Respond to introduction of a veto for English MPs on English matters

[RichardTaylor]

The 2015 Conservative Manifesto states:

we will give English MPs a veto over English-only matters

During Prime Minister's Questions on the 1st of July 2015 the Prime Minister made clear the Government intends to implement this manifesto promise.

This ticket is just to flag up that this change is potentially coming and collect ideas for responding to it.

There are no details yet on how this might work. One suggestion is a committee of English MPs which would have the ability to block a Bill's progress. There could be votes in the House of Commons which only English MPs can take part in; or the results of votes which all MPs can take part in might be interpreted to see if the English MP veto applies.

Ideas

• Mark individual votes as being on an "England only" matter.
• Record, and show, which nation of the UK members are representatives from.
• Show how English MPs voted on individual votes and on policies. Highlight votes and policies where English MPs disagree with the UK House of Commons as a whole.
• Provide breakdowns of individual votes, and policy positions, for other nations, and parties within nations.
• Consider covering debates, and votes, in any "Grand Committees" comprising MPs from certain nations of the UK on TheyWorkForYou/PublicWhip.

I think there's a need to watch the proposals as they are developed and decide what, if any, changes to TheyWorkForYou are needed as a result.

Working on some of these ideas before the debate on how to implement the veto for English MPs might help inform the debate and could generate news coverage for TheyWorkForYou.

[RichardTaylor]

Details of proposals have now been published:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/english-votes-for-english-laws-proposed-changes

The key proposed new standing orders appear to me to be 83X and 83Y

The proposal is for "Legislative Grand Committees" for England, England and Wales, and England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

These will operate like committees of the whole house.

As far as I'm aware TheyWorkForYou/PublicWhip don't distinguish between committees of the whole house and other sessions of the whole house - votes and transcripts are already covered.

What would be new is under the new system we would have MPs who are not merely "absent" but actually "ineligible" to vote in divisions of the Legislative Grand Committees; so we've got a new state in which an MP can be in a division.

There is a further, separate, proposed change - of requiring a double majority - a majority of both all members voting, and a majority of those voting from the nations in question - on the consideration in the House of Commons of Lords' amendments deemed to impact only England, England and Wales, or England Wales and Northern Ireland.

Would These Changes Cause Critical Problems for TheyWorkForYou/PublicWhip ?

• I think that by not including Legislative Grand Committee votes when calculating policy positions we could continue using the current system in an defensible manner. If any MPs are not eligible to vote in a division then it wouldn't be fair for that division to count towards a statement on that MP's voting record on a policy. TheyWorkForYou / PublicWhip already don't take into account committee votes (other than committee of the whole house votes). Deciding not to include any votes at Legislative Grand Committees is not ideal though as the voting record of those MPs on the Grand Committees could be argued to be incomplete.
• Describing an MP as "absent" rather than "ineligible" would only occur on PublicWhip and not TheyWorkForYou if no votes in the new Legislative Grand Committees were included when calculating policy positions. This isn't a problem for TheyWorkForYou.
• If there was a conflict between the way the majority of MPs from the relevant nations voted vs the majority of MPs then this could be noted in the division description on PublicWhip. Providing the breakdown automatically, and highlighting the disagreement/veto, might be desirable but not essential.

Electronic Recording of Votes

The statement in the Commons on 2 July 2015 introducing the proposals mentioned the recording of votes on tablet computers so MPs can rapidly see if a veto has occurred. This appears to apply only to those Commons votes on Lords amendments where a veto is possible. This is interesting as presumably the electronic recording of votes could extend further to all votes; if that happens then I think there will be a greater demand for more timely information on how an MP has voted.

[RichardTaylor]

Following a vote on the 22nd of October 2015:

http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2015-10-22&number=87

Changes along the lines outlined in my comment of the 2nd of July have been made to the House of Commons Standing Orders.

I think the only essential change with respect to TheyWorkForYou to prevent showing anything that is badly incorrect will be to not include "consent motions" at "legislative grand committees" in policies. As noted above this would prevent MPs being described as absent in votes they were note eligible to take part in. Votes in which some MPs were not eligible to take part would then not be part of any policy position shown on TheyWorkForYou.

Ideally:

• votes where some MPs were not eligible to take part would be included in policies but would only impact the policy stance for those MPs eligible to vote in the division.
• a concept of "ineligible" to vote would be introduced to both PublicWhip and TheyWorkForYou (this would require knowing which part of the UK an MP was from, and which part(s) of the UK the legislation in question had been deemed to uniquely impact so would be quite complex).

We don't yet know how many votes there will be where not all MPs are eligible to take part so it's not clear yet if its worth making any code changes.

[RichardTaylor]

On the 12th of January 2016 the House of Commons resolved itself into the Legislative Grand Committee (England and Wales) and then into the Legislative Grand Committee (England).

http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2016-01-12a.791.0#g793.0

This time there were no divisions while in the committees.

Interestingly according to the chair all MPs were allowed to speak while the House was in each committee; though only MPs from the relevant areas would have been allowed to vote had a vote been called.

[RichardTaylor]

We've now had the first vote where a double majority (both of all MPs and of those MPs from the affected part of the UK) was required for the motion to pass:

http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2016-01-19&number=166

In this type of situation as all MPs get to vote on the matter there's no problem with taking such divisions into account when making a statement about the position an MP has taken when voting.

No issues which need fixing on TheyWorkForYou or PublicWhip arose as a result of this vote.

[RichardTaylor]

I'm pretty sure there still has not been a division (within a Legislative Grand Committee) where only a subset of MPs have been eligible to vote.

If such a vote ever happens one impact on TheyWorkForYou will be on the reasonableness of line on percentage of votes attended under the Numerology heading. eg.

Has voted in 64.49% of votes in this Parliament with this affiliation

The impact is likely to be minimal though and the statements made are unlikely to be rendered misleading. If a problem does arise then dropping the two decimal places of accuracy and adding "around" would be an easy fix.

If there were ever many votes in which only a subset of MPs were eligible to vote then further changes might be required.

[This comment reviewing the current position was prompted by correspondence from an MP]

[MyfanwyNixon]

We had this message via user support:

I wanted to ask what future plans you may have to deal with English Votes For English Laws?

You currently publish stats on the MPs who represent constituencies in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales who are affected by EVEL (Welsh to a lesser degree). At present you make a value judgement on the percentage of votes attended and cite these members as below average etc. without giving an explanation that they cannot vote on English only matters or English and Welsh only matters. How do you plan to deal with this? Is the value judgment made by They Work for You, which is in contrast to Public Whip where no such judgement is made, misleading for these members?

[JenMysoc]

Another user has asked for this:

I manage a facebook page looking at the voting record of my local MP, where I plot the monthly voting record in parliament (Ian Blackford votewatch). At the moment there are two choices, voted or absent, but now there is a separate category of votes where some MPs are banned from voting, i.e. EVEL. It would be useful to have a flag on these votes so I can tell whether it was a forced absence.

[RichardTaylor]

As far as I know the position is still as it was at:

https://github.com/mysociety/theyworkforyou/issues/909#issuecomment-236647538

I don't think there's been a vote where only a subset of MPs have been eligible to vote.

[MyfanwyNixon]

An MP has been in touch:

Can you please indicate on your page in the Numerology Section the number of votes in the Commons which are covered by the English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) legislation, whereby votes from MPs representing Scottish Constituencies are discounted and therefore not worth casting?

Otherwise the unexplained raw numbers and percentages you quote are misleading and give a false impression to anyone looking at these pages. I presume these numbers are printed to keep people who are interested in checking, informed but it is not a true explanation since EVEL votes are ignored in your analysis and give a false and misleading impression to constituents.

[RichardTaylor]

...votes in the Commons which are covered by the English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) legislation, whereby votes from MPs representing Scottish Constituencies are discounted

As described previously on this issue thread, votes where Scottish MPs, for example, can't vote are technically possible when a "Legislative Grand Committee" (the MPs from certain part(s) of the UK) considers a "Consent Motion", in other words it considers if it wants to veto a Bill, clause, schedule or amendment. To-date though there don't appear to have been any such votes. I have asked our correspondent to point us to an example of the kind of vote they are referring to.

MPs are perhaps used to hearing a deputy speaker say something like:

I remind hon. Members that if there is a Division, only Members representing constituencies in England and Wales may vote. *

but are not realising Divisions have not yet followed such statements, the motions have, so far, been dealt with without a division.

Can you please indicate on your page in the Numerology Section the number of votes in the Commons which are covered by the English Votes for English Laws (EVEL) legislation

The numerology section is for statistics which relate to an individual MP. The number of motions certified as relating only to certain parts of the UK is not a statistic which it would make sense to track there. There are some statistics for 2015-7 at https://academic.oup.com/pa/article/71/4/760/4868636/

[dracos]

The above MP was actually asking for a note to be added saying SNP MPs don't vote on non-Scottish matters, which is something TWFY had always said until it broke a couple of years ago. Happy to put it back up, have done so.

[RichardTaylor]

It looks as if the first three votes in which only MPs from constituencies in certain parts of the UK were able to vote have taken place. These were three votes on the NHS Funding Bill on 4 February 2020 which occurred in the Legislative Grand Committee (England). The Legislative Grand Committee (England) is made up only of MPs representing English constituencies.

https://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2020-02-04&house=commons&number=28 https://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2020-02-04&house=commons&number=29 https://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2020-02-04&house=commons&number=30

Following the first vote a point of order was raised and the following exchange took place:

I am interested in the numbers that have just been read out, Madam Deputy Speaker, because 163 for the Ayes seems very low to me. Just by means of a headcount, I counted a significant number more than that. In fact, according to my calculations, at least 46 Members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were in the Lobby just now. Can you tell me whether the number that was read out in the House accurately records the number of Members of Parliament who wished to express their view on the amendment?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for expressing his concerns in such an articulate fashion, and I note the words that he has used. I can confirm to him that, although his count of the number of Members who wished to express their view might well be correct, the numbers that I have announced to the House and on which I will rely from the Chair constitute the number of Members who have a right to vote on this matter. As the hon. Gentleman knows, under the procedures set out in Standing Order 83W—with which he, if not the rest of the House, must of course be familiar—Members who do not represent constituencies geographically situated in England do not have a right to vote in these particular Divisions.

Does this break anything on TheyWorkForYou?

Not yet as far as I can see:

1. Statements on voting records

If these votes are taken into account when determining MPs' voting records on certain subjects then as I understand it at the moment not having been recorded as voting will impact what is said about an MP. This may be unfair as not all MPs were eligible to vote.

None of these votes have been added to policy positions shown on TheyWorkForYou so there is no current issue on TheyWorkForYou arising from this here. The first vote has been added to the policies on Openness and Transparency (proposed to be listed on TheyWorkForYou via #1399) , and a new provisional policy ~"Better mental health care".

I have raised this issue on the PublicWhip issue tracker at: https://github.com/publicwhip/publicwhip/issues/33

2. Display of votes on TheyWorkForYou eg. at https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2020-02-04d.212.4#g262.0 There's nothing misleading here. A note to say which MPs were eligible to vote might be desirable though.

As yet I can't see that Parliament itself hasn't yet made any changes to its system to flag up the fact some MPs were ineligible to vote: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2020-02-04/division/3FE40F58-5A6D-4746-BF5F-C2C44188FA4B/NHSFundingBill?outputType=Names

3. On an MP's recent votes page for an MP who was not eligible to vote https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25361/ian_blackford/ross%2C_skye_and_lochaber/recent the votes are not appearing as it appears only votes, not absences, are listed??? So that looks fine.

[RichardTaylor]

Just to note that on the 2nd of June 2020 the House of Commons passed a motion with effect until 7 July 2020 including:

(5) Standing Orders Nos. 83J to 83X (Certification according to territorial application etc) shall not apply.

I think this had the effect of suspending the procedures for giving a veto to MPs from certain constituent parts of the UK over Bill or clauses of Bills relating exclusively to those areas.

Also a motion setting out a procedure for dealing with the Business and Planning Bill passed on the 29th of June 2020 also appears to suspend these provisions in relation to that Bill:

(15) Standing Orders Nos. 83J to 83O (Certification of bills, clauses, schedules etc) shall not apply to the Bill.

This kind of thing is something else to be aware of when interpreting and presenting MPs' votes.

I don't think any specific action is required in light of these motions.

[RichardTaylor]

The provisions were scrapped on 13 July 2021:

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2021-07-13c.306.0