Government of Wales Bill

Time is short, so if the hon. Lady will forgive me I will not give way. This Bill, like so many home rule Bills in our history, stands in a long line of half-measures and missed opportunities. Tom Ellis’s home rule Bill, for example, was struck down by a Liberal Government and certainly was not given time or support. Such things have happened throughout our history. People sometimes speak of a slippery slope to independence, but the slope certainly is not slippery and it is always uphill. Every small step constitutes precious ground that those of us in the national movement, and devolutionists in other parties, have had to fight for every inch of the way. Lord Morgan of Aberdyfi has pointed eloquently to the fact that it took some 70 to 80 years longer to establish a Welsh Office—in 1964—than it did to establish the Scotland Office. He said that that was a product of our being a conquered people. Only a Labour parliamentarian could say that without getting heckled, but there is probably something in what he says. Consider our history as a nation. In contrast with Scotland, we did not retain—in fact, we did not even have—modern institutions of civil society. We had an absentee aristocracy, followed by an absentee landlord and political class. Because of that, we have had to make these halting steps forward—steps that we see once again in this Bill. I do not think that the Government have got the Bill just about right, but I do not think that they have got it totally wrong, either, which is why I will support Third Reading. If we had refused all along the crumbs and half-loaves that were sometimes given to us by the political establishment in this place, the Welsh nation would have withered on the vine. We have to accept that pragmatism—the accepting of sometimes deficient measures—is part of our history. However, I look forward to the day when Government of Wales Bills no longer echo in this Chamber and when the governance of Wales will not be a matter for debate in this neo-gothic monument. It will be a matter, entirely properly, for the people of Wales, and will be dealt with where it belongs—in the Senedd that will be symbolically opened tomorrow. One day, it will be open in earnest, and have all the powers that a Welsh nation with the right of self-determination will deserve. The late Gwyn Alf Williams said that Wales as a nation had existed for almost 1,600 years, and that it was about time that we got the keys to our own front door. We are still waiting. The Government somehow suggest, through the post-referendum device, that Welsh democracy—and, by extension, even the Welsh nation itself—is not yet mature enough to have the full range of primary law-making powers. I reject that assertion. It is symptomatic of the strange position that Wales is in that one of the oldest nations in these islands and on this continent should be one of the youngest democracies. There is a contradiction and a tension there, and that is why I think that, in his heart of hearts, the Secretary of State does not believe his own assertion that the Bill, shot through with contradictions as it is, can resolve the national question that we in Wales have debated for so many generations. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman is also shot through with contradictions and tensions: he is certainly a complex political operator. The Secretary of State said earlier that the matter has been resolved for a generation, but I think of a generation as lasting 20 years. I am not prepared to wait that long to get primary law-making powers in Wales—[Interruption.] He also said that no other party had delivered devolution for Wales. However, I thought that the referendum campaign was meant to be a collective enterprise that went beyond political party divisions. How easy will it be to resurrect that sense of collective endeavour, given the sectarian and partisan approach displayed even tonight by the Labour party and the Secretary of State? We must recreate the national consensus created in 1997 so that we can make progress along the long and arduous path towards national self-determination. By their approach to the Bill, the Secretary of State and his colleagues have made that difficult task even more onerous. Unfortunately, that will be the badge of shame that he must carry.