Government of Wales Bill

I also support the amendment wholeheartedly because it seeks to redress the fundamental dishonesty of the Bill, namely, that the powers that are to be transferred are so small and modest that they do not need to be put to a vote of the Welsh people. We have heard already that those powers can be used for the purpose of amending, extending or repealing Acts of Parliament. It is hard to think of powers that can be more extensive than those. We have heard that in 1997 it was made abundantly clear to the people of Wales what they were voting for—an Assembly that would assume responsibility for exercising the powers that were at that stage exercised by the Secretary of State for Wales. They were secondary law-making powers. The Minister has conceded today that what is proposed is the extension of primary legislative competence to the Welsh Assembly, not as a block but, as was eloquently described by the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) on Second Reading, on a salami-slicing basis: a bit of power is given here, a bit more next year, then a bit more and a bit more. Ultimately, we end up with the whole salami transferred to the devolved body and none left with Parliament. That is by any standard a major transfer of power. The convention in this country is that such transfers of power are put to the vote of the people in a referendum. It is abundantly clear why the Government do not want a vote. It is because, as the Secretary of State has already conceded, they know that they would lose the vote. It is simple. He said that the Labour party is not in the business of holding referendums that it knows it would lose. This is an illegitimate, dishonest device for getting around the problem of going to the people in a referendum.