: 20%
British and Northern Irish: 8%
Irish and Northern Irish: 2%
British, Irish and Northern Irish: 1.5%
British and Irish: 0.6%
English or Scottish or Welsh: 1%
Other: 6%
The way the question is framed, people who claim more than one identity do not rank or prioritise them. “European” was not one of the identities offered in the question.
Just a link to the England & Wales results: National identity, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (scroll down for chart).
It seems to me that you can really see Brexit and its rhetoric driving people to espouse a “British” identity, though of course that’s a hypothesis from two datapoints.
There is certainly a West Lothian question of why the other constituents of the UK have devolved powers but an MP from Scotland still has equal say over a matter affecting only England. There is some support for the notion of an English parliament as the resolution to this issue.
The report you link to was produced in 2016-18 at the same time as the English Grand Committee was being trialled. These are alternative possible answers to the West Lothian Question, which I think was receiving a good deal of attention at that time as a consequence of debates about devolution and independence in the wake of the Scottish independence referendum of 2014.
But the truth is that neither found much traction. The English Grand Committee, as already noted, sputtered and died; the report of the UCL Constitition Union, although interesting, didn’t find much political traction and in the five years since it was issued nothing has been done about implementing it, or even about advancing the thinking that it reflects. Interest in an English parliament is still a fairly marginal position in UK politics.
Part of the context here is that the Westminster Parliament and government do in fact spend a lot of their time on legislation/executive business that is of relevance only to England, or to England and Wales. This reinforces an impression that the UK is basically an extension of England, and prioritises English concerns and affairs, and this in turn fuels independence movements. Hence, in the period around the Scottish independence referendum, interest in making structural and institutional changes that would reduce that impression.
In other words, and at the risk of oversimplifying, any progress towards separate English institutions isn’t primarily driven by what the English want, but by (perceptions of) what the Scots want. And it may simply be that concern about what the Scots want has waned.
All MPs, have equal status in a vote. There is a convention, where Scottish MPs choose not to vote on purely English matters.
The part devolution and growth of the Scottish Independence Party (SNP) have given the British Labour Party problems since many Labour MPs lost their seats to the SNP.
My impression is that there is a lot of resentment against the English in Scotland. For example, when England plays rugby against France, many Scots will support France for no other reason than they are not English.
It’s worth pointing out that each devolved administration is governed by a separate statute devolving separate sorts of powers. It isn’t a full-blown federal structure like the US (or Canada or Australia) - it’s developed piecemeal and ad hoc in response to local circumstances, like so much else.
Thus for example Scotland, at the union in 1707, retained a different criminal justice system and education system, and separate legislation for Scotland passed through Westminster until devolution; but the criminal justice system in Wales was part of the English system since Henry VIII’s time and still remains so. Northern Ireland, like the whole of the island until 1922, was always governed by separate laws (and its own parliament and government until the 1970s).
There have been attempts to solve the imbalance creating the “England question” by regionalising some aspects of government, but attempts to create regional assemblies to supervise at least economic/development policies fell foul of local suspicion of creating more jobs for politicians.
Plus, the Treasury is always reluctant to let go of control of public expenditure (hence our other problem, the hollowing out of local government at all levels). In opposition, parties are full of plans to reduce central government controls on local government in England: in office, these usually take a back seat
It’s entirely personal, but for many it isn’t an either/or - it’s both. My Welsh wife considers herself both Welsh and British, just as I am both English and British - and her brother’s children, raised in Scotland by Welsh and Scottish parents, also consider themselves Welsh, Scottish AND British. Of course, people in favour of independence will eschew the British bit, but my family example is fairly typical. The union of Scotland and England has existed for over 300 years at this point, and anyone joining the army, navy etc will be fighting for the UK, so it’s hardly a surprise.
Northern Ireland is WAY more complicated.
Well, there’s the whole ‘auld alliance’ thing - France and Scotland have been best buddies against their mortal enemy for centuries. It used to be fairly common to see bumper stickers of the Scottish flag with ‘Ecosse’ written on it. That may have fallen out of favour with the resurgence of Scottish languages of course, but the point stands.
Of course, the Welsh and Irish have a similar approach in sporting fixtures - ‘anyone but England’.
The bit that took me by surprise is that some of these folks are quite prescriptive about it. I’ve been told by Scots nationalists that I should call myself English, not British
About the sporting stuff, it’s all a bit lopsided because I think (anecdotally) a large portion of English fans like to see the other ‘Home Nations’ do well, and (Republic of) Ireland too. I certainly do, unless they’re playing us! Of course, there are still going to be English who ‘hate’ (in a sporting sense) the other countries too, I just don’t think it is the majority, like it surely must be the other way round. Most England fans (in football) would rather we beat Germany or Argentina, I’m sure.
The 2014 referendum had the inevitable effect of hardening attitudes among some of the supporters - on both sides. If you present complex questions as a binary yes/no then an inevitable effect of the subsequent debate is that people entrench themselves, and some will self-radicalise as continued exposure to opposition makes them take a harder and harder line.
The anyone but England thing goes back a lot further and is essentially a combination of normal sporting rivalry (if an Everton fan says they hope PSG beat Liverpool, no-one blinks an eyelid) and a reaction to the fact this is one more area where England dominate and it’s a bit wearing. The fall out from political nationalism doesn’t help because Scottish football is nothing if not ludicrously tribal; on the other hand England are increasingly modest about their football prowess and the team under Southgate are very likeable (compared to say the all hat no cattle era under Sven Goran Erickson) and I get the impression this has helped somewhat.
I always figured it was sort of analogous to the way we Americans think of ourselves- within the country, I’m a Texan, but elsewhere, I’m an American first, and a Texan second.
That’s more or less the way an ex-girlfriend of mine conceived of it anyway; she was Scottish ethnically, grew up in England, and lives in the US. So she was British to everyone, unless you asked a more direct question, at which point she’d say she was Scottish, which would confound us all, as her speaking accent was very much an upper-middle class Hampshire one- that’s where she grew up. But her parents were Scots, so she was too.
It’s not at all analogous to the US states. These are four separate countries with very different histories. Imagine if the US and Cuba and Mexico and Canada merged, and 500 years later everything was governed from Washington and we all mostly spoke English. Oh, and most of Mexico broke away 100 years ago, but there’s still a lot of coming and going and identity tension between Mexico and Northern Mexico, which is part of the United Presidency. (I mean, there sort of is a Northern Mexico, from Texas to California, but as far as I’m aware it’s only a few people in New Mexico that retain much of a pre-US sense of identity.)
Quite a few upper-crust Scots speak “English” RP, having been sent to English private schools.