Government of Wales Bill

I think that a Joint Committee approach has worked extremely well in the past, because it promotes a positive atmosphere of Assembly Members and Members of Parliament working together. I hope that that will develop as the process in the Bill develops. The position of the official Opposition confuses me. In recent years in this Parliament, legislation appropriate to Wales or directed at Wales alone has been drafted in the form of enabling legislation and has been passed either in a separate Bill or as a Wales-only section of a larger Bill. It seems to me that there has been little difficulty with those proposals being considered by Joint Committees, being drafted in the broadest terms in primary legislation and passed in those terms by this Parliament, and the Assembly implementing the proposals at a later stage, after its process has been gone through. It has not been necessary after the Assembly has gone through its process to bring legislation back to this place for a vote, as the official Opposition are suggesting should happen, and it would be unnecessary after the Bill was passed if Members of Parliament were closely involved at an early stage of the process.