Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, I shall be extremely brief, and I mean it. I come from a scientific background. Moses has clearly not come down from the mountain with the tablets on this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, is correct that the matter is not of such an order that we need a referendum on it. In fact, in Wales it is largely regarded as a quarter of a loaf; the balances set out in the clauses and the limitations on the Welsh Assembly, which means that it can do very little, are crumbs from the table. We believe that the referendum situation is one of controversy. My noble friend pointed out that there are divisions on this in the Labour Party, but all the opinion polls I have seen in the past 12 months are in favour of giving the Welsh Assembly more powers, and primary legislative powers too. It is a point of argument as to whether a referendum would be lost, but this is in Part 4 of the Bill, not Part 3. The noble Lord, Lord Kingsland, said that there was a shift in power to the Secretary of State. That is correct. We have put down amendments to reduce and eliminate the Secretary of State’s overbearing powers. I believe that we need to move on.