Government of Wales Bill

We can go forward, but we cannot go back. That is astonishing. It is a somewhat interesting perspective on what constitutes democracy. I will come to that in a moment. Despite the Select Committee’s recommendation that there should be a minimum of two full Assembly terms before there is a second referendum, the Government have not accepted that. Despite the First Minister’s indication that a generation would be needed before there could be a second referendum, the Secretary of State has not accepted that. Despite his own declaration that it would be a very long time before there was a second referendum, he has not even been willing to incorporate a very long time in the Bill. Why? I have not seen the quotation that the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham read out, but a time limit is not included in the Bill because he is waiting for a moment of political opportunism. That is what it is about. He will not put a time limit in. He will just wait for the opportunity, if there is one. If that opportunity arises, he will jump while he can to get the vote that he wants. Meanwhile, we shall still have the drip, drip, drip of the order-making process. For that reason, I welcome the amendment that was tabled by my hon. Friends; I apologise for jumping in before them. I wish that the interval had been substantially longer, but at least I agree with the principle. I tabled my amendment not in the expectation that it would be accepted but because I want to alert the people of Wales to the fact that, as the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) has just revealed, the people of Wales are trapped—they were trapped by the original Bill. I described it then as a constitutional mystery tour, but the mystery has gone. We are now on a one-way escalator with two buttons: slow and fast. There is no stop and certainly no reverse, as we heard from the hon. Gentleman. The devo-zealots will not contemplate the fact that the people of Wales have as much right to think of going back as they have of going forward. They are not willing to offer them that option. They could put it at nil cost on the ballot paper to resolve once and for all perhaps the issue of whether the people of Wales want devolution, but we can rest assured that that choice will not be offered. The Secretary of State—I am not knocking him for this—is a self-declared enthusiast for full legislative power. I am as sceptical as he is enthusiastic. I respect his position, although I do not agree with it, and I hope that he respects the sincerity of my position and what I am saying. What worries me is the determination that he shows. He showed it in his evidence to the Select Committee. I quoted this last time but it is worth repeating. He was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, South (Mr. Jones):"““Have the people of Wales ever been consulted over the Order in Council procedure?””" He replied:"““There was a widespread process of consultation following the Richard Commission, in which both Rhodri and I were in exactly the same position, that we wanted to see the Assembly get on with its task of having greater powers following 2007 and did not want to wait””." He and Rhodri did not want to wait. That sounds like a great consultative process. He says that he consulted on the Richard commission. He consulted, and then he ditched it, because he and Rhodri did not want to wait. There is something even more revealing, and I asked about it in my speech last week. When I was talking about consultation, I asked Ministers to put in the Library the consultative papers that had been issued before the election. The White Paper and the Bill came afterwards, but what papers had been issued for the people of Wales, to consult them about this switch to the salami-slicing of the order-making process? In fairness, I must tell the House that the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary gave me a firm answer: there were no papers to go in the Library. There had been no consultative process—with one exception: there had been consultation within the party. That worries me even more. Of course the Minister should consult the party; that is right—but I am talking about what happened before the election. He knew his intentions before the election. He knew his intentions after the election as well—but he decided that he did not want to bother the people of Wales with them. Well, I think that the people of Wales deserve better than that.