Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, having spent my working life as a publisher, I have become very interested in the past few years in digitisation, recognising how important it is that material should be available to the public. I have spent a lot of time at the Library of Congress, which has led the way in digitising printed material, and I am totally behind the spirit of what is being proposed. I really do not think, having read the letter from the First Minister, that there is any disagreement here at all. Obviously there are technical difficulties, as you will find if you talk about digitisation programmes, but the intention is that what is delivered in electronic form is what should be delivered in electronic form. I should clear up one misunderstanding: there is a difference between having something online and having hard copies but, if something is online, you can make a hard copy at the press of a button. So that really is not the problem. As we heard, following the debate in Committee, I wrote to the First Minister to convey the concerns voiced by Peers and asked for his assessment of the issue and the details of any action that has been taken. The letter has been referred to and it is in the Library; I will not read all of it out, but it is very comprehensive. The First Minister says:"““We already go further than the rest of the UK in publishing this information which is made available via the legislation section on our web-site””." He also voices the concerns expressed during the debate on the subordinate legislation made between 1999 and 2005, which I think is the issue. As we have heard, he has commissioned a feasibility study to consider indexing the non-statutory instrument legislation. I really do not think that this is a matter on which we can disagree. The First Minister intends to deliver the spirit of what we have been talking about both in Committee and this evening. Obviously there are technical problems, but I hope that the House will welcome the First Minister’s very positive response. I have every confidence that we, and the people of Wales, will get what we want—online access to legislation that can be downloaded as a hard copy at the press of a button so that those of the printed-word generation can read it in book form rather than on screen.