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Government of Wales Bill

I have listened to the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, making very persuasive speeches for more than 30 years. I do not think I have ever heard him make a less persuasive one than that. The noble Lord gave the whole game away in his opening remarks. The real reason the Government do not want to move on to Part 4 and prefer this more obscure way of proceeding is that the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, and many of his friends in the other place are all too aware of the consequences of that move as regards the role of Welsh Members of Parliament. The likelihood is that there would be a reduction not only in the role of Welsh Members of Parliament, but in their number. We all know that there are Members in the other place who are very concerned about that. It was because there was no unity on this issue that the Government have suddenly devised this complex and obscure route forward. That is the whole reason why we are going down this rather absurd route. The noble Lord put forward an Aunt Sally and then tried to destroy it. He put up a wholly fallacious argument about setting out in great detail the clauses of the Bill in a referendum and the inability to explain it to the electorate of Wales. One only has to turn to two remarks made about the matter by very distinguished Members of both Houses to see how easy it would be to get a perfectly simple question that one could put to the electorate of Wales. The first remark was made by the right honourable Alan Williams, the Father of the House of Commons, when he pointed out that,"““the Bill as drafted . . . provides for a succession of orders, [and] the full legislative objective could be achieved without a referendum””." He went on to say,"““It is a form of creeping devolution””.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/1/06; col. 53.]" Then, in the Welsh Affairs Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Richard—unusually for him he is not in his place, but that is not perhaps surprising at this late hour—pointed out very clearly that we are dealing with,"““a device to avoid having to come to Westminster to ask for primary powers to be formally devolved. It is quite an interesting device . . . Westminster can say they have not devolved primary legislative powers, but depending on the way in which the Order in Council procedure is used, it could in effect be a concealed grant of almost a direct legislative competence down to Cardiff””." Once one brings those two things together, all one really has to do is to say, ““Look, we propose to extend primary legislative powers””—that is what they are, as my noble friend Lord Kingsland has established very clearly—““to the Welsh Assembly, step by step and bit by bit. We are reluctant to do it all in one great step, but we think that you should have the opportunity to choose whether you want those legislative powers conveyed in the step-by-step process or whether you want to wait until the whole process is complete and the powers have been transferred in totality so that nothing can be reversed again. Then we are prepared to go through the farce, the charade of having a referendum to decide whether you go on to what we have already given you””. I think that is profoundly insulting to the people in Wales. It is an absurd proposition that it is not possible to get agreement on a form of wording that one could fairly put to the people of Wales and that the people of Wales could perfectly understand. What is more, one of the features of a referendum campaign—we have all taken part in them—is that the parties are able to explain in detail exactly what the problem is and put the case, something that was never done when the clause was slipped in on the back of the manifesto. I do not believe many Labour candidates went round their constituencies saying, ““I draw your attention to the wording that we have put into our manifesto about what we are going to do in the next Parliament to extend the powers of the Welsh Assembly””, nor do I believe they attempted to explain them. They did not elaborate in any way. Indeed, as my noble friend Lord Kingsland pointed out earlier, they had not actually devised this obscure way of doing it when they went to the electorate. We are being led up the garden path. I think the people of Wales are being misled. I want the people of Wales to have the choice. If they want to go further, I think they should be allowed to. I think that the proper way to proceed now is to ask them whether they want full legislative powers, and get on and do it, sooner rather than later. I do not think they should wait 10 or 11 years and I do not think the then Secretary of State, whoever it may be—I cannot imagine for one moment that it will be the present Secretary of State, and I hope it will not be—should have the power to take that decision. I think the Welsh Assembly, by a simple majority, should be able to ask for a vote on Part 4. When we get to it, I shall move an amendment in due course. At this stage, however, we ought to have a referendum on Part 3, and not fudge the issue or try to obscure the reality of the situation from the people of Wales.