Government of Wales Bill

Clause 97 will regulate proceedings on proposed Assembly Measures. Subsection (1) provides that there should be a threefold procedure in the Assembly: a vote on general principles, an opportunity for the Assembly to consider Assembly Measures in detail—I take that to be a Committee or Report stage, adapted, obviously, due to the number of Members of the Assembly—and a final stage at which a proposed Assembly Measure can be passed or rejected. However, I am worried about subsection (2), which states:"““Subsection (1) does not prevent the standing orders making provision to enable the Assembly to expedite proceedings in relation to a particular proposed Assembly Measure.””" There is a meeting of minds to the extent that part 3 of the Bill is not the same as part 4. Part 4 would, after a referendum, give the Assembly the legislative power to get on with it, for better or worse, but part 3 allows the Assembly to undertake detailed scrutiny of legislation in a procedure under which we retain, by virtue of the Order in Council, overall responsibility for the process. If that is indeed what we are doing, I have considerable anxiety about whether subsection (2) is appropriate because it provides a mechanism whereby the Assembly, having been given power by the Order in Council that we had enacted, could enact the Assembly Measure without giving it the consideration that is the very justification for granting the power in the first place. The situation is quite different from that under part 4. I have tabled an amendment that is similar to amendment No. 170 to part 4, but that is a probing amendment because my attitude to part 4 is rather different. I understand that if we are transferring legislative functions to an independent body, it is not for us to start telling it how to carry out its business. However, the Government are announcing to the people of Wales that part 3 offers a hybrid procedure under which the House retains control, but detailed scrutiny is carried out by the Assembly so that the minutiae can be threshed out in a way that provides better legislation for the Welsh people. It is thus astonishing that subsection (2) provides a loophole under which the Assembly could decide not to carry out adequate scrutiny.