Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord would have made a good point if there had just been a schedule listing all the bodies, but we have a categorisation here that offers them four different kinds of protection ranging from minimal protection to retrenchment. But what have the first four bodies listed in the present schedule in common that causes them to be bracketed in this particular category? For example, let us take Part III, listing the Countryside Council for Wales, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and the Welsh National Board for Nursery, Midwifery and Health Visiting. Again, I should have asked in 1997 and 1998 when we were debating this issue: what do these three bodies have in common that requires them to be bodies which may only gain functions, but in this case not without consent? In Part IV I understand that there is a common denominator for the bodies listed. As the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, explained, in many cases they are chartered bodies or very well established. However, I have a problem with this part. I assume that it seeks to re-entrench these bodies. I have always believed that one of the great portents of devolution was to bring the quangos under control; it was one of the issues that swayed the referendum. People had concluded that quangoland had grown too big. While I shall pay tribute to them both in a moment, both the Sports Council and the Arts Council were in the vanguard of Welsh quangoland. Just as the Assembly has now brought into itself ELWa and the WDA, thus creating a better critical mass for policy-making and bringing operational policy together in some of these bodies, I see no reason why, at a date in the not too distant future, sports and arts issues should not also be part of the appropriate department of the Assembly Government—for the same reasons that these other bodies have been brought in already. When I served on the Richard Commission, one thing that struck me very forcefully when we looked at this area was that there was a growing tension between the quangos and Ministers. While it was never explicit, remit letters from Ministers grew longer and longer as they endeavoured to develop policy for these quango bodies. At the same time, the poor quango bodies had their budgets. While Ministers could tell them to do this, that or the other, they were not responsible for the budgets. That divorce between policy-making, management and operational issues has become increasingly less justifiable and defensible now that we have democratically elected Ministers in an Assembly to whom these bodies can be directly answerable. It is for Ministers to explain their decisions. Strangely enough, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, because he has prompted me to review my own thinking and to say that I could not possibly go into a Lobby and support the schedule as it stands. First, I do not understand how the bodies have been categorised and, secondly, I no longer believe in entrenching quangos because reversing that is one of the important processes of devolution. However, I support the noble Lord on Amendment No. 35. The Arts Council and the Sports Council have done very good work and I have admired the chairs of those bodies. I have had personal dealings with them and I have found them easy, transparent and helpful in every respect in all my constituency responsibilities in the past. It is no criticism of them but I believe that they should be democratised. However, until that happens, I think the noble Lord’s Amendment No. 35 has considerable merit—I hope my noble friend will not slam the door on it—as, indeed, does his reference to consolidation. It may be that now is the time for that. What we admired about the drafting of this Bill as opposed to other Bills is that the parliamentary draftsmen did not do what they traditionally would have done: a paste and scissors job on the original 1998 Act. In fact, very unusually, this Bill was rewritten and incorporated all but 25 clauses from the original Bill. It is not as complete as we thought it was because now we know of all the clauses that have been left out. I think the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, has a very good point—at an appropriate moment there should be a consolidation so that we have one and only one Government of Wales Act. But I have to say to the noble Lord that I could not possibly go into the Lobby and support his schedule because the law that has stood since 1998 is, in my opinion, no longer relevant.