Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, let me begin by stating that we are on common ground. We want the committees of the Assembly to be established according to fair principles. Let me disabuse the House of any false notion about this formula. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, that Schleswig-Holstein was a dispute about which territories belonged to which kingdom. It is a pity that it has a foreign name, but d’Hondt is merely a dispassionate formula that is widely used to deal with a problem. It is ridiculous to suggest that other parliamentarians in other Assemblies have used it when they know that it is corrupt, biased and flawed and that it discriminates against smaller representations. That is not so. They use it because there is a problem that needs to be overcome. Why does the British Parliament not use the formula? It does not use it because, on the whole, the majority party in elections to the British Parliament is pretty clearly defined. That is why we have a defined government as a result of British general elections. It is also the reason why some of us in earlier debates had reservations about STV and the problems that it throws up. It is clear how one sets up committees in the British Parliament, and the formula used in another place, which is also used here, is based on agreed principles relating to the size of the parties in Parliament. The problem with Wales is straightforward; there will not necessarily be a majority. In fact, it is quite often likely that there will be no majority. There is a balance and a range of positions in Wales, which are reflected in an electoral system that is guaranteed to be fully representative, thereby producing nothing quite so dramatically clear. There is therefore no easy numerical formula to apply to the question of how one arrives at the composition of committees in quite the same way in which it is applied in the other place in the UK Parliament. The presumption must be that men and women of good will will try to set up committees that are reasonably and properly representative. Nothing in Clause 29 prevents that process. Our fellow citizens in Wales who are elected to the National Assembly must have the same presumption of reasonableness that our elected representatives have in the other place. They will have no more difficulty, much of the time, in achieving a fair distribution in their committees by agreement. If they do have such a difficulty through the usual channels, nothing like d’Hondt ever comes into play. They carry out the normal political process of reaching agreement. However, they might not reach such agreement and bargains might not be struck through that formula because there is not necessarily a large majority party in Wales. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Henley, who upbraids me by suggesting that I have not solved this problem, leaves a huge problem itself. Under his amendment, what would happen if agreement could not be reached? There is no fallback in his amendment. It presumes that the composition of committees is arrived at through a process of good will. The Government are a little more farsighted than the noble Lord’s amendment. We want, hope and expect committees to be set up in sweet reasonableness on the basis of the relative size of the parties in the House, but if they are not, and if agreement cannot be reached, the question is: who decides? How is the problem solved? This problem is almost as knotty as Schleswig-Holstein. The amendments of the noble Lords, Lord Henley and Lord Livsey, ignore that. They take out the d’Hondt formula but put nothing else in its place, so we are left with stalemate if there is disagreement. The noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, indicated that endless wrangling about the composition of committees might be to the detriment of any Assembly. It is not an edifying sight, and not something that Assemblies want to spend a great deal of time on, although they sometimes do. They certainly do not want a great deal of public interest in the problem. All the d’Hondt formula does is to indicate how the composition of committees is to be arrived at if there is no agreement. That is why it is a fallback. I said that in Committee, and I reiterate the point today. That is exactly what it is. Nothing prevents the Assembly setting up its committees under any formula or proposition it likes, provided of course that it has total, or at least two-thirds, agreement on the position. If agreement is reached, even if it is not total, there is no problem. If there is severe disagreement and the problem cannot be resolved, d’Hondt says, ““Here is a fallback formula that will define how the committees will be established in those circumstances””. It is suggested that the d’Hondt formula is biased against smaller representations in the Assembly, but that is why Clause 29, which the Opposition seek to amend, ensures that every Assembly Member—including independent Members, those belonging to smaller parties, and even those who belong to a party of one in which they are the sole representative—could be entitled to a place on the committee, subject to there being enough committee places to make that possible. There is respect for the minorities. The d’Hondt formula is, of course, also easier to operate among larger numbers, because how can you operate any formula of proportionality in a committee of one? You cannot create a fraction of one, so of course committees must be of a certain size before the formula works entirely fairly. Indeed, the formula produces exactly the same representation in a committee of 10 as it does in current Assembly committees with 10 members, so the formula and the agreed process that has produced a committee of 10 in the Assembly both produce exactly the same representation as the Assembly in its wisdom has arrived at. If the Assembly in its wisdom arrives at that without any application of any formula, it is entirely free to do so. Nothing in Clause 29 prohibits that. Clause 29 addresses the Schleswig-Holstein question. When the going gets difficult and agreement cannot be reached, there are only two solutions: stalemate, which the noble Lords, Lord Henley and Lord Livsey, blithely say they do not mind, despite the warnings of the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, that stalemate in the Assembly and endless problems over committees might do the Assembly’s reputation no good at all; or a formula. That is the defence of d’Hondt and of Clause 29. I hope that noble Lords opposite will recognise that this is a proper and democratic defence in a clause that allows the Assembly to take its decisions but resolves disagreement where it occurs. It behoves noble Lords who propose amendments to say what they would do about disagreement. Their amendments do not refer to that at all.