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Government of Wales Bill

The spirit in which the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, has moved his amendment is entirely shared by all Members on these Benches. The noble Lord will see that our Amendments Nos. 64A, 64B, 64C and 66A are grouped with his; and I would be interested to know at some stage during the debate what his reaction is to our ideas on filling this undoubted gap. Before I turn to my amendments, I have one question about the detail of Clause 94(3), to which the noble Lord’s amendment refers. I am focusing on the powers that an Order in Council provides under this clause, which grant either new fields of action or new matters of action to Schedule 5. How is Clause 94(3) relevant? I ask that for the following reason. Clause 94 provides a mechanism for creating new fields and new matters. Subsection (3) gives power under this procedure to the Crown by Order in Council to disapply existing legislation in the United Kingdom, whether it is primary legislation or secondary legislation. Is this not premature, because the transfer of fields and matters does not itself create new law; all it does is expand the vires of the Welsh Assembly to create new law through Assembly measures? Where an assembly measure is approved by the Crown, I can quite understand at the second Order in Council stage, when you have a new law of the land—or, at least, the land in relation to the territory of Wales—that it would be necessary to disapply certain primary legislation and delegated legislation which contradicted the terms of the Assembly measure so approved; but I cannot understand how it could possibly make sense to disapply these measures at the earlier Order in Council stage—because that stage does not change the law of any part of the United Kingdom; it merely provides extra vires to make new laws. I put this question to the Minister as a matter of inquiry. In my submission, this notion would be much better placed at a later stage of Part 3 of the Bill and in relation to the second Order in Council stage, not the first. I have not given the Minister warning that I was going to say this because it only occurred to me when I was looking at the text just before the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, spoke. But, as his amendment is to that part of the Bill, it struck me that it would be an appropriate moment to mention it to the government Benches. As I have said, the spirit of our amendments broadly reflects that of the noble Lord, Lord Rowland. We are seeking to establish as thorough a parliamentary procedure as we possibly can to consider the draft Order in Council passed by the Welsh Assembly, together with whatever memorandum the Government produce in support of it. The attitude of Ministers in another place has been to say, ““Well, this is all up to Parliament. We will leave it to you. You will have 60 days to sort all this out””. I can see the force of the Government saying that it is up to Parliament—after all, they are rightly reluctant to interfere with procedures which are those exclusively of this House and another place—but, given that we are effectively transferring legislative power from both Houses to the Welsh Assembly, I would humbly submit that we might need rather longer than 60 days to consider all the details of the matter. That has animated our amendments tabled in this line. We believe that Parliament ought to have up to six months to consider the proposed addition of a field, or of matters under a field, before the 60-day period starts. That six months would give the Government, in seeking to formulate the right order to place before Her Majesty, the opportunity to hear representations from all parts of the United Kingdom, whether or not those submissions are made by lobbying organisations, or by voluntary organisations—of course, or by voluntary organisations lobby as well—or vested interests. It would also give the Secretary of State the opportunity to take into account any resolutions about the content of the Order in Council made either by another place or your Lordships’ House. Essentially we are engaging with the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, in his amendment, but we are trying to set out a rather more elaborate procedure than he has done.