Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, first I must say how much I have enjoyed working with the Minister throughout this Bill. He has always set out, in the speeches that he has made, a spirited defence of the Government’s position. However, in this case, far from reassuring me, he has confirmed my worst suspicions. He has done so by explaining the process that would lead to an order. Perhaps I should say at this point that the order is not one made by the Welsh Assembly but one made by the Westminster Parliament. I am talking not about the second range of orders but about the first range. The Minister described the process of determining whether your Lordships' House and another place should make an order as one of balancing the public interest against the rights of the individual. From that, I conclude that, even after a court has decided that a certain individual has certain rights in law as a consequence of the trial process, those rights may be retrospectively taken away from that individual if Westminster considers it in the public interest to do so. That is my understanding of what the noble Lord said. I derive no reassurance whatever from the fact that there may be similar provisions in the Scottish legislation. Those provisions may well turn out to have the same defects as, I believe, I have identified in the definitions in this Bill. Indeed, the situation arises all the time in our own law. Where you have a piece of delegated legislation that is passed by your Lordships’ House and another place and on which people rely, and then subsequent litigation establishes that that legislation is ultra vires the primary legislation, there is no power in our constitution to retrospectively change the rights that flow from that court decision. Of course, Parliament can then change the law for the future, but not for the past. I believe that our case here is unassailable and I should like to test the opinion of the House. On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 4) shall be agreed to? Their Lordships divided: Contents, 110; Not-Contents, 106.