Foulkes calls for overhaul that would see him lose two jobs

Published on Thursday 26 March 2009 08:58

LABOUR peer George Foulkes has called for both the House of Lords and the list system to elect MSPs at the Scottish Parliament to be scrapped – a move which would lose him two jobs.

In a submission to the cross-party Calman Commission, which is looking into the future of devolution, he argues England should get its own parliament, Westminster should become a single-chamber legislature and Holyrood should change its voting system.

Lothians MSP Lord Foulkes, who started his political career as an Edinburgh councillor, said he had voted for abolition of the House of Lords when he was in the Commons and had not changed his mind since he was made a peer in 2005.

"The important thing is not whether I have a job or not," he said.

"I always find something to do and that would continue to be the case."

Lord Foulkes – or Baron Foulkes of Cumnock – said an elected House of Lords would challenge the Commons' supremacy and an appointed Lords would continue to have its legitimacy questioned.

He told the Calman Commission his solution to the constitutional question is to scrap Westminster's second chamber and use the Lords chamber to house an elected English Parliament.

He said it would create a "more logical and symmetrical structure" if England had its own devolved legislature to balance the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies. He admitted the plan was well beyond the Calman Commission's remit.

He said: "A unicameral Westminster, achieved by the abolition of the Lords, with an elected English Parliament meeting in the Lords chamber would solve a number of problems."

In his submission he also urged a change to the current voting system for the Scottish Parliament, which sees 73 constituency MSPs elected first-past-the-post and 56 regional members elected via a top-up list to make the parties' share of the seats match their share of the vote.

Lord Foulkes said: "The regional list system is a farce."

He said he had been elected with almost no campaign and only because Labour lost two constituency seats in the Lothians.

He also pointed out that if Margo MacDonald resigned she could not be replaced because there was no-one else on her "list" to fill her place.

He said he would have preferred the first-past-the-post system for Holyrood, but voted for the existing system in line with the party whip.

He said: "I am not in favour of proportional representation, but believe any other PR system would be better than the one we currently have."