Government of Wales Bill

I am grateful for the opportunity to pick up some of what was said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer). I remind the Committee that the last referendum was indeed very narrowly won, and that only one in four people voted in favour of the Assembly. The referendum was narrowly won, despite the fact that the Government spent vast amounts of money putting out one document after another purporting to show what a utopia Wales would be if and when the referendum were won. To some extent, they also encouraged people to vote in favour of the Assembly by deliberately holding the referendum one week after the referendum in Scotland. They were not prepared to risk Wales voting on the same day. Most important, they made it clear all along that the people of Wales would be voting on a Welsh Assembly, not a Parliament. Despite all that, they could only get a very narrow result in favour of a Welsh Assembly—the difference was about 2,000 votes. To change the ground rules just seven years or so after that referendum would be unfair and cheat the people of Wales. The reality is that we are embarking on a huge constitutional change that has not been thought through properly. No one has sat down in government and thought where they want the British constitution to be and how they will reach that state. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal has pointed out, we still have the huge difficulty of providing an answer to the West Lothian question. I do not happen to know what the answer is. We cannot carry on with the status quo. I do not like the idea of more politicians sitting in an English Parliament. I tend to go along with my right hon. Friend’s view that preventing Welsh and Scottish Members from voting is the answer, but the constitution is a fragile flower and if we are going to start tampering with it, we need to be clear what we are trying to achieve. For example, there is, within one strand of the Conservative party, a perfectly logical argument for some sort of federal United Kingdom. I do not happen to share that argument but I can see the logic of it. However, if one is going to go down that line, one has to say so from the start and set out exactly how it will be achieved on an equitable basis. We now have the prospect of yet more powers for the Welsh Assembly without any of those other questions being answered, and those questions will get bigger and bigger. That is why it is important that we have a referendum. It is only fair. Before the referendum took place, the former Secretary of State for Wales, Ron Davies, was asked in The Western Mail:"““Is a Welsh Assembly seen as an end in itself, or the first step towards a fully federal system in Britain””." He said:"““This question is based on a false antithesis. It is an end in itself””." If the Welsh Assembly were an end in itself back in 1998, it is completely wrong that we should come back just a few years later to discuss giving it significant further powers, without any prospect of a further referendum. Therefore, I support the amendment.