Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, we are now coming to the end of a fairly long debate, but I take the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, back to his opening remarks. He remembered the introduction and Committee stage of the 1998 Bill Act, which was taken through this House by the late Lord Williams of Mostyn. I imagine—I cannot remember the precise number of days—that we spent quite a lot of time on the Committee stage of that Bill. I go back a bit further. When I first came into this House the original Scotland Bill and Wales Bill of the ill-fated Callaghan government were proceeding through this House. I seem to remember that we had something in the order of 11, 12, 13 or 14 days in Committee on both those Bills. It did not do much good in the end because, as noble Lords have reminded us, when the Wales Bill was put to a referendum it was defeated by something like four to one, despite the fact that a large number of parties were then in favour of devolution. I refer to the Committee stage of the 1998 Bill purely because, as the noble Lord will be aware—I understand that there is a Motion to this effect following Second Reading—we will have the Committee stage of this very important constitutional Bill on the Floor of the House. Although we have seen quite a large part of it before, and a lot of it to some extent replaces the 1998 Bill, there is a great deal to debate, and we want to be sure that enough time is provided by the Government to debate it at that stage. I gather that the first day has been agreed by the usual channels, and we shall come back to this after Easter on the first Wednesday back. I shall say a little more about the Committee stage at the end of my speech. Having made those introductory remarks, I shall restate the Conservative Party’s position on this Bill and on devolution. Prior to Second Reading, my right honourable friend the Leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, made it clear that in our view devolution was here to stay and we would be a constructive Opposition offering constructive opposition to the Bill. He said that there should be a referendum to decide whether the Assembly gains more power and it should be a matter for the people of Wales to decide how much power they wanted. I will deal with that later. Further, the Leader of the Conservatives in Wales, Nick Bourne, also made it clear that he supported the position of the national party and said that there would be, as he put it, no turning back the clock on devolution. As my honourable friend Ms Cheryl Gillan, speaking at Second Reading, made clear, although there is much in the Bill that we do not like, we are certainly supportive of some of the new aspects of the Bill, particularly the point made by a number of noble Lords regarding the separation of the Assembly and the Executive. We will certainly support that, just as we will support further devolution, if that is what the people of Wales want. I would like to touch on a number of different aspects of the Bill that have been raised by a number of noble Lords. The first that I should like to mention concerns the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, and others, on the subject of the Welsh language. I am not competent to speak on that subject. I am not even competent to speak in Welsh, as I know the noble Lord is. I would like to remind him and the House of the remarks of Dr Johnson, I think, when he heard of the death of the last Old Norse speaker in the Western Isles, about how we are all impoverished by the death of any language. We on these Benches certainly take some pride, as my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy did, in the Welsh Language Act 1993, and we will certainly look very constructively at anything the noble Lord brings forward or anything that, as he suggested, the Government bring forward that might help to support the Welsh language. We accept his points. One other speaker from England, apart from myself, spoke in the debate. I refer to my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking. I think we need have no shame in being the only speakers from England in this debate. It is important to point out that there is a United Kingdom dimension in this aspect and it is not merely a matter for serried ranks of Welsh speakers and others to take part in this debate. As my noble friend made clear, the measures are a very significant step and have major consequences for the rest of the United Kingdom, which I will be touching on later. They have consequences for the number of Members of Parliament who will be representing Wales at Westminster. I just put it in passing that that might be one of the reasons why the Government wish to pursue—and I will get to this later when we get to Part 3—the measures by stealth, as I think both the noble Lord, Lord Richard, and my noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy, put it, because it rather blurs the moment at which one decides that there has been sufficient devolution to justify the reduction in the number of MPs. I turn now to Clause 7 and the question of dual candidacy. We on these Benches—and I expect it is true also of the other parties but the matter was raised by the Labour Party—have some suspicions. Why is it that the Labour Party in Wales wants this but the other parties—I am very pleased to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, that they voted on it this afternoon and the result was what might be described as a score draw, and therefore the status quo will continue to exist—would prefer to see the existing situation continue, although I appreciate that there are others such as the Liberal Democrats who would prefer to move on to STV, as recommended by the noble Lord, Lord Richard. However, if there is a problem, what we want to hear from the Secretary of State, the Welsh Labour Party and others is the evidence of abuse? What is the mischief that they are particularly addressing? Why is it that the Secretary of State in particular will not deal with this question? Why will he not, for example, answer various letters that have been sent to him by Nick Bourne, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, the most recent of which was sent on 20 March, two days ago, though a number have been sent before, asking him to explain what is the mischief and the abuse he is dealing with. Answer, so far, we have heard none. I think for that reason that it is fair and right that we might remain suspicious of a measure that seems to have the support of the Electoral Commission, of the Arbuthnott commission in Scotland and certainly of the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, when he was dealing with the Bill of his noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock. I am grateful that there was support for our position and the Liberal Democrat position from others in the House—I single out in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay. The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, also raised Clause 29, which I was possibly not going to address this evening, thinking that it was much more of a Committee point, but when I first looked at it the word d’Hondt jumped up, as it were. I remembered the various speeches of my late noble friend Lord Mackay of Ardbrecknish as he dealt with a fairly pernicious piece of government legislation, the European Parliamentary Elections Bill, which was eventually forced through only by use of the Parliament Act, but a Bill that in effect established the closed lists for those European parliamentary elections when we—and the late Lord Mackay in particular—were fighting for the open list. I certainly look forward as a little memorial to my noble friend to coming back to d’Hondt and those amendments. I assure the noble Lord that we will be examining that issue and tabling constructive amendments to Clause 29on the composition of committees. I warn the noble Lord of that at this stage. I move on to Part 3, the Order in Council procedure and the referendum procedures in Part 4. As I understood it, the noble Lord, Lord Richard, partly accepted that in that he said that it was a good thing that they were proceeding by stealth, but he accepted that the devil was in the detail; no doubt we will be exploring that in Committee. My understanding, which I find extraordinary, is that the Secretary of State for Wales, Mr Hain, does not believe that he can win a referendum, despite the fact that all the evidence seems to be in favour of people having more power devolved to that Parliament. I suppose that it is not surprising for those who can remember the Bill of the Callaghan government and the closeness of the result in the 1999 or 1998 referendum—I forget the year. One should also remember—this is nothing to do with Wales—the Government’s record on other referendums for assemblies: one thinks particularly of the referendum that they chose to have in the north-east; that was the only one in England that they thought they had a chance of winning, which they again managed to lose by that celebrated margin of four to one. As I understand it, the Secretary of State seems to be frightened of getting his referendum through to give greater powers to the Welsh Assembly and therefore wishes by the use of Part 3 by a process of salami slicing—as it was referred to by the right honourable Mr Alan Williams in another place—to reach full devolution without ever having to have the Bill put before the Welsh people. Having got to that final stage he will then be able to say to the Welsh people, having decided that everything is in favour of a referendum, ““Right, now you’ve got it; you can now vote for it””. I am not sure that that is satisfactory: we will want to spend considerable time on the issue in Committee. As my noble friend Lord Crickhowell explained, we will want to look even more at the Order in Council procedure which, as he explained, is even worse than we originally thought. I look forward to that scrutiny. At this stage we await the Government’s response, but I emphasise the importance of Committee stage to which we are looking forward in this House. This is a major constitutional Bill. As I understood it, the whole of Committee stage—admittedly on the Floor of the House—in another place took all of three days. The Bill is 165 clauses long. Can the noble Lord assure the House that I am right in saying that 133 of those 165 clauses were never discussed by another place—that is 133 out of 165—including the particularly complex and rather important financial provisions of Part 5? They were never discussed in another place. I remind the noble Lord of just how many days were spent in Committee on the previous Wales Bill back in 1978. I hope he will pass on to the Government Chief Whip that, when we come to negotiate on these matters, we will bear in mind how many days were spent on them and will want to make sure that we have enough time to ensure that this important constitutional Bill is discussed with sufficient vigour.