Lords unite in a battle over the role of Scottish MPs in EVEL

Government plans to exclude Scottish MPs from voting on some laws will receive another blow this week.

The House of Lords will seek to kill Tory proposals on English votes for English laws, dubbed Evel for short.

Labour peer Lord Foulkes is one of the ringleaders of the peers’ plot.

He said: “The Government has set a disastrous course.

“I’m now of the view that Evel will not get through.”

The Conservatives have already had to abandon plans to rush the changes through Parliament after a humiliating debate in which the proposals were attacked by MPs on all sides including the Government benches.

Leader of the House Chris Grayling promised to redraft them and schedule more time for debate.

But this week the House of Lords will weigh in with a coalition of Labour, Lib Dem and crossbench peers expected to inflict a crushing defeat on the

Government which could force them to drop the plans altogether.

The Lords will vote on a motion to replace the Evel plans with a joint committee of MPs and peers set up to consider the proposals.

With the committee not required to report till next year that would kick the issue into the long grass.

If the Lords backs the motion tabled by crossbench peer and former head of the civil service Lord Butler, the Government will be compelled to let MPs have a say on setting up a joint committee too when the issue returns to the Commons in September.

Said Lord Foulkes: “We can give succour, support and encouragement to people in the House of Commons who are against the current plans, not just among Labour, Lib Dems and the SNP but also Tory rebels.

“If they decide to continue the debate in September when the Commons comes back, the likelihood is they will be defeated and the Commons would agree to the genuine proposal for a joint committee.”

The Conservatives promised an answer to the West Lothian Question in their General Election manifesto.

Currently, Scottish MPs can vote on issues like health and education at Westminster even though legislation doesn’t affect their constituencies because it’s been devolved to Holyrood.

The Tories’ original plans involved the Commons Speaker certifying some Bills as England-only.

The Bills would then be discussed by English MPs who would be asked to accept or veto them.

However, the English MPs could not force proposals through unless the whole House, including all Scottish, Welsh and Irish MPs, agreed at the final reading of the Bill.

After an emergency debate organised by former Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael, it became clear that the plans would likely fail with Labour, SNP, Lib Dem and Tory rebels voting them down.

Grayling published revised proposals last week designed to reassure Scottish MPs by making clear that all MPs would continue to vote on finance Bills.

A special seven-hour debate saw the plans criticised again, however.

The SNP’s Pete Wishart said: “I cannot even call it a dog’s breakfast as that would show disrespect to our canine friends’ favourite morning meal. It is such a mess and disaster.”

The House of Lords weighed in with experts from all sides trashing Evel for a range of reasons.

Labour’s leader in the Lords, Baroness Smith, predicted “constitutional chaos”.

Lord Lisvane was clerk of the House of Commons until last year and probably the foremost expert in the workings of Parliament.

Speaking to The Sunday Post, he said: “It’s exceptionally complex but if I was going there I wouldn’t start from here.”

He warned that the current proposals could even contravene the Bill of Rights drawn up in 1689.

He said: “A joint committee is emphatically the right way to tackle a major constitutional issue, which is rightly of such interest to both Houses, as it might offer the possibility of some informed consensus which at the moment is rather far to seek.”

Some peers are continuing to call for a constitutional convention to look at all the issues surrounding devolution.

Last week, Lib Dem former MSP turned peer Jeremy Purvis’ Constitutional Convention Bill passed its first Parliamentary hurdle.

He co-chairs the all-party group on devolution which will announce this week that they are setting up a panel to draw up a blueprint for how a constitutional convention would work.