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Government of Wales Bill

moved Amendment No. 99:"Page 67, line 39, at beginning insert ““Subject to subsection (2B),””" The noble Baroness said: We are still on Clause 124, and in moving Amendment No. 99 I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 101 and 109 in this group, which are probing amendments. In the last group of amendments, I was talking about the problems of ensuring that the right amount of resources reached the Assembly, the Auditor General and the ombudsman free of interference from Welsh Ministers. This group of amendments addresses two similar bodies, the Children’s Commissioner for Wales and the proposed Commissioner for Older People in Wales. The Children’s Commissioner is supposed to be independent of the government and hence the office receives funding from the Assembly. If nothing else is done, that function will pass to Welsh Ministers by virtue of Schedule 11(28); that is, the funding of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales will be transferred to the very people from whom he should be independent. Similar considerations apply to the Commissioner for Older People in Wales, who will come into being when the Commissioner for Older People (Wales) Bill, which is before Parliament, comes into law. Perhaps I could digress. The Bill left your Lordships’ House in March but has still not had a Second Reading scheduled in another place. Perhaps the Minister could set out the Government’s intentions on that Bill. My amendments proceed on the basis that the Commissioner for Older People (Wales) Bill will be pursued by the Government. My amendments propose two ways of tackling this issue. First, Amendments Nos. 99 and 101 amend Clause 124 so that the annual budget motion would have to include the amounts needed by the two commissioners as determined by the Assembly. Secondly, Amendment No. 109 amends Schedule 11(28) so that the current funding functions of the Assembly are not transferred to Welsh Ministers but to the Assembly Commission. I believe that Amendment No. 110, tabled by the Liberal Democrat Peers, represents a further way of dealing with the same issue, which must be dealt with. I recognise that my amendments are not perfect as drafted but, as I said, they are probing and I hope that the Minister understands the issues that I seek to probe. They are crucially about the independence of the two commissioners. I beg to move.