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Government of Wales Bill

I shall add briefly to the Minister’s troubles by trying to be helpful. I want to look at this concept of pre-legislative scrutiny. To a certain extent, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and my noble friend Lord Elystan-Morgan. I do not particularly like it but, as I understand it, the idea is that there should be pre-legislative scrutiny of the terms of the Order in Council, but there would be none in respect of any Acts passed by the Assembly under the powers conferred upon it by the Order in Council. ““Pre-legislative scrutiny”” is rather an ill-chosen phrase to describe that process—which almost amounts to negotiation between the Assembly in Cardiff and the Government in London—as a result of which the scope of the powers to be devolved is arrived at. The Government in London would then agree to put that in the form of an Order in Council, and would bring it to the House. We have got too bogged down in looking at the mechanism of the Order in Council rather than the substance. The mechanism may indeed not be the most appropriate way of doing this, but that is what the Government have chosen. Given that, we must be perfectly clear as to what it entails. A situation in which a mechanism demands that the Assembly put before Parliament the detailed terms of a measure that it proposes to pass does not make sense. Either you devolve, or you do not. If you do not, so be it. In that case, Parliament has the right to pass whatever legislation it likes. But if you want to devolve certain competences to Cardiff, the way in which they are exercised has to be determined in Wales and should not be subject to legislative scrutiny by the Westminster Parliament. The function of the Westminster Parliament is to give the Assembly the competence. Once the Assembly has the competence, it exercises it. You cannot half devolve in this sense: you either give it to them or not. If you do, you do so in the knowledge that it has competence, authority and jurisdiction to exercise it as it thinks fit. This is almost a classic discussion between the devolutionists on the one hand and the restrictionists on the other. I am unashamedly a devolutionist, but some of the language I have heard in some of the contributions to this debate almost leads me to believe that people are saying ““Yes, we will accept this, but it is not really going to mean anything””. What it will really mean is that Westminster will have control over it; first, by the Secretary of State if he wants to; and, secondly, by a system of pre-legislative scrutiny, allowing Westminster to scrutinise the details of the measures that the Assembly will pass under the devolved competences. That would be wrong, contrary to the purposes of this Bill and certainly incapable of being presented as further devolution to Wales.