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Government of Wales Bill

I thank the Minister for that. My noble friend Lord Roberts of Conwy identified an extremely important point—one that I had not fully recognised—that we are transferring power to Ministers. That makes it extremely important that we consider very carefully exactly how the Assembly, which we now have had defined to us by the Minister in explaining Clause 1, will be able to control those Ministers and effectively keep their actions under proper review. That is, step by step, what we will have to do as we proceed with the Bill. On the question of the name, I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, was a little rash to take as his precedent the Bill that, after all, was so decisively rejected by the people in Wales at the time—so decisively that the then Secretary of State, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, was clear that had an elephant appeared in his garden at the time it would have been impossible not to recognise it. The noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, pointed out that the Assembly had chosen to call the new building the ““Senedd””. Perhaps that was so that it could separate it from its existing building, which I am happy to say is still known by many as Crickhowell House. Be that as it may, it seems to me that the overwhelming argument against the case put by the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, and those who spoke, is the fact that this matter has been fully considered by the Assembly and rejected by seven votes to one. Surely, that is an example of where we should listen to the Assembly and its Members. So I go along with the Government’s rejection of this point.