Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, has come out with a very attractive argument for the disclosure of the purpose of a particular Order in Council. However, one weakness of this mechanism is that once the field has been established and the details have been given, anything can happen into the future. It is not the provision that the Assembly has in mind that will be covered. To take for example the noble Lord’s illustration, if the Order in Council were to provide nursery education, the Assembly might very well bring in a measure that would deal with the nursery education for that particular moment and then two years later could bring in a measure to reverse the first measure. Another Government in the Welsh Assembly could reverse what happened in the first measure. Once the field is established, it is established for all time. That is one of the great problems about the mechanism that is being put into the Bill in Part 3. It is a very good reason for moving as quickly as we can to Part 4, where we can get into proper primary legislative powers. At the moment, the way in which Part 3 will operate could conceal reverses of policy as well as the ground of policy itself.