Government of Wales Bill

I am grateful for that intervention, because I do not think that the Secretary of State understands the procedure of this House at all. This is the Committee stage of a Bill that is an important constitutional measure. It is being held on the Floor of the House so that hon. Members, and especially Opposition Members, can probe and question the Government about their proposals. The headline in The Western Mail today was ““Hain accuses Tories of a bid to ‘castrate’ Assembly””. The Secretary of State said that the amendments that we have tabled"““are a total insult to the people of Wales. Not only do they prove that the Tories still don’t understand devolution and don’t trust the Assembly. They show that the Tories are trying to turn the clock back and reverse the outcome of the 1997 referendum.””" Most extraordinarily of all, he alleged that Tory amendments to the Bill would involve not only a referendum first but the clearing of a long list of hurdles. The Secretary of State has been in this House longer than I have and he can read the amendments that we have tabled. May I gently point out to him that some of them adopt the alternative position? That seems not to have dawned on him in considering the Bill. [Interruption.] He says, ““They are all down there.”” This is a classic illustration of all that is wrong with this Government. What does he think that we are supposed to be doing here today? We are supposed to be scrutinising and probing and putting proposals to the Government that might indeed commend themselves to him. Yet all he does is to lump our amendments together, put out a propaganda statement that is worthy of South Africa’s apartheid regime in terms of trying to blacken one’s opponents, and tell the Committee that this is a wrecking procedure. It is nothing of the kind. [Interruption.] If the Secretary of State would listen, he would discover those areas of the Bill that we think could be improved, and those about which we are concerned. One way in which we might address the problem that I identified is to provide a mechanism through which the House of Commons—and, indeed, the House of Lords—can both vote to empower the Assembly to work out the detail of such legislation and enact it, and vote on that legislation once it has been prepared, so as to give its seal of approval. That mechanism does not involve 16 more hoops—it involves one.