Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist on its Amendment No. 3, to which the Commons have disagreed for their reason 3A. Since your Lordships’ House last debated this Bill, the Government have come forward with a package of amendments that I hope will form the basis of a cross-party consensus to achieve Royal Assent before the Recess. The package of amendments addresses a number of concerns quite properly raised by noble Lords during previous debates on the Bill. The arrangements for the composition of committees have been changed to make it clearer that the d’Hondt formula will be used only as a fallback if cross-party agreement cannot be reached. Concessions have also been agreed on the membership of the Assembly commission and the name of the Audit Committee. The debates on the details of the Bill have now been had. I hope that we can all join together to make the new powers work, rather than continuing to pursue old arguments. The Bill’s passage and the success of the Assembly’s new powers rest in your Lordships’ hands today. If the Bill is delayed until the autumn, it will have to compete for scarce parliamentary time with other major legislation in the spillover. A delay would also condense into a dangerously short timescale a number of interdependent preparations that need to be made to implement the Bill; for example, the preparation of the new standing orders and a number of major pieces of secondary legislation, including the elections order, the disqualifications order, and the Schedule 7 amendment order. Unless the Assembly is able to start these preparations now, the success of the Assembly’s transition to the new powers could well be put in jeopardy. That is a view held not only by the Government but by the Assembly’s Presiding Officer, the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, and a former leader of Plaid Cymru, Dafydd Wigley. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, in his place as—I hope—we complete this Bill. It is in that context that we consider the proposal in the Bill to put the voters back in charge by banning dual candidacy. The dual candidacy ban was an explicit manifesto commitment. Our 2005 general election manifesto stated that we would prevent candidates standing both on 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 back door even when they have already been rejected by voters. That is a clear commitment from a manifesto that we took to the country last May and on the basis of which we won a resounding victory, both in Wales and in the rest of the country. Both Houses have considered the matter at length and the proposal was supported by considerable majorities in the other place. There can be no question at all of the Government giving way on this issue. The ban on dual candidacy will strengthen the integrity of the Assembly’s electoral system and the legitimacy of regional Assembly Members. It will put 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. I appreciate that the issue has aroused strong feelings, but we have a convention in this House that we do not stand in the way of a manifesto commitment of a democratically elected Government. To insist on this amendment would not only be a clear breach of that convention; it would put at risk everything else that the Bill seeks to achieve. As the Liberal Democrat Assembly Member Peter Black has said, opposition to the proposed ban on dual candidacy is a, "““distraction from the real issues in the Bill””." Mr Black is no fan of the proposed ban, but on that point I believe that he is entirely correct. The Government have accepted a number of improvements proposed by noble Lords, and are seeking to move forward on the basis of consensus. The ban on dual candidacy is a manifesto commitment, and I hope that noble Lords will recognise that so that we can all join together in the interests of Wales. Moved, That the House do not insist on its Amendment No 3, to which the Commons have disagreed for their reason numbered 3A.—(Lord Evans of Temple Guiting.)