Government of Wales Bill

My Lords, I begin by thanking the Government for accepting the thrust of our amendments on the composition and membership of the Assembly commission, Assembly committees and the title of the Audit Committee. These amendments were supported in the Division Lobby by substantial majorities of your Lordships and were clearly worthy of further consideration by the Government. We also had a new Welsh language clause, thanks mainly to the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies. I am happy to acknowledge the Secretary of State’s rather negative but nevertheless welcome appreciation of our efforts when he said in the other place last Tuesday that he was, "““not seeking to deny that there have been real improvements to the Bill as a result of debates and arguments in the Lords and the amendments that have been moved there””.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/7/06; col. 192.]" That is in contrast to the very tetchy, almost hysterical remarks about the Bill’s prospects by the Secretary of State, which were surprisingly rather echoed in the Minister’s opening speech. We can safely claim to have thrown some light on a few of the darker corners of the Bill and to have properly done our job of scrutinising it. Of course, we regret that the Government did not accept more of the amendments that your Lordships supported. One of them, which the noble Lord mentioned, preserved the dual candidacy system introduced by the Government in the Government of Wales Act 1998. That system has served Wales reasonably well in two Assembly elections. The prohibition of such candidacies under the present Bill has been roundly criticised by a string of authoritative bodies from the Electoral Commission to the Arbuthnott commission. Robert Hazell, the authoritative director of the constitution unit of University College London, described it as, "““nasty, parochial and seemingly driven by partisan motives””." The change is undoubtedly partisan in that it is an attempt to protect the interests of the sitting constituency Members against the rivalry of regional list members. It is not irrelevant that all Labour members of the Assembly are constituency members and none regional list members. Whether the prohibition will succeed in improperly protecting sitting constituency Members remains to be seen. What it will do, as Arbuthnott pointed out, is, "““restrict voter choice and potentially diminish the quality of constituency contests””." Political parties will have to find more candidates and this increase may affect quality. Nevertheless, the fact has to be faced that the political parties in Wales have already reconciled themselves to the requirements of this legislation even before its passage into law and are already appointing candidates to contest the Assembly election next May. There is therefore not much practical point in pursuing our amendment. However, we remain of the view that the Government were wrong to make the change that they have done for the reasons that they made it. It was not justified, except in terms of very dubious party political advantage. I do not propose to suggest to my colleagues on these Benches that we support the Government; I suggest that they abstain.