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Government of Wales Bill

I have considerable sympathy with the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, because I thought that the original Scotland Act contained some serious errors. Trying to list what were going to be the powers of the Scottish assembly was so confusing that those of us who are lawyers thoroughly enjoyed ourselves working out which bits were still within the remit of Westminster and which were to be within the power of the Scottish assembly. The solution that the Government arrived at in the Scotland Act 1998 was an elegant one. It was a much better idea to say, ““These powers will be reserved to Westminster and everything else will rest within the competence of the Scottish Parliament””. I was never very much in favour of devolution to Scotland, and I cannot say that anything done subsequently has either restored my faith or encouraged the Scottish people to believe that a good job is being done. Nevertheless, if we are to alter the constitution, it would be appropriate to provide symmetry between the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. If the Scottish Parliament has powers to legislate on anything except a reserved matter, it would be appropriate for a Welsh assembly or parliament to have a similar range of powers. There would be no confusion. We would all know, when we are dealing here with matters that are reserved for the whole of the United Kingdom, that we are not dealing with matters that may relate to a bit of Wales or a bit of Scotland, and we would know precisely what was going on. For that reason, it would be appropriate to achieve that symmetry. I have much sympathy with the idea that if we are going to introduce a powerful assembly or parliament in Wales in such circumstances, a referendum should be held to determine the views of the people of Wales. That seems a sensible idea and I do not really understand why there should be any opposition to that. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, concentrated on the fact that there is a single legal system in England and Wales. That is, of course, correct. However, if he considers, say, the National Health Service, he will know that there are very different arrangements in Wales. As I understand it, the Welsh Assembly last year voted to abolish prescription charges. That is not the case in England. The Scottish Parliament is also considering such a proposal. Given that that issue affects a large number of people, we must consider that we no longer have a single national health service, but a number of national health services. If that is to be the way that such matters are organised, there should be symmetry between the constitutional arrangements in different parts of the United Kingdom.