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Government of Wales Bill

I disagree with Lord Richard on his last point. The Bill is extremely transparent and conceals nothing. There will be pre-legislative scrutiny of all the relevant Orders in Council, the Assembly will use its own procedures to give proper scrutiny to Assembly Measures, and this House and the House of Lords will be able to decide whether the powers defined in the Order in Council should be given to the Assembly.That is a much more transparent system than what we have now. Under the present system, the Assembly can make a request for primary legislation, but there is no real discussion about why that legislation gets delayed or is prevented from reaching the statute book. On the previous group of amendments, we debated at some length how the proposed powers will work and the degree of change that they represent. The Government argue that Parliament will retain control of the process by which power is given to the Assembly to legislate in clearly defined areas, so the Bill does not represent a change that is so substantial and significant that it warrants a referendum. Moreover, I challenge Opposition Members with Welsh constituencies to say how many people have gone to their weekly surgeries—or written to them, or phoned their offices—to demand a referendum on the Orders in Council. The fact is that nobody has expressed any concern about a referendum—except members of the Conservative party. I understand that Nick Bourne, who leads the Conservatives in the Assembly, has gone on record as saying that there are divisions within the party on this issue. One good reason for having a referendum is to resolve that issue within the Conservative party.