Difficult question.  I voted for the "doesn't need one, dominates Westminister" option.

The Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly (why not make it a full-fledged Parliament?) were/are great ideas, the Scottish one in particular has gone some way towards undoing some of the more stupid policies enacted by the Blair government, such as abolishing tuition fees for university students (which exists in England and Wales).

How effective could a proper English Parliament be, however?  Which areas could it legislate?  Education?  Health?  Defence?  If there ever is one, it should be elected by proportional representation and have fixed terms, e.g. four years, so you don't get unpopular administrations (Major in 1997) hanging on until the last minute to call an election (and then losing it badly).

I'm unconvinced as to the need of an English Parliament.  However, I think that regional assemblies (as opposed to fully-blown Parliaments) would be a good idea and could be used to get rid of some of the many quangos out there and bring democracy closer to the people.

(My first ever comment on E.T. - woo!)

The difficulty of having an English Parliament is that England contains the great majority of the UK population. Federal type arrangements do not work well when one of the 'states' contains most of the population and wealth of the country. I imagine the UK politicians would fear that the English First Minister would do to the UK Prime Minister what Russian President Boris Yeltsin did to Soviet President Gorbachev.

The Liberal Democrats have long favoured a federal arrangement, with English regions joining the non-English countries of the UK as the 'states' of the federation. There is however no public demand for it.

There are regional governments in England, although most of the English would be surprised to know that. The Regional Chambers are composed of indirectly elected local councillors. They have few powers.

The Labour Party tried to create directly elected Regional Assemblies, which were going to be weaker than that in London and the National Assembly in Wales. However a referendum in North East England (a very pro-Labour region remote from London) decisively rejected the idea. Labour has not explained what they are going to do next on the issue. They seem content to leave things as they are.

The Conservative Party thinks that only the English members of the Westminster Parliament should vote on issues like Education and Health in England. The problem with that is what happens when the UK and English majorities are of different parties. Would the UK government be expected to fund things they did not agree with?

The status quo is illogical but may endure for many years as there is no consensus to change it.

This is one of the unresolved problems of Scottish (and to some extent Welsh) devolution AKA "The West Lothian Question".

The situation is now quite the same as the States/Federal division in the US or for that matter Germany. Scotland and Northern Ireland have seperate legal systems but England and Wales share criminal and civil laws but the Welsh Assembly has certain powers like responsibility for Education. There are therefore votes in the Westminster parliament that affect the whole of the UK, England and Wales only and England only. Despite this all MPs can vote. Scottish Nationalist MPs absent themselves from such votes on principle.

The Labour party depends on its Scottish and Welsh  MPs for its majoriy on votes concerning England only which is why the idea of an "English Grand Committee" where only English MPs would vote on English matters, is unlikely to come about. But then the English are well used to the PM being a "perfidious Scot" - that includes Blair.