National Assembly for Wales (Legislative Competence) (Agriculture and Rural Development) Order 2009

I have very little to say about the substance of this order; I am mainly concerned about the process and procedure involved in producing it and bringing it before Parliament. I hope that the order and the Assembly measures that may stem from it are beneficial to the Welsh farming community and its marketing of red meat. I shall certainly hope to see more Welsh meat on the shelves of the supermarkets that I patronise from time to time. I was glad to see from the Minister’s opening speech on this order in the other place, and to hear the Minister say here, that the draft had been approved by the National Assembly in plenary session on 31 March, and that it had also been subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by a committee of the National Assembly. Your Lordships may think it a pity that the record of that scrutiny is not readily available to us here. Such records should be among the papers tabled before proceedings such as ours. I say that I am glad because, during the Whitsun Recess, I read the interesting report of an inquiry by the Subordinate Legislation Committee of the National Assembly, chaired by Janet Ryder AM. The committee pointed out that it was prohibited by standing order from considering, ""any statutory instrument or draft statutory instrument that is required to be laid before Parliament"." I presume that the pre-legislative scrutiny in this case was carried out by the relevant subject committee of the Assembly—probably the Agriculture Committee. I am told that the same standing order prevents the Legislation Committee considering, ""any draft legislative competence order"," a number of which have come and will be coming before your Lordships. This prohibition apparently runs counter to the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, and the committee has asked that the offending standing order be changed. Of course we understand that that is entirely a matter for the Assembly to consider further. We attach great importance here to the scrutiny of legislation at all levels. Inappropriate as it may seem for me to comment on Assembly affairs, I nevertheless commend the Subordinate Legislation Committee of the Assembly for its worthy ambition to extend its remit to orders such as the one before us, and to legislative competence orders in general. That committee’s comments are helpful to all of us in Parliament who consider these orders. Whether we agree with those comments or not, the committee at least has a different perspective from our own, and its comments therefore have added value. Our own Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments similarly makes a unique contribution. At the risk of digressing a little from the order, I should say that the report of the Assembly sub-committee to which I referred also contains some telling and revealing criticism of the lack of prior consideration, basically at Assembly level and beyond, of specifically Welsh clauses in general Bills, such as the Marine and Coastal Access Bill, which we dealt with recently in this House. The sub-committee says that there was insufficient pre-legislative scrutiny and that the draft Bill contained insufficient information on how powers conferred should be implemented. That last query arises with every piece of legislative power devolved by this Parliament, including the powers devolved in this order. We never know quite what will be done with the powers and we feel slightly uncomfortable about our ignorance of the ultimate aims of those to whom we devolve power. I am glad to see that the sub-committee is seeking to remedy that defect by sending us its observations and suggestions on such Bills as the apprenticeship Bill which will shortly reach its Committee stage here. I have one final concern about the piecemeal devolution process in which we are engaged today under Part 3 of the 2006 Act. We will have what can only be described as a legislative maze before we are much older, a very dated pattern of legislation with bits of parliamentary Acts interspersed with complementary Welsh Assembly measures and their secondary derivatives. Many plaintive citizens will be lost about which law applies in their particular case. I am sure that the lawyers will have a field day, which is probably beginning now.