Government of Wales Bill

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker. If the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal were available for comment, I am sure that he would have something to say in his defence, but no doubt he is at home writing his next speech on Northern Ireland or Scotland. Although I have had a little bit of fun at the expense of Conservative Members, my criticism of the Conservative party is entirely serious. The Conservative party cannot be credible on devolution if it offers vague, warm words about hoping that the Bill would be good enough by Third Reading while behaving in a way that shows that its colours have not changed one iota on devolution. I believe that the mood of the hon. Member for Monmouth is in tune with what is going on in the Conservative party. The Bill poses real dilemmas for the Liberal Democrats. We are a pro-devolution party that believes passionately in the best devolutionary arrangement for Wales, which was set out by the Richard commission. The Richard commission proposed an 80-Member Senedd with primary law-making powers elected by a single transferable vote system, and the Bill delivers some of that. The Bill provides two pathways for the Assembly to gain primary legislative powers, which are otherwise known as Assembly Measures, namely the Order-in-Council procedure and a referendum in Wales. It also creates a strong and clear basis for the Assembly to exercise greater powers more efficiently by separating the Assembly’s Executive and legislative elements. That change was so desperately needed that the Assembly was heading that way itself through various ad hoc measures, and it is to the Government’s credit that they have formalised that distinction. The Bill is a step away from the Conservative anti-devolution strategy, which would significantly dilute the potential for Wales to gain primary legislative powers by putting a whole series of restrictions and conditions between where the Liberal Democrats would like the Welsh Assembly to be and where it actually is. So much more could have been done in the Bill, which is the product of compromise not with other parties or pro-devolution organisations in Wales, but with Labour Back Benchers. By caving in to internal pressure, the Government have missed an opportunity, and a number of points will need to be reconsidered in a future reworking of the devolution argument. In fairness, the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham has highlighted concerns that we share. The extreme concentration of power in the hands of the Secretary of State is not appropriate. The arrangement is almost colonial: unlike Scotland, Wales must go cap in hand to the Secretary of State for Wales. The Secretary of State can turn down requests for pretty much any reason. As the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham said, every one of the modest changes that we proposed to reduce the Secretary of State’s governor-like potential to intervene was rejected. The Welsh Affairs Committee said that"““the Secretary of State’s powers should be limited to refusing Orders in Council on the basis of procedure, not the merits of policy aspiration.””" The Secretary of State can shake his head, but he must recognise that the limitations proposed by the Committee have been ignored. The banning of dual candidacy has been discussed in great detail. We feel that there is no justification for that, as did the Richard commission. The Government have acted in a way that I can understand emotionally but is not right in terms of human rights and democracy. Having people standing in a list on a constituency basis does not devalue the integrity of the electoral system or act as a disincentive to vote in constituency elections. Nevertheless, we lost that vote, and Welsh democracy has been somewhat compromised as a result. We talked about the Barnett formula and the injustices of having a somewhat random formulation. I proposed, and we voted on, the modest request for a panel of experts to suggest how it could be done better, but even that was not accepted by the Government. The limit on the scope of the Welsh Assembly’s powers is another frustration. The Secretary of State rightly commented on Wales’s potential to be a beacon for the environment, yet the Assembly does not even have the power to legislate on power stations over 50 MW. That could become very significant in the nuclear debate. On powers over policing, we all know that the majority of people in Wales, and a large proportion of police officers themselves, are opposed to the centralist—