A Parliament for England

Two thirds of voters (68%) in England believe England should have its own Parliament with similar powers to those of the Scottish Parliament, according to a new ICM poll for the Rowntree-backed democracy campaign group POWER2010 published on St George’s Day.

The findings come as POWER2010 stage a huge guerrilla-style projection of the St George’s flag with the words ‘Home Rule’ onto the Palace of Westminster to brand it English for a day.

The ICM poll shows a large majority (70%) of voters say that laws for England should be made by the House of Commons but only MPs representing English constituencies should be able to vote on them. English Votes on English Laws (EVoEL) is one of the five changes to fix politics backed by over 100,000 votes which now forms the POWER Pledge being put to all candidates standing in the General Election.

The poll of 1033 people across England also shows that less than a quarter (23%) of people in England feels either “more English than British” or “English not British”. Almost half – or 46% - of those questioned in the poll say they feel “equally British and English”. 24% of those questioned said they feel either “British not English” or “more British than English”, according to the poll. POWER2010 says this means that the fairness of decision-making matters more to people than Englishness.

Director of POWER2010, Pam Giddy, said today:

England was not mentioned once in the leaders’ debate and has not featured at all during this campaign so far. Yet we now know people want a fairer way of making decisions that affect England.

It suddenly feels like we are on the cusp of seismic changes to the way our politics is done. But so long as the unfair system we have at the moment persists it can only play into the hands of undemocratic voices like the BNP. With all the talk of reform in the air politicians should not duck the English question, but use the opportunity of St George’s day to say where they stand.

Cranmer would like to wish all of his readers and communicants a happy St George's Day, and a day of reflection, appreciation and gratitude for the Bard, who was born (and died) today.