I congratulate the hon. Members for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), who were instrumental in bringing this debate to the Floor of the House, and I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting permission for it.
Ultimately, however, I believe that it is a great shame, as was said by the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), that the Government have not ensured there is always a St David’s day debate in the calendar. That is especially true this year, given the St David’s day announcement last week, to which I shall turn later. It is right and proper that the Government Command Paper should be debated on the Floor of the House, as it is that Welsh Members should get to debate Welsh matters on or as near as possible to St David’s day each year. It is to the Government’s great shame that such debates have not been secured. By making this plea, I once more hope that somebody somewhere will listen and we can revert to the ordinary processes that used to take place.
I shall talk about the Command Paper, the so-called St David’s day agreement, in greater detail in a moment. Suffice it to say at this stage that the proposals will still leave Welsh devolution far behind Scotland and Northern Ireland. The announcement on funding public services still leaves Wales considerably worse off, to the tune of about £1.2 billion per annum, compared with Scotland.
If I may, I will say a brief word about the discussions that led up to the Command Paper. It is almost an open secret that the main obstruction to any meaningful progress during the discussions was, unfortunately, the London Labour leadership, which it seems to me was often at loggerheads with its Cardiff bay counterpart. In the end, it is the Westminster wing of the Labour party that has the final say over its colleagues in Cardiff, a point which the electorate will do well to heed on 7 May.