Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, that question will be debated at enormous length as the Bill goes through the House. To raise it now in my opening address and discuss it would distract us from the work in hand. The Bill delivers on those three manifesto commitments. It carries forward most of the substance of the 1998 Act, but does so with important changes made in the light of experience. It builds on what has been achieved while recognising the need for the Assembly to be able to achieve its goals more quickly and more effectively. The first important change is to replace the existing Assembly with a separate executive and legislature. Since 2002, the Assembly Ministers and the staff working for them have been known as the ““Welsh Assembly Government””. Within the constraint of still being legally one corporate body, the government arm and the legislative arm have increasingly been operating as separate entities. The legal separation of the two was one of the recommendations of the Richard commission appointed by the Welsh Assembly Government to review the operation of the devolution arrangements. I should like at this point to pay a warm tribute—it is a great pleasure to do so—to my noble friend Lord Richard for his achievement in producing a most thorough and most influential report. He has served Wales with wisdom and vision. I probably do not need to dwell on the issue of separation, since we all agree that it is necessary. It is worth noting that the vast bulk of the Bill relates to the separation. Some 93 clauses of the Bill are re-enacted with only minor modifications from the 1998 Act. A further 47 clauses have been included to give effect to the separation. I welcome the fact that so much of the Bill commands cross-party support. The Bill will set up the Welsh Assembly Government as an entity in their own right. The current executive functions of the Assembly will transfer to the Welsh Ministers on separation. An Assembly Commission, similar in nature to the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body, will be set up to work on behalf of the 60 Assembly Members. The Assembly itself will be given much greater freedom to determine the way in which the legislature should operate. The second significant change is to the electoral arrangements. The Government believe that it is fundamental that a constituency member, of whatever party, is elected to represent the interests of all their constituents. At the same time the Government recognise, to the benefit of other parties in Wales, that a degree of proportional representation is necessary in order to ensure that the outcome of the election properly and fairly reflects the will of the voters. The Government therefore believe that the current additional member system, which combines both the constituency link and an element of proportionality, has served the people of Wales well. Nevertheless, there have been some unforeseen and undesirable consequences. Because constituency candidates often also stand on their parties’ regional lists, it is possible for candidates who are defeated in a constituency election nevertheless to emerge victorious as regional members. In Clwyd West at the 2003 election, this resulted in no less than three of the defeated constituency candidates re-emerging as regional members. Moreover, there is nothing to stop regional members from targeting the constituency in which they were defeated, to the exclusion of other parts of the region they are elected to represent. No fewer than 15 regional members have located their offices in the constituency in which they were previously defeated. Dual candidacy is confusing for the electorate. If they have rejected a candidate at the ballot box, how can that candidate still win in the same election? Voters have a right to reject a particular candidate. Furthermore, the targeting of constituencies by regional members undermines the very purpose of regional representation. The role of regional members is to represent all the people in their region, rather than targeting the bulk of their work and resources on roughly one eighth of it. That is why the Government are modifying the additional member system—retaining both the clear constituency link and the element of proportionality, but removing the anomaly of dual candidacy which provides defeated constituency candidates with a safety net and denies the voters a proper say. The ban on dual candidacy will mean that candidates will have to choose between standing for a constituency or standing for a region; and that applies equally to all parties and all candidates. The Government—