> London has it relatively easy; the only layer of government above it is the national one.
Is that actually true? I mean, are there no vestiges of England, Scotland and Wales in the UK?
Is that actually true? I mean, are there no vestiges of England, Scotland and Wales in the UK?
The once-English institutions of parliament, the crown, and its ministers became those of Great Britain first and the United Kingdom subsequently. But the remit of the UK government in devolved matters is limited in some cases to some subset of {England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland}, e.g., the first two and the fourth. Those powers are exercised qua the British government, not qua some English, English and Welsh, or English, Welsh, and Northern Irish (i.a.) government, none of which exist.
There is a body of law peculiar to England. It is administered by the English and Welsh courts, from which an appeal may lie to the UK Supreme Court or the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as the case may be.
A large exception to these remarks is the Church of England; the Churches of Ireland and Wales were disestablished in 1869 and 1914 respectively.
Firstly, note that all constituent countries elect MPs to the UK's Westminster parliament, because there are many laws that affect the entire country, and are controlled centrally.
Between 1707 and 1997 (20 years _after_ asking the question!), _all_ laws for Scotland were made in Westminster, and voted on by _all_ MPs. Laws for Scotland get their own bills because Scotland retains its own legal system. Likewise Northern Ireland, but _not_ Wales. Wales shares the same legal system as England, which is why the phrase "England and Wales" appears often.
Since Scottish devolution, certain powers were _reserved_ for Westminster, and the rest of the laws for Scotland are now made in a separately elected Scottish parliament. But there are still plenty of laws which affect Scotland, sometimes _exclusively_ affect Scotland due to the reserved powers having the ability to override choices that Scotland has made for itself. Those laws are still made in Westminster, English MPs can still vote on them and easily win, and so Scots still need representation in the Westminster parliament.
The main part of the West Lothian question, which is where there are sometimes laws that _exclusively_ affect England and Wales, why do Scottish MPs get to vote on them?, was handled by the Scottish MPs voluntarily not voting on them. They managed to do this for centuries without any formal process. Then after the 2015 election, the UK government brought in the EVEL process (English Votes for English Laws), which gave English MPs a "veto" on laws that only affected England. Since the pandemic, Westminster chose to drop EVEL, presumably because the voluntary system of Scottish MPs abstaining from voting on England-only bills worked just fine!
What's relevant for this discussion is that _London_ has an elected mayor, which makes it a special case. It has its own autonomy, within England, which supposedly doesn't have any special carve outs unlike Scotland/Wales/NI... in reality, it has quite a few: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directly_elected_mayors_in_Eng...
Did they? Wikipedia says this:
> In establishing foundation hospitals and increasing student tuition fees in England, Scottish votes were decisive in getting the measures through.[10] The vote on foundation hospitals in November 2003 only applied to England – had the vote been restricted to English MPs then the government would have been defeated.[11] Had there been a vote by English MPs only on tuition fees in January 2004, the government would have lost because of a rebellion on their own benches.[12]
In another case of shenanigans, it's an established procedure that if you can't physically turn up to the HoC to give your vote, you find an opponent and pair off with them, they abstain in order to give the equivalent outcome of you turning up to vote. What if they go back on their promise and vote anyway? It happened: https://theconversation.com/pairing-and-why-it-matters-in-th... - has anything been done about it? Not really.
The politics of Westminster are not in the habit of looking at every infraction and locking down process tightly. If Scottish MPs habitually voted on English-only legislation, and if it affected the outcome (which is very rare indeed as there are only 59 Scottish MPs versus 533 English MPs), there would be more concern, but as they generally don't and it generally doesn't, the formal process giving English MPs a veto on English-only legislation only lasted 5 years out of the past 316.