Government of Wales Bill

moved Amendment No. 13:"Page 18, line 24, leave out subsections (2) to (9) and insert—" ““(   )   The standing orders shall include provision for ensuring that in apportioning members to committees and sub-committees regard is had to the balance of political parties represented in the Assembly.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, Amendment No. 13 relates to Clause 29, which deals with the composition of any committees set up by the National Assembly of Wales. We debated this issue at considerable length in Committee and I do not intend to repeat all the arguments put forward at that stage. I can briefly sum up our objections—I imagine the same will be true of the Liberal Democrats’ objections, but we will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, in due course. They are, first, that Clause 29 is overly prescriptive and, secondly—and I think more importantly—that it is a fix to give the largest party, which happens to be the Government party, a Labour Party, an unfair share of the membership of the committees that are set up. In Committee we put forward all the arguments that the, what I described as, ““overly prescriptive”” nature of Clause 29, which brings in the d’Hondt mechanism for counting committees, would give an undue proportion of members to the ruling party, the Labour Party. I set out the figures showing how the relatively small-sized committees—and they have to be relatively small, bearing in mind the size of the Assembly—meant that d’Hondt provided an even more unfair system than anything else. We feel that this is overly prescriptive and that possibly the best way to deal with the matter is to leave out Clause 29 and leave it to the Assembly to decide on the composition of its committees. However, if we are going to have a Clause 29, we feel that it should be a much simpler version of affairs. The best way of dealing with that is to leave in subsection (1), remove subsections (2) to (9)—virtually the whole of the clause—and replace them with the words in Amendment No. 13:"““The standing orders shall include provision for ensuring that in apportioning members to committees and sub-committees regard is had to the balance of political parties represented in the Assembly””." It is as simple as that, and we can leave it to the Assembly to decide what it does. In Committee—it is right that I should say something about this—the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, spoke for the Government and defended Clause 29 and the d’Hondt principle. He said:"““So the d’Hondt principle is simply a formula that gets as close as possible to the appropriate levels of fairness””." I do not accept that. I think that the Members themselves can get a much better level of fairness than D’Hondt gives us, as we know from all the figures that d’Hondt will provide with the relatively small size of committees. The Minister went on to say that Clause 29 was, in effect, merely a voluntary clause and did not bind the Assembly. He said:"““The formula is there against the eventuality of deadlock. I do not see why this is an intrusion on the Assembly””." Further, he said:"““I emphasise that it is not dictation. It does not dictate to the Assembly. If the Assembly can reach agreement on its committees, the d’Hondt formula . . . does not come into play””.—[Official Report, 19/4/06; col. 1135-37.]" All the noble Lord can suggest in favour of the argument that the clause is voluntary is subsection (8), which says that the Assembly may disapply subsections (2) to (7) but only if it has a two-thirds majority for so doing. In other words, there is a very comfortable blocking minority for the Labour Party preventing that applying and allowing it to go on using d’Hondt which gives it an unfair advantage. As I said, I found extraordinary the Minister’s defence in Committee and his claims that the clause was in effect voluntary. I invited him in my closing remarks to be good enough to look carefully at everything that he had said, which no doubt he has done, especially about the voluntary nature of the provision, and have a word with officials to see whether they could draft amendments to bring the clause into line with what he said. No doubt the Minister has done that and will tell us about those discussions, but I regret that he has not come forward with any amendments intended to do what we and the Liberal Democrats seek to do. Therefore, I have brought my amendments back and I certainly intend to press them in this case unless the Government can give a very clear response to our real concerns about the membership and composition of the committees. I beg to move.