Taking away Scots MPs would have made little vote difference
REMOVING Scottish MPs from all House of Commons debates in the last 13 years would only have made a difference in 22 votes or 0.6 per cent of the total, research has found.
As so-called English Votes for English Laws is set to become a hot political topic in the forthcoming General Election – and with Commons Leader William Hague due to unveil the UK Government’s Command Paper on the controversial issue as early as this week – the Commons Library has undertaken research on the voting patterns of MPs and geographic composition of governments. It found:
of the 18 governments since 1945, six have had a sufficient number of MPs in England to form a UK majority consisting of just English MPs – of these six government, two were Labour, three Conservative and one the current Coalition;
among the 12 others, Winston Churchill (1951), Marga- ret Thatcher (1979) and Tony Blair (2001 and 2005) required the support of MPs from multiple constituent countries of the UK to form a majority in the Commons and
of the 18 governments since 1945, 15 or 83 per cent had a majority among English MPs;
the three governments, which did not, in 1950, 1964 and February 1974 were all Labour;
of the 18 governments, 10 or 56 per cent per cent had a majority in Scotland;
the other eight or 44 per cent did not have a majority in Scotland – seven were Tory adminis- trations and one the present Coalition.
The research also showed what impact there would have been if Scottish MPs had been removed from the records of historic Commons votes. Of approximately 3,600 divisions between June 2001 and September 2014, just 22 or 0.6 per cent would have concluded differently had the votes of Scottish MPs not been counted.
These included the Bill to reform the House of Lords in 2003, which MPs from the rest of the UK would have passed, the Higher Education Bill of 2004 bringing in tuition fees, which would have been lost, and, more recently in August 2013, the vote on taking military action against Syria, would have succeeded.
In 2006-7, of all 221 votes cast, the absence of Scottish MPs would have made a difference to not one. In each of six sessions between 2001 and 2014, including the Coalition’s first in 2010 to 2012 when there were 544 votes, not having Scottish MPs vote would have made a difference to the outcome of just one.