Dear Mr Clegg

It's probably a waste of electricity sending this email, but you never know...

Dear Mr Clegg,

I read with interest, and a fair bit of approval, your speech today (7th April 2010) on political reform. But I was dismayed that you did not tackle the West Lothian Question which pertains to the voting rights of Westminster MPs, or the wider 'English Question' which asks how England should be governed. The Conservative Party with their 'English Votes on English Laws' prefer a Westminster-centric, top-down, mitigation of the West Lothian Question, and do not even attempt to answer the 'English Question', presumably because only the people themselves can answer the question and the Tories are terrified of popular sovereignty. Whilst Labour with their regional committees and the 'don't ask it' response to the West Lothian Question, just treat England as an irrelevance, an after-thought. But what is Nick Clegg's view?

In a letter to me in January 2006, your predecessor, Ming Campbell, wrote:

As a Scot I do not feel it is for me to prescribe the best solution for England. It is however clear that until England is in some shape or another devolved the federal structure of the United Kingdom will remain out of balance.

Scotland achieved a wide consensus by convening a constitutional convention whose recommendations formed the basis for the current settlement. England deserves no less. It is time for an English constitutional convention.

Do the Liberal Democrats in 2010 support the idea of a national public consultation and an English Constitutional Convention, so that the English can answer the English Question from the bottom up to decide how we the people want England to be governed, similar to the Scottish Constitutional Convention and Claim of Right that the Lib Dems supported for Scotland?

If not, could you tell me what your top-down solution is?

Many thanks,