Government of Wales Bill

Very shortly. I shall finish on this point. Ironically, the Secretary of State and the Conservatives are trying to resist what the Liberal Democrats want—for trust to be placed in the Assembly to dispatch primary powers in a fashion similar to the Scottish Parliament and for trust to be placed in the Welsh people, through the electoral process, to elect Assembly Members whom they trust with those responsibilities. As it is at the moment, the Secretary of State’s office has the enormous power to run with or kill legislation. We have seen the taming of the three Welsh Conservative Members. It is a delight to note the influence that the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham has already had, but I am more than a little surprised by their mouse-like silence. The guns of Monmouth have been silenced, and the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) has been tamed by the new shadow Secretary of State for Wales. However, I suspect that underneath their docile fac””ade, those three hon. Members are still the same people whom we knew and loved before. I would counsel the hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) that, as the Liberal Democrats know all too well, a revolution can start with a whisper. If the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham wishes to lead her Back-Bench colleagues through the Lobby, she must explain what the transformation on the road to Damascus has been framed on. If the Conservatives really want to reassure us that they are pro-devolution, they must explain why, as the Secretary of State pointed out, they have tabled a reasoned amendment that would abolish the Bill before it had received its Second Reading—that is the nature of the vote. I have heard the words of the hon. Lady and her boss, but it will take more than words to convince me that there has been such a transformation and that a Conservative Government would be committed to devolution in the way in which I have described.