Government of Wales Bill

Whatever questions people in Wales are currently asking about devolution, I do not believe that the Bill provides the answers. It contains useful measures to enhance the effectiveness of the Assembly’s workings, which I welcome, but at its heart lies a very unwelcome political fix. I refer to part 3, which sets out the Order-in-Council procedure for granting further law-making powers to the Assembly. By constructing a hugely complex procedure whereby the Assembly can essentially legislate for itself in the fields devolved to it by part 1 of schedule 5, and which requires Parliament to give its consent, the Secretary of State has pulled off the ultimate devolution trick. He can tell his impatient pro-devolution colleagues in the Assembly that he has given them full law-making powers in all but name. He can also tell colleagues who are more cautious about devolution—some may be present now—that Parliament is retaining its sovereignty and that part 3 does not constitute a significant extension of current practice. It is a political fix and I do not believe that the British constitution should be bent and shaped by such a fix. Apart from the constitutional issues, I am very concerned about the way in which the Order-in-Council procedure would work in practice. It seems to rely heavily on a large measure of good will and shared objectives on the part of the Secretary of State and the Welsh Assembly Government. It is not difficult to envisage circumstances in which the relationship might not be so cordial and the scope for disappointment, confusion and, perhaps, legislative breakdown could be considerable. If we are to extend and deepen the devolution settlement, the Order-in-Council mechanism, which emasculates Parliament and bypasses a referendum, is certainly not the way to do it. Without doubt, the Bill develops the settlement in a way to which the people of Wales never assented when they voted by a 1 per cent. majority to establish the Assembly in 1997. It is simply not true that, as the Secretary of State would have us believe, the Government of Wales Act 1998 provided for exactly this kind of arrangement. As has already been said today, Lord Richard himself argued that the proposals for Orders in Council had the potential to be a"““concealed grant of almost a direct legislative competence down to Cardiff””." Professor Rawlings of the London School of Economics has argued that the approach could be described as a"““form of quasi-legislative devolution””." The claim that the Order-in-Council procedure is nothing more than what was agreed to by the Welsh people in 1997 is a bizarre and misleading interpretation of the Bill. The truth is that it goes significantly beyond what was agreed to following the referendum eight years ago—which is why, if part 3 is to be implemented, it should be implemented only after a new referendum decision. The one fundamental driving force for devolution should be the people of Wales, and what they want for their country. If they want to take the devolution settlement further to give the Assembly full law-making powers, let us get on with it by using part 4. If they do not want that, let us not try to bring it about by using a byzantine alternative route that would risk further alienating Welsh people from the body that is supposed to bring decision making closer to them. It is essential for those making policy to move in step with Welsh opinion. Otherwise, they will risk creating an even more remote devolved body that will lack real meaning for the Welsh people. It is worth reminding ourselves just how divided the Welsh nation was over the original devolution question in 1997. Wales was split down the middle on whether to create the National Assembly. Eleven of the 22 Welsh local authority areas returned no verdicts, while just 559,000 people—a mere 25 per cent. of the Welsh electorate—voted in favour. At the time, many of us believed strongly that that was a flimsy basis for the creation of an Assembly that could command popular legitimacy and interest, but we in the Conservative party accepted the fact of devolution, and, as many neutral commentators have said, the Conservative group in the Assembly has perhaps worked harder than anyone else to make the institution work. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore the fact that large chunks of the Welsh electorate are disengaged from devolution. At the first Assembly election in 1999, there was a 46 per cent. turnout and just over 1 million people voted. In 2003, only 850,000 votes were cast. There was a 38 per cent. turnout, about the same as the United Kingdom turnout for the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, an institution that is supposed to represent the very paragon of remoteness to the people of this country. That is a dreadful record for such a young institution, which was set up to satisfy some unmet desire for devolution on the part of the Welsh people.