Evel has failed the test of confidence

T is difficult to see how much lower confidence in English Votes for English Laws could sink. The so-called West Lothian question has troubled parliamentarians for decades, but the answer David Cameron suggested on the morning after the independence referendum in 2014 was dubious from the start and implemented with undue and reckless haste. It also failed to win the kind of cross-party support that a constitutional change on such a scale demands.

The chorus of criticism has also grown in the two years since Mr Cameron’s announcement and the year since the new procedure has been working in Westminster. When English Votes for English Laws, or Evel, was first proposed in 2014, the Electoral Reform Society said it was playing fast and loose with the constitution.

Criticism also came from the SNP, which said the idea was incoherent and unfair, and Labour, whose Ian Murray called Evel a constitutional wrecking ball. And earlier this year the Lords Constitution Committee suggested Evel could fail the stress test of Brexit. It seems that it is hard to find a single friend of Evel.

Now the House of Commons Procedure Committee has added its voice to the criticism. In a report evaluating Ebel a year on from its introduction, the committee says the rules need to be urgently and comprehensively rewritten if they are to win any kind of confidence among MPs.

In an echo of the Lords’ criticism, the committee also says the procedures do not command the respect they will need across all parties if the system is to be sustainable through the political tests it will face in the future.

The most obvious of the tests to come is Brexit, which has the potential to push Evel to the limit. If some of the controversy that was predicted for the new procedures has failed to materialise, then it is probably because they have been hardly used and barely tested (the legislative grand committees, made up of English MPs, have lasted mere minutes and failed to trigger substantive debates). That could all change when Brexit finally reaches Westminster and returns a whole range of powers to the UK. It is then that the UK could face the real prospect of a constitutional crisis.

The Evel procedures have also failed in almost every other respect. The Commons committee says they are impenetrable even for the law-makers. It is also significant that those who called for an “English voice” are not using the procedures as intended. In other words, Evel does not even have the confidence of those who wanted it.

Of course, the man who created this mess, David Cameron, is no longer around to do anything about it, and it is likely that only further constitutional reform and a more federal arrangement for the nations of the UK can fix the issues which Evel sought to address.

But in the meantime, the UK Government has to acknowledge that the process is not working and reform the system as part of a more profound review of the UK’s constitutional arrangements. The Government must also try to do what Mr Cameron did not do, or had the arrogance to think he did not need to do: seek widespread support from MPs representing all parts of the UK.