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The process of devolution has so far been precisely that – a process. The original settlements of the late 90s have evolved to meet the needs and circumstances of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with both constitutional and cultural changes occurring gradually as required.
But there is one area of the UK where decision making remains centralised in London. I am of course speaking about England. Victoria has already warned of England’s backlash on these pages, and the momentum for reform will only grow over the next decade as the devolved nations develop distinctive and different responses to the age of austerity. Anyone who has spent time reading discussions on the English question on Wales home will already know the scale of feeling amongst some that the current devolution arrangements are unfair. Such sentiments were also expressed by some English MPs in the recent discussion on the west Lothian question in Parliament. It is clear that England now needs to become involved in the devolution process.
The major historical obstacle towards de-centralisation in the UK has been Whitehall. Unlike countries such as Denmark, most public spending has been initiated and controlled through central government in Whitehall, with local or regional government relying on the treasury for a large proportion of their funding. Even the devolved administrations have relied on block grants, and produced amounts that people in Wales have regarded as under-funding their services and people in England have regarded as over-funding it. Even then a significant amount of public spending in Wales has been through the benefits system, which remains controlled in Whitehall.
This means that attempts to resolve the ‘west lothian’ question by simply preventing MPs from Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland from voting on English only matters are doomed to fail. It is not these MPs that prevent people living in England from having free prescriptions, but the political choices made by the UK government in which the majority of MPs represent English constituents. Furthermore a separate English parliament would remain dominated by Whitehall and the treasury, and equally prone to centralisation. The argument that English taxes subsidise welsh services would simply be modified to one of taxes raised in London and the south east subsidising services in Liverpool and Manchester.
Which is why real devolution and decentralisation needs to happen in England. The longer resentments grow based on national grounds, the more unlikely it is that English devolution will take on a character that represents a transfer of power away from Whitehall. Real devolution in England must involve a transfer of power away from London and towards the regions, and these powers must also involve fiscal responsibility if they are to work. And in this scenario Wales and Scotland will also benefit from gaining their own fiscal responsibilities, and the UK economy may cease to be so dominated by the financial industry.
The Celtic nation and constitutional Duchy of Cornwall airbrushed out of the picture yet again?
The creation of the European Union, along with other pan-European bodies such as the Council of Europe, has produced a need for greater regionalisation, decentralisation and subsidiarity in the organisation of a European politic. In tandem with this new regionalism the European Union, Council of Europe and United Nations have developed human rights legislation specifically aimed at the protection of minority groups, their languages and their cultures. Taken together the above developments seem to promise a much brighter future for the national minorities and historic nations which abound on the European continent. More on the national minorities of Europe can be found here: http://www.eurominority.eu/version/eng/
The Cornish are an ethnic group and historic nation of the southwest of Great Britain. They have their own lesser-used Celtic language, related to Breton and Welsh, and more distantly to Scottish, Manx and Irish Gaelic. Alongside the Cornish language, there are specific sports and sporting tradition: Cornish music, dance, cuisine and a distinct political culture. These phenomena are all bound up together with a popular self perception as being other than English, as being Cornish Britons.
The ethnic data from the 2009 Cornish schools survey showed that 34% of children consider themselves to be Cornish rather than British or English. The results from the 2001 UK population census show over 37,000 people hold a Cornish identity instead of English or British. On this census, to claim to be Cornish, you had to deny being British, by crossing out the British option and then write ‘Cornish’ in the “other” box. This does not represent a mere clerical error or poorly thought through wording. This represents a denial of the right of the Cornish to describe themselves in terms of their identity. In the 2011 census whilst the possibility to record your ethnic and/or national identity as Cornish was publicised by Cornwall Council still no distinct tick-box option was available. How many more people would describe themselves as Cornish if they did not need to deny being British or if there were a specific Cornish tick-box? How many people knew that writing ‘Cornish’ in the “other” box was an option? How many simply tick British but feel Cornish British would be closer to the truth.
Over the last decade various Cornish groups and individuals have been campaigning for the Cornish to be recognised under the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM). Such recognition would be a powerful tool to ensure correct treatment and protection of the Cornish national minority and its culture. The UK’s Commission for Racial Equality in its shadow report on the FCNM produced in March 2007 advised the government that the treaty could be extended to protect Cornish culture and also raised concerns about the lack of legal equality for minorities in the UK. The Council of Europe itself has also suggested that the FCNM could be extended to include the Cornish.
This officially sanctioned silence on the existence of a Cornish identity must stop. Why has the government to date not asked the Office of National Statistics to include a Cornish tick box on the UK census? The Life in the United Kingdom handbook, required reading for all who wish to immigrate to the UK, quotes the census heavily when describing the regions and ethnic diversity of the UK. Why are the Cornish not mentioned once? Why has UK government so far blocked all attempts at ensuring the Cornish are recognised under the FCNM and ignored the advice of the CRE and CoE?
In 2008, a group of Cornish people decided that enough was enough and started to collect funds for a court action to challenge the Government’s decision to exclude the Cornish from the FCNM. The purpose of the fund was to pay much of the costs involved in pursuing a legal action against the UK Government. The action was deemed necessary after government’s constant, dogmatic and wholly irrational refusal to include the Cornish within an international treaty designed to, among other things, introduce educational pluralism in their traditional homeland and thus bring to an end the forced assimilation of the Cornish people. Whilst £40K in pledges were obtained this was deemed insufficient.
With the arrival of the New Labour government in the United Kingdom in the mid 1990s, a process was begun that resulted in devolved governmental bodies being given to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. At this time the Government also made the offer of devolution to any ‘English region’ that could prove an interest. Following a popular campaign for a Cornish assembly, supported by a petition of 50,000 signatures, the government reneged on its promise, adding that only what it considered to be a ‘region’ could be offered an assembly. For ministers, Cornwall was but a subdivision of a larger and somewhat artificial Southwest region. For many Cornish residents, however, Cornwall is one of the six Celtic nations of the European Atlantic arc and a constitutional royal duchy.
Over the last three centuries, Cornwall has gone from being on the leading edge of the industrial revolution to being one of the poorest regions of Europe. In recent history Kernow has qualified for Objective One Funding from the EU, as have many regions of the former communist block. Today little has changed, with Cornwall still qualifying for European funding. Low wages, unskilled ‘McJobs’, poverty, social problems, drugs, and rocketing housing prices provide an often hidden face to the Cornwall of weekend holiday breaks. Coupled with this, Cornwall has seen the centralisation of services, institutions and government bodies, followed by the skilled jobs they entail, out of the Duchy. This process has been much to the benefit of various undemocratic and faceless ‘South West of England’ unelected governmental bodies and quangos.
To begin to address the above problems, many in Cornwall, including Cornish nationalists Mebyon Kernow, have called for decision making powers to be devolved to a Cornish body of governance. Cornwall Council’s February 2003 MORI Poll showed 55% in favour of a democratically-elected, fully-devolved regional assembly for Cornwall, (an increase from 46% in favour in a 2002 poll). In 2000, The Cornish Constitutional Convention launched a campaign that resulted in a petition signed by 50,000 people calling for a fully devolved Cornish assembly. The campaign generated support from across the political spectrum in Cornwall. To date it has been the largest expression of popular support for devolution in the whole of the United Kingdom. The UK government has ignored all requests for greater Cornish home rule. Indeed, at the moment of writing, Cornwall is facing the end of its 1000 year old territorial integrity and sharing an MP with part of English Devonshire : http://keepcornwallwhole.org/
So it must be asked why UK governments are so stubborn when it comes to giving the Cornish any form of devolution or recognition? Perhaps the answer rests in out constitutional subsoil.
Even if the UK government, Duchy authority, or history curriculum are loathed to touch the subject, Cornwall does in fact have a distinct constitutional history as a Duchy with an autonomous parliamentary legal system called the Stannaries. Some of the latest research on the Duchy of Cornwall from John Kirkhope, solicitor and PhD student, can be found here: “A Mysterious, Arcane and Unique Corner of our Constitution”: The Laws Relating to the Duchy of Cornwall : http://www.research.plymouth.ac.uk/plr/vol3/Kirkhope.pdf
In present day Cornwall the playing field is tilted against the Cornish identity. The impression promoted is that the Cornish nation has only ever been an insignificant sub-division of some awe-inspiring, all-powerful, fully homogeneous, fixed and eternal England. With the English education system encouraging English nationalism in Cornwall at the expense of the Cornish identity, the exploitation of Cornwall has become acceptable to the state while the absence from English law of the international right to an enforceable equality before the law has protected the Duchy authority from an effective legal challenge. The result is that the Duke of Cornwall’s fortune from Cornish assets continues to relieve England of paying tax to support the heir to the throne while all moves that would empower the Cornish, hence threatening the Duchy, have been stifled. The Duchy of Cornwall Human Rights Association website (http://duchyofcornwall.eu/) explores these Cornish constitutional issues in much greater detail. Equally the revived Cornish Stannary Parliament acts as a pressure group focusing on Cornish rights and constitutional issues.
When the UK government and Duchy authority finally decide to be honest about the autonomous position of the Duchy of Cornwall within the UK perhaps then an open debate about Cornish devolution and our future governance can begin. We wait with interest, if also a little cynicism, a positive response to the Cornish question from the coalition government.
Stick your unwanted (EU) “Regions” where the Sun don’t shine!.
English Parliament NOW!.
1. Regions are the most unpopular option for local governance in England – 78% reject them in polls and the one referendum in Northumberland and Durham.
2. The most populat option is an English Parliament, 63% of those polled want one on average.
3. There are two reasons England does not have a parliament
a. It is in the UK (so a good reason to get out of the UK because people keep banging on about blasted, reviled regions). If England were not in the Union it would obviously have its own parliament.
b. The Scottish Parliament has made all MPs redundant in Scotland, so an English Parliament would make them all pointless across the whole of the UK. Their opposition is merely to preserve their jobs.
If England is bust up into regions and Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland then opt for independence then the English will be rendered stateless and powerless. Oh wait! That’s the plan!
Stephen, I was with you until the part of claiming that breaking up England was part of the plan. Trust me, if the secret overlords ( whoever they are) want to break up England, then they won’t be trying it in a referendum. A referendum is a strange way to ‘force’ something on people.
You will get a better reception if you focus instead on explaining what advantages a Parliament and civil service based in London to represent some 50 million will have over regional institutions with civil services based locally to represent a fraction of that amount . The point of my piece was to argue that the benefits of devolution will not be had if England chooses to keep power centralised in Whitehall, merely excluding Welsh and Scottish MPs. Devolution is about transferring power away from the centre, and no proposals for a English Parliament (over regions) have yet grasped this.
Furthermore it is absurd to suggest that regional assemblies will break up England. The United States has a federal system with a great deal of powers operated at the state level (or lower), and has developed quite distinct political cultures – think of the differences between Massachusetts and Texas for example. Does anybody seriously think these regional differences mean that the United States cannot be regarded as Nation?
Clearly the England question needs to be resolved. But have you considered what will happen if places like Cornwall vote for a regional assembly (quite likely if Phillip is to be believed), London keeps it’s Mayor, but other regions vote to remain governed by Whitehall? What will happen then? Will the newly created English Parliament respect the verdicts in regions that prefer local assemblies?
Best,
James
@Ian Campbell,
You are assuming that England has a coherent national identity strong enough to warrant one centralised national parliament. From my Cornish perspective I can only disagree. I don’t want another pointless parliament with its mandarins running the show in London. Give me a Cornish assembly anyday.
@David,
Whilst I’m happy to debate with you please refrain from childish bating. It does you and your cause no good.
I don’t consider Cornwall to be part of England – historically, culturally or constitutionally – however for the purposes of this debate, due Anglo-British twistory, Cornwall will be considered as part of England.
So tell me why I as a Cornish man, or a Northumbrian or Yorkshireman, would want an English parliament?