Government of Wales Bill

I agree entirely. This is a creeping process, which has probably been going on for some time. This Parliament has been successively surrendering powers of legislative competence through the greater use of statutory instruments and Orders in Council for a long time. In 1966 there were, I think, 35 statutory instruments, whereas there are now some 3,000 to 4,000 a year. That is already a measure of the loss of competence—but at least in key areas of primary legislation, historically we have kept the competence. That is what we are surrendering now. As I have said, if I were being asked to surrender that competence to a Welsh Assembly taking over our powers, I might argue against that because of my attitude to devolution, but I could not fault it as a procedure. I also have to acknowledge that in the Scottish context, that has worked quite well. However, I am not prepared to surrender the power of this House to scrutinise and enact legislation to a system that very considerably increases the power of the Executive.