Government of Wales Bill

I shall make only a short contribution to the debate, because I know that a number of Labour Members also want to speak. When I heard the Secretary of State extol the virtues of everything that the Government had done for Wales, including creating the post of Secretary of State for Wales, I bore it in mind that they decided to merge the post of Secretary of State, making it a half job, which clearly it is not. The only disagreement that I had with the former Leader of the Opposition was when he decided to have the shadow post of Secretary of State for Wales outside the shadow Cabinet. I thought that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) was wrong, and that Wales deserved a better status. I am delighted that the new leader of the Conservative party has decided to put the post of the shadow Secretary of State for Wales back into the shadow Cabinet. I am delighted also that my hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) has secured that position. I know that she will enjoy the role, as I did when I undertook it. The people of Wales will take my hon. Friend very much to heart as she travels around and discovers some of the parts of Wales that I did not get round to, despite the fact that I lived in Wales for about 30 years. I wish my hon. Friend well in her position. She has one great advantage that I did not have when I did the job, which is that she has three Conservative Members in Wales sitting with her and supporting her. They are a tremendous addition to our team. They are all live wires, and they will make a fantastic contribution. I want to make a couple of points. First, everyone has spoken about proportional representation. I am not a fan of PR—I am a first-past-the-post man. I have always believed in that system, and think that it is the right way to proceed. Clearly, it has worked against us in Wales. As I said, we had no Welsh MPs for eight years, even though we were the second party of Wales, given the percentage of support that we received from the Welsh people. I am not a Lib Dem—I do not believe in an electoral system that favours my party. Either it is right or it is not. If we are to understand the situation, we must accept that the electoral system that Labour Members are all rubbishing today is the one that their party introduced at the time of devolution. It is their system, and if it is wrong, they were wrong to introduce it. We were not hammering for it. During the passage of the first Government of Wales Bill, we did not say what a wonderful electoral system it was. Quite the reverse, even though it benefited us.