CEP comment on Queen's speech 2008
campaign for an english parliament press release logo new
Welcome to the British Youth Council's site, providing up-to-date information about our policy and campaigning work and access to our key briefings, press releases and policy research. |  |
Gay rights activists have welcomed a new leaflet from the Catholic Church in England and Wales urging greater respect towards homosexuals. |  |
A sex worker comments on why government proposals put women in danger. |  |
Wednesday, 03, Dec 2008 12:00
The CEP comment on the Queen's speech has to be on the Equality Bill which is intended to 'simplify and harmonise discrimination law'. The Bill in common with existing discrimination law has a profound and flagrant hypocrisy and injustice at its heart because not a single clause or proposal in it addresses the discrimination against the people of England enshrined and embedded in existing legislation which all that this Bill intends to do is re-organise and re-focus. It not only does nothing to abolish the discrimination which English people live under but it also maintains the huge raft of advantages which the people of Scotland enjoys over the people of England. The only correct comment that can be made is that the Bill is hypocritical and unjust.
The Bill does not address the following areas of flagrant discrimination:
-by reason of the Barnett Formula each Scottish man, woman and child receives £1600 more in Exchequer expenditure than an English man, woman or child in educational, health and social care provision.
-by reason of having its own parliament Scotland has been able to abolish tuition and top-up fees for its university student, even those attending English universities, while English students are being forced to pay both and leave universities with debts of £15000 to £20000
-Scottish elderly receive free personal care denied to English elderly
-in Scottish all dental and eye tests are free, not in England.
-in Scotland council tax has been frozen for three years while in England its increase is yearly and inexorable.
-in Scotland many very advanced medications for eye disease and cancers are available free on the NHS which are not available in England unless ill people pay for them privately.
-Scotland by reason of the 1998 devolution legislation is now self-governing in at least 70% of major government matters, such as health, education, social services, legal administration, culture, sport and media, forestry, fisheries, agriculture etc,
-Scottish MPs can be ministers in every department of government of England's internal affairs, while no English MP can be a minister of any department of government of Scotland's internal affairs.
-Scottish MPs can vote on every single aspect of English internal government while no English MP can vote on any aspect of Scotland's internal government.
-Scotland along with Wales and Northern Ireland, by reason of the 1998 devolution legislation, now have their own poltical and constitutional existence. England constitutionally and politcally does not even exist.
If this raft of discrimination and injustice was inflicted upon any people by reason of the colour of their skin or their religion or their gender, there would be a huge outcry. But it is being inflicted upon the people of England. The contradicts every single clause of the Human Rights Aact. It is totally and flagrantly hypocritical that Mr Gordon Brown, MP for a Scottish seat, and his government has an Equality Bill in his programme of legislation which does not address one item of it. And to make matters worse, which would be difficult, the fact is that it is the English taxpayer who who is footing the bill for the very advantages every Scot is getting, which they themselves do not get. The Financial Times calculated that each English taxpayer pays an extra £281 per annum to enable Scotland to enjoy the benefits of the Barnett Formua and those lavished upon it by the Scottish Parliament since devolution. How unbalanced and unfair has the Union become!
Michael Knowles
Head of the Media Unit of the Campaign for an English Parliament (www.thecep.org.uk)
email: michael-knowles@tiscali.co.uk. Tel: 01260 271139