Government of Wales Bill

I do not know where the hon. Lady has done her research, but the First Minister is fully signed up to this policy. At a special Welsh Labour conference on 11 September 2004, he voted for and backed the manifesto on which we stood in May last year that unanimously endorsed the policy. He is enthusiastically backing the policy and she should not take his name in vain in that way. Although the proposals in the Bill were in Labour’s manifesto for an historic third term, it is right to acknowledge the part that people from all parties have played in the debate on the future powers and electoral arrangements of the Assembly. Those people include Lord Richard of Ammanford and the members of his commission who submitted a detailed report to the Welsh Assembly Government in 2004. I pay tribute to Lord Richard for the strength of his advocacy. He remains a tribune for Welsh reform, and we look forward to his contributions when the Bill reaches the House of Lords. Members of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis), have provided expert analysis to inform the debate about the Bill, as have members of the Assembly committee, chaired by the Presiding Officer, Lord Elis-Thomas. The vast majority of clauses in this 165-clause Bill should have cross-party support. Ninety-three clauses re-enact, with only minor modifications, those from the 1998 Act. For example, clauses 145 to 147 on Welsh public records, which applied just to the Assembly as a corporate body under the old Act, have been modified to apply to the Welsh Assembly Government and the Assembly Commission separately. A further 47 entirely new clauses have been incorporated into the Bill to establish a proper legislature to hold the Executive to account—something that all parties support. Many of those provisions draw directly from existing statutes, which provide a successful model for what we are trying to achieve in Wales. For example, the provisions establishing the Assembly Commission are drawn almost word for word from the provisions in the Scotland Act 1998, which set up the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body. I hope that those clauses, too, will prove uncontentious, so that the vast majority of clauses—at least 140 of the 165 clauses—will have cross-party support. Just 24 clauses concern extra powers—the real meat of the Bill—and one clause from the 1998 Act has been amended so as to ban candidates from simultaneously standing in both a constituency and for a region, whether as a list candidate or as an individual. The Bill will set up the Welsh Assembly Government as an entity in its own right, rather than as an off-shoot of the National Assembly, as it is now. In future, it will be much clearer who is responsible for taking decisions and who should be accountable for them. Instead of an Assembly modelled on old local government lines, there will be a new Westminster-type structure with a clear distinction between the Welsh Assembly Government and the Assembly acting as a proper legislature, holding Ministers to account. This change has support from all parties in the Assembly and will make for better government and better public understanding of the differences between the responsibilities of Ministers on the one hand, and the role of Opposition parties and Back Benchers of all parties on the other. Secondly, the Bill will give the Assembly enhanced powers to take decisions affecting the people of Wales in areas approved by Parliament on a case-by-case basis.