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National Assembly for Wales (Legislative Competence) (Social Welfare and Other Fields) Order 2008

I appreciate that the noble Lord is making a fundamentally important point. It is important that there should have been scrutiny and an agreement by the relevant body of the Welsh Assembly before the matter came here. I ask him, however, to accept that the situation is to some extent ameliorated in this way. Over the past six years, four comprehensive statements of policy, very helpfully set out in the Explanatory Memorandum, have been published in relation to children and young persons generally and to vulnerable children and children in poverty. I believe I am right in saying that there is no proposal in any part of this draft order which is not specifically a proposal contained in one or more of those papers. Although it can fairly be said, and has very properly been said by the noble Lord, that there has not been scrutiny by the Welsh Assembly, this paper nevertheless contains nothing other than what the Welsh Assembly has set out, from time to time, in relation to these matters.