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Just before the Scottish referendum the leaders of the three main Westminster parties promised to devolve more powers to Scotland in the event of a No vote. Implicit in that was that there should be changes to the way the rest of the UK works. Quite what those changes will be is another matter although all three parties would cede significant tax varying powers.

The Tories have revived their idea of "English votes for English laws". In other words, Scottish MPs would not be allowed to vote on issues which are devolved to Scotland on the grounds that the vote does not affect their constituents. This has a number of flaws. First, it is purely party political. The Tories know that it will make it harder for any future Labour government as they may not have a majority without Scottish MPs. It also ignores the fact that all MPs are elected to a UK parliament and therefore have a right to participate in all votes. After all, the Tories were perfectly happy to use the votes of English MPs to impose the Poll Tax on Scotland. It would also mean potentially having ministers who could not vote for their own department's legislation.

The daftest idea has come from Kenneth Baker (former Tory minister accurately represented on Spitting Image as a slug) who has suggested that UK-wide matters would be discussed on Monday and Friday while English matters would occupy Tuesday to Thursday. Therefore, Scottish MPs would have to travel to and from Westminster twice a week. Of course, a cynic may think that he is hoping that many Scottish MPs (and only one of them is a Tory at the moment) would attend on Monday or Friday but not both.

Unless Charlie, Danny or Tirren know better, Labour's plans are unclear.

The Lib Dems have been in favour of further devolution for decades. This would involve elected regional assemblies in England rather than an English parliament (whether elected or cobbled together as above). These assemblies would have wide-ranging powers. As a result the number of MPs would be reduced significantly as they would have less to do. There are two main objections to an English parliament even if it is elected. First, it would be dominated by London and the South East with the City of London still calling the shots. Second, any federal structure cannot function effectively if more than 80% of the population live in one of the four constituent parts.

The Tories have been making a lot of noise about how Scottish MPs would be able to vote on tax matters which no longer affected Scotland if the Scottish parliament was able to set its own rates. That can be resolved. We could have something similar to the US Federal Tax with the regions having the power to raise additional funds though a regional income tax. The Federal Tax would raise enough to pay for federal matters such as defence as well as allocating grants to the regions - and local government - for redistributive purposes. Administration could be done centrally to avoid employers having to handle a multitude of tax rates.

I an sympathetic to the idea of using the regional assemblies to populate the second chamber in the same way that the make-up of the German second chamber is dependent on the make-up of the state governments. The regional assemblies (elected by PR) would nominate members in proportion to their numbers in the assembly. Ideally, we would also follow Germany in having the regional assemblies elected at various times rather than all at the same time. Therefore, the make-up of the second chamber would change gradually throughout the lifetime of a parliament.

Discuss.