Government of Wales Bill

Amendment No. 131 seeks to give the National Assembly for Wales the right and responsibility of setting the wording on any future referendum under the provisions of clause 102. As the Library has pointed out, it is unusual for the wording of a referendum question not to be set out in a Bill. Indeed, there is only one other example of this not happening. We had a lengthy discussion recently on the uniqueness of Wales vis-à-vis Northern Ireland. Only in the Northern Ireland Act 1998 is there another example of the wording not being set out in the legislation. The Conservative amendment, which we do not support, would provide the opposite solution to ours, namely that the wording should be set out by Parliament. We believe that the people of Wales should decide on these matters, and that their representatives should decide on the wording of the question in a referendum on the extension of the principle of democratic sovereignty. As we know, timing is a key parameter of success when it comes to calling a referendum. We had a lengthy discussion on such issues in our debate on the last few amendments. The other key parameter is the wording on the referendum ballot paper, which can influence the likelihood of success. As opinion pollsters know, the wording of a question can affect the level of support that a proposal attracts. We have seen that in relation to questions of devolution over the years. I would suggest that a question asking the people of Wales whether the National Assembly for Wales should have law-making powers would be more likely to succeed than a question asking whether it should have more power, in an open-ended way. These are subtle differences, but they can affect the likelihood of success. The referendum in question, as with every other referendum, will be subject to the provisions of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which will mean that the Electoral Commission will pronounce on the intelligibility of the question and produce a report, according to its guidelines, to ensure that the question is clear, concise and impartial. Nevertheless, the power to set the wording of the referendum question is an important one, and it should properly reside with the elected representatives in the national representative institution of the people of Wales—the National Assembly—which is what our amendment seeks to achieve. The Welsh Affairs Committee’s report suggested that the wording should be set out in the Bill in the interests of clarity. However, the Government’s response rejected that proposal, saying, rather mysteriously, that the wording should reflect the circumstances and the timing of the question’s being put. That almost suggests that the referendum might happen in some future century, when the English and Welsh languages might have evolved in some way. The Government’s response proves my point that subtle differences can be introduced into the wording of a question. The power to set the wording is therefore an important one. The other issue that the Welsh Affairs Committee was trying to resolve in its way, and that we are trying to resolve in ours, is that of the lack of clarity as to how the wording will be decided. This could become a major political issue. As we have seen, the issue of where the power to decide the wording lies became a major issue in Quebec following the 1995 referendum there. Even now, we can see the jostling between Ottawa and Quebec for the proper constitutional authority over that issue. Ottawa has passed the Clarity Act to give itself the constitutional authority over the wording of any future referendum question, but the Quebec Government insist that they still have that power. We, too, need clarity, because we do not have it at present in this regard.