In a statement of the Conservatives' policy on constitutional change, Tory leader William Hague has said he will end the right of Scottish MPs to vote in Westminster on matters which have been transferred to the Scottish parliament.

In a speech to Magdalen College, Oxford, on Monday evening he attacked Labour's constitutional changes, including the system that allowed Scottish Labour MSPs to vote in the Scottish parliament for one system of tuition fees for their constituents and at the same time vote to impose a different system on England.

Describing this as an "explosive" situation which needs to be addressed, he promised that a future Conservative government would ensure in its "opening days" that MPs representing English constituencies have an exclusive say over England-only legislation: "There will be English votes on English laws." He added that the next Conservative government will reduce the number of Scottish MPs to bring equal representation for Scotland and England.

Hague went on to address a wide range of other matters. On reform of the Commons he accepted recommendations to make prime ministers questions bi-weekly and to make appointments to select committees independent of party managers. He attacked the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights as "a charter for litigious lawyers at the expense of our democratic institutions" and promised to enshrine in law "the powers and rights that we hold today...so that no stroke of a pen from Brussels, or retrospective court judgement, can take those rights away."