Government of Wales Bill

I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment. I believe that the package of amendments that we present today forms the basis of a cross-party consensus to achieve Royal Assent before the summer. The Government have listened to debates in this House and particularly in the House of Lords, where some major amendments were tabled. We have sought agreement and I believe that we now have that on the composition of Assembly Committees. The d’Hondt formula is now, instead of being up front, very much a fall-back option and on the backburner. It is there if needed, but we hope that it will not be needed. We have also made concessions on the name of the audit committee and, importantly for all Opposition parties and—frankly speaking—for ourselves, on the membership of the Assembly commission. The debate on the details of the Bill has now been had and I hope that the Conservatives will now join the other parties in Wales to make the new powers work, and not pursue old arguments. I thought that it was very apt of the former Plaid Cymru leader, Dafydd Wigley, to have told the Western Mail yesterday:"““I hope both sides can give and take. To prepare for what happens after next May, it is extremely important that the Bill gets through before the recess.””" That is indeed important. There are important preparations to be made for the election and many orders to be laid in respect of the new internal architecture of the Assembly. The Assembly officials and others want to get on with that and, therefore, Royal Assent by next Tuesday is very important. After that brief introduction, I shall now address the amendments specifically. I realise that the ban on dual candidacy is contentious with all Opposition parties, but it is a manifesto commitment. Our 2005 general election manifesto stated that we would"““prevent candidates from standing on both the list and in a constituency in order to make all candidates genuinely accountable to the electorate and to end Assembly Members being elected via the backdoor even when they have already been rejected by voters.””" That is a clear commitment from a manifesto that we took to the country in May last year and on the basis of which we won a resounding victory, certainly in Wales and also in the rest of the country. It is a measure that this House considered at length and supported by a considerable majority earlier this year. The proposals in clause 7 of the Bill, as originally drafted, will strengthen the integrity of the Assembly’s electoral system and the legitimacy of regional Assembly Members. They will put the voters in charge by enabling them to reject a candidate who can currently get in through the back door despite being rejected by the voters in a constituency. I appreciate that this issue has aroused strong feelings on both sides of the House and concerns have been expressed, but I wish to draw the attention of the House to the views of Lord Elis-Thomas on this matter, the Presiding Officer of the Assembly since its establishment in 1999 and Plaid Cymru’s former parliamentary leader. When asked recently by the BBC about his views on the dual candidacy ban, he said:"““every party has selected under the system which is in the Bill and that, to me, signals a bit of an hypocrisy to carry on fighting old battles, I find that quite boring. So my main battle now is to try and get the structure of the National Assembly under the new constitution and new bill in place for 2007 because I don’t want people wasting time, whoever the Government is after 2007, by not being able to get things done.””" He added that"““the debate and the arguments have been lost.””" That is a significant statement. He continued:"““The politics has been lost. What I’m saying is that the big picture now is to get the Assembly established, and a new constitution, because what we have to do is to make it clear to the people of Wales that we have a new democratic opportunity. That is the most important way to challenge the Labour Party or any other party.””" I would be the first to admit that I have not always agreed with the views of Lord Elis-Thomas in the past—and I do not necessarily agree with every word of that quotation— but I believe that on this occasion he was speaking with the best interests of the National Assembly and of Wales at heart. He was speaking in a non-partisan way. I know that he was not a supporter of the ban on dual candidacy, but he has moved on and it is important that the House also moves on.