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Government of Wales Bill

I acknowledge that the noble Lord and many of his friends have been pretty consistent on this issue, which is why I find it rather strange that they are content with this extraordinarily complex and unsatisfactory set of arrangements, which has been introduced almost entirely because the Labour Party in the other House are divided and because of the fact, already referred to by my noble friend Lord Kingsland, that Ministers do not believe they could win a referendum. My position, which I made clear at Second Reading, is that I would go straight to Part 4 and give the people of Wales those powers, if that is what they want. I acknowledge that my views were rejected by the people of Wales at the last referendum, by a narrow margin. I fully accept that verdict. I made it clear at Second Reading that I do not want to go back. However, if you are substantially going to change the devolutionary step that was approved by the Welsh people on that occasion on the basis of information clearly put before them, you must have a further authority. I would not go down the halfway house route. If the Welsh people want to take the devolutionary step and have the same powers as people in Scotland, let them do it, but let us get on with it. Indeed, as regards the suggestion that so far we on the Conservative Benches have done nothing to indicate that we really mean that, I have tabled amendments that would make a referendum easier. I have tried to remove some of the blocking mechanisms that stand in the way. I have said that if a clear majority—rather than a two-thirds majority—of the Assembly want to go down that road, it should not be possible for the Secretary of State to block it. Let us have no aspersions cast on our willingness to go down that road. Indeed, a number of my colleagues in another place made that very clear. Mr Gummer made a passionate speech in which he said that he would like to go down that road and get on with it. There are many other examples of that. I refer to the power that we are discussing. Incidentally, one of the most curious arguments advanced by Ministers in another place against a referendum is that the scheme that the Government have devised is so complicated that no one will understand it. Apart from the feeling that it was pretty insulting to the people of Wales to be told that they would find the whole thing much too difficult to understand, the general proposition was included by the Labour Party in its manifesto but in such general terms—I have the wording of the manifestos in front of me—that no one could have expected the Welsh people to understand what was actually proposed. Surely, if the Welsh people are to be told that they have given a matter their approval, they should have clearly put before them an explanation of what it is about. I do not want to go over the ground that many of us covered in great detail at Second Reading, but this is not a modest measure. It is a Trojan horse measure that enables very wide powers to be taken step by step so that we can go down the full road to the kind of legislative Assembly that the Liberal Democrats say they want without a referendum at all. We can get there step by step under this arrangement. That is one of the reasons why we object to it. One should have no doubt about the extent to which this measure can widen the powers and scope of the Assembly and its Ministers. The report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee is very helpful in this context. As I do not think that its comments have been quoted before in our debates, I propose to quote some of them now. One of the points the committee emphasises is the breadth of the measure. It explains that the competence of the Assembly is defined by reference to 20 fields set out in Schedule 5. Paragraph 24 of the report points out:"““There is no limit to which fields may be added, or which matters within each field. The fields could even be more extensive than the list of subject headings in Schedule 7 (which relates to Part 4 - Assembly Acts)””." At paragraph 26 of the report the committee reasonably states:"““It is for the House to decide whether it is appropriate for such a degree of competence to be conferred by subordinate legislation. It is the apparent purpose of the bill for Part 3 to be a gradual process and for Part 4 to be a more definitive settlement. We consider that an incremental process of increasing the Assembly’s competence need not necessarily be achieved by a series of bills. The idea of areas of competence being varied by subordinate legislation is precedented in the Scotland Act 1998””." The committee goes on to say,"““What is different here is the proposed scale of the use of the power: the Scotland Act 1998 itself defines the devolution settlement and the Order in Council power may be used to modify it; in contrast, it is here proposed that Orders in Council will define the competence of the Assembly””." In other words, by this piecemeal measure and without the approval of the Welsh people taken in a referendum, we are going down the full legislative route. That is wholly wrong and wholly improper. We should be either honest about the matter and face up to it—we want full legislative powers given to the Assembly—and deal with it by the proper legislative route, or we do not. It seems to me wholly wrong to abandon the opportunity for anyone in this House to carry out the vital process that it does so well of looking at the detail of legislation—the devil is in the detail and cannot be covered by pre-legislative scrutiny—and allow this vast extension of power without proper authority from the people of Wales. I support the amendment.