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Government of Wales Bill

I regret that I did not put my name to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, because his speech clearly expressed the anxieties that exist in Wales about the content of Orders in Council. Anxiety is certainly felt that things will not be spelled out clearly. Whichever of the routes set out by the amendments in this group one takes, I say as someone who is a non-lawyer but who works in Wales and listens to what people are saying that quite a degree of anxiety is felt that Orders in Council will not have their contents sufficiently spelled out and will therefore be inadequately thought through prior to coming before us. The advantage of the noble Lord’s wording—"““all of the principal features””—" is that it would act as a standard and as a checklist against which different Orders in Council, with time, could be looked at, and it would provide an assurance that what one might call the collateral consequences of legislation had been thought through before we were presented with the outline framework. So I support the principle behind the amendments, although, as a non-lawyer, I am very confused as to what would be the best route to follow.