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Government of Wales Bill

I am going to disappoint hon. Members who have contributed to this debate, because I am going to give a technical response to the amendments rather than engaging with the points—although they have been well made—about whether the powers should be devolved to the Assembly, and with the reasons why hon. Members think that that should be the case. I shall explain the process as I go along, and perhaps hon. Members will then understand the position. As I made clear earlier, this Bill is not about broadening the terms of devolution but deepening it. The two amendments would broaden devolution into areas such as energy, police and the probation and Prison Service, with which the Assembly does not currently have the Executive functions to deal. That goes against the basic premise for the way in which we have established the fields in schedule 5. Those fields, as they are set out, are exclusively those areas in which the Assembly currently has Executive functions. The proposals for which hon. Members have argued—that energy, police and so on should be included—would contradict the premise that the only matters that appear in schedule 5 are those in which the Assembly has an Executive function.