Westminster: just what’s the point?

This is a question that often crosses my mind, particularly when I hear pundits, presenters and politicians proclaiming the (Westminster) Government will be introducing whatever piece of legislation or programme aimed at improving health, education, housing, or whatever.  Occasionally you’ll even here the age old conflation of England being labelled Britain, something that is even more misleading in these post-devolution days when Westminster bears no responsibility for a great deal of matters effecting Scotland.  You’d have thought that 10 years after gifting us our own parliament they’d have realised that.

Indeed a great deal of our day-to-day affairs in Scotland are managed and legislated for from Edinburgh, from our pseudo parliament, without any recourse to Westminster.  I say ‘pseudo parliament’ since it doesn’t have the full range of powers an independent parliament would have, but what it does have is enough to be going on with for the time being, enough even to usurp some unpopular Westminster decisions, such as new nuclear power stations.  Since the authority for nuclear power is reserved to Westminster the Scottish parliament has no direct say on them, however, if they are to be built in Scotland then they fall under Scottish planning laws, and this is a devolved matter.

So, if we’re running most of our own affairs anyway, what’s the point of Westminster?  They take and set most taxation, they are responsible for foreign affairs and defence.  These are probably the major things although there is obviously a great deal more, they are also responsible for dealing with Europe.

I was recently caught out repeating an oft-heard statistic, namely that 70% of UK legislation originates from Europe, it turns out that I was wrong.  Upon further research though I did discover that according to German MEP Jorgo Chatzimarkakis 85% of German legislation originates n Brussels.  OK, so it’s not the UK but it does give you a flavour of the influence that the EU wields.

Lord Stoddart asked the following question in regard to the EU:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether, in the light of the statement by German MEP Jorgo Chatzimarkakis that 85 per cent of German legislation originates in Brussels, they will state what percentage of United Kingdom legislation is of European Union origin.

 Lord Malloch-Brown the Minister of State for the foreign and Commonwealth office responded thus:

It would entail disproportionate cost to research and compile the percentage of UK legislation originating in the European Union: some European measures are directly applicable in member states and others require incorporation into national law through a variety of legislative or administrative means.

It has been estimated that around half of all UK legislation with an impact on business, charities and the voluntary sector stems from legislation agreed by Ministers in Brussels, but this is a category of legislation which is more likely than legislation in general to have originated in the EU. It is likely that the overall proportion is therefore much lower.

In other words in the areas of “business, charities and the voluntary sector” it might be about 50%, but they don’t really know, and in other areas they might know but they’re not telling.  It all sounds rather wooly to me.

When the Lisbon / Reform Treaty finally becomes ratified yet more powers will be ceded to Europe and I guess we can expect an even greater percentage of our legislation to be influenced or originate from Europe either directly or on a more administrative basis.

So if the EU is directing Westminster in areas that haven’t been devolved, and Holyrood is dealing with much of the day-to-day items, as well as major infrastructure projects, then what is the point of Westminster?  It strikes me as being little more than an additional level of bureaucracy and furthermore it prevents Scotland from fully participating with the European project … assuming that Scotland wants to.

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Westminster: extra-national and increasingly irrelevant
• my politics
• Westminster has no interest in power sharing … unlike Norway