Government of Wales Bill

We have had some interesting contributions, and some tantalising bait was dangled before me by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard) and the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies). I shall not bite at that bait because I am concerned about meeting the terms of the programme motion that was unanimously agreed. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) for his general support for the Bill, but a Liberal Democrat source was reported in The Times recently as saying that"““the last thing anyone wants is for him to declare for them. They’re calling it the curse of Lemsip.””" I shall luxuriate in the fact that he does not support me on this occasion. There is widespread agreement across the House, including the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), that there should be a referendum if we move to primary powers. I also agree with the spirit of amendment No. 189 in the sense that we cannot keep calling referendums until the voters, exhausted, simply say yes. That point was also made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams). The very idea that we should have an ““everendum”” that just kept going in the way that was described is completely unacceptable and I think that the people of Wales would revolt against it. We need to come down to earth politically on that point. The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham asked about my motives. My view on the time frame is straightforward. In the end, the question of a referendum is not up to me because it is for the Assembly to initiate the process with a two-thirds majority. If she was asking for my view, I do not think that there is a case for considering holding a referendum in the next term of the Assembly, which will run from 2007 to 2011, because there will be a new political architecture in the Assembly if the Bill is passed and the new streamlined process of powers will be bedding down. I do not think that the issue will arise until at least the following Assembly term. We can all agree that the additional procedures provided under part 3 will need to establish themselves. We will then be able to determine whether that process has provided the streamlined process of decision making for which the Assembly has asked, whether there is a need to call a referendum, or whether a period of conflict has existed between Westminster and Wales that has provoked conditions such as those in the late 1990s that resulted in a turnaround of opinion from that in 1979 and produced the yes vote in 1997.