Scottish Affairs Committee could be dominated by English MPs

The SNP will go head-to-head with Westminster authorities this week in the first battle over how much influence the party’s 56 MPs will really have.

Despite only having one Scottish MP, the Conservatives are entitled to control one of the key bodies that deals with Scottish issues the Scottish Affairs Select Committee.

The SNP are determined the majority of seats on the committee are not taken by English MPs.

A senior SNP source told The Sunday Post: “That would raise all sorts of issues around the legitimacy of the whole committee. We’ll be seeking to chair two committees including the Scottish Affairs Committee.

“We won’t stand for any mischief from the other parties and if they try to rig the committee in any way we’ll cause some mischief of our own.”

Labour and the Tories have only one Scottish MP each and in both cases that person won’t be able to sit on the Scottish Affairs Committee.

For the Tories, David Mundell has just been appointed Scottish Secretary. He’ll be required to appear before the committee to answer their questions.

Similarly, Labour’s sole Scottish representative, Ian Murray, is Shadow Scottish Secretary and that will stop him sitting on the committee too.

That means the committee considering Scottish issues could be overwhelmingly peopled by MPs from English constituencies.

During the last parliament, Tory nominees to the committee included Mark Menzies, a Scot who represents a Lancashire seat, and London MP Mike Freer who went to university in Stirling.

The Government won’t want to give the SNP a majority on the committee as that would allow them to determine what inquiries are launched and give them the power to publish majority reports criticising Downing Street.

But questions will be raised if the Scottish Affairs Committee has more English MPs than Scottish at a time when the Government is determined to legislate on English votes on English laws as they claim it’s unfair to let Scots vote on issues that don’t affect them.

In a sign of how desperate some are to avoid that scenario it was suggested Lib Dem Alistair Carmichael could take the chair, but he’s not keen and SNP sources scoffed at the idea they’d be willing to work with the man who was Scottish Secretary in the run up to the independence referendum.

The process of setting up the new select committees starts once the Speaker is elected tomorrow.

John Bercow is expected to retain his position. He will then issue a calculation of how many MPs of each party should sit on each committee, based largely on how many seats they have in the Commons.

The template for most 11-person committees will be six Tories, four Labour and one SNP MP with the Lib Dems and Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists getting the occasional seat here and there.

The parties are not obliged to follow the Speaker’s guidelines, however.

Party whips will hammer out deals in the days to come.

The SNP have already signalled they are open to some horse-trading giving up seats on committees concerned with reserved issues such as health and education in return for more representation on others.

They are widely rumoured to be in line to chair the International Development Committee much of the department’s workforce is based in East Kilbride as well as Scottish Affairs.

However some in the party are hoping effective trading will see them bag the Energy Committee where they could promote the SNP’s enthusiasm for renewables such as wind farms.

As The Sunday Post reported last week, Alex Salmond, as the party’s only Privy Councillor, is in line for a place on the vital Intelligence and Security Committee that oversees the work of the nation’s spy agencies.

The process of setting up the new select committees could also test the unity of the new SNP bloc.

After the authorities have determined which committees the SNP is entitled to run, any ambitious MPs among the new intake can, in theory, stand to be elected chair.

It’s believed the party will nominate chairs to take up the roles unopposed and that part of the reason there’s been a delay in announcing their whole shadow team is because of internal wrangling over who’ll be nominated as a party chairman, depending on which committee is up for grabs.