National Assembly for Wales (Legislative Competence) (Amendment of Schedule 7 to the Government of Wales Act 2006) Order 2007

First, I, too, congratulate my noble friend on his return to office. Last year, I immensely admired the way in which he piloted the Government of Wales Bill through this House, and he has always been open and approachable towards Back-Benchers. Secondly, in one sense, I was saddened to hear the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, say that he is to leave the Front Bench. His parliamentary life and mine have almost paralleled each other, and we both go back a very long way. I give him one word of comfort, although I do not think that he needs it. There is life on the Back-Benches. Indeed, I have found it rather enjoyable in some respects and I am sure that he will enjoy it too. I want to ask one or two brief questions about the order. In the Explanatory Memorandum, which has been laid before Parliament alongside the order, we are helpfully taken through the legislative background and told the distinction between orders under Schedule 5 and those under Schedule 7 to the Government of Wales Act. Naturally, we have not yet had any orders under Schedule 5 because the powers have only just been brought into being. However, that means that the Assembly has not been gaining legislative competences. I draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that two Bills which have been before this House—the Further Education and Training Bill and the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill—carry various clauses with a substantial transfer of legislative competences which I should have thought in future should be brought before us in the form of orders. I raise this with my noble friend because I wish to register concern. As we laid down very clearly how orders of this kind—either under Schedule 5 or, now, Schedule 7 of the Government of Wales Act—were going to be the subject of considerable pre-legislative scrutiny, neither of those sections have been subject to that scrutiny. Although we are told that we can amend them in this House and the other place, that is not a substitute for the proper kind of pre-legislative scrutiny that we established was going to be the norm for future Orders in Council. In future, if legislative competence is brought forward in the form of clauses in Bills, they should be subject to the same kind of pre-legislative scrutiny as we expect of orders. Briefly, on this schedule, my noble friend mentioned that the Welsh Assembly Government had been consulted. Was the National Assembly consulted? Did this order at least go before one of its appropriate committees for clearance and approval? Perhaps I am now a natural Back-Bencher, but I see it not through the eyes of a government these days, but the eyes of a parliament or assembly. Has the Assembly had the opportunity to comment or make observations on this order? Finally, I turn to the fact that, oddly, all those who have spoken have fastened on to one aspect—I shall go a slightly different way: the maintenance of the exception of any formal legislative competence in the area of energy. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, said energy; I am not sure that it is energy, but it is certainly electricity and nuclear installations. You cannot possibly have a different health and safety regime on nuclear in England from Wales or anywhere else. That has to be a UK responsibility, but it is now totally accepted that the Assembly will have legislative competence over electricity. The way in which electricity is going to be commissioned and developed is changing dramatically and rapidly. There are very small schemes, combined heat and power schemes, the wind farm issues and all the rest of it. I cannot see that somewhere, somehow, that total exception is going to hold. I ask my noble friend whether we are right in saying that the Assembly Government do not have any formal legislative competence at all, even around the fringes of electricity generation. How does that lack of competence compare with the planning powers it has in certain respects? As the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, pointed out, the strategic decision to commission a power station is often involved in planning. He made a reference to the LNG pipeline. I do not share his view. I live near where that pipeline is going, and can see what he called ““devastation””. I have North Sea gas in my house. A generation ago, people on the northern coasts of the country suffered whatever they had to suffer for the generation of, and advantages we have from, supplies. We cannot be so curmudgeonly on these issues as that. I suggest to my noble friend that the issue of electricity generation and the legislative competence that the Assembly does not have but may need at some time in the future is one that we will return to.