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National Assembly for Wales (Legislative Competence) (Social Welfare) Order 2009

I, too, warmly congratulate the Minister on his appointment and, so far as this body can, I am sure that we will confer on him honorary Welsh citizenship. I, too, very much welcome the orders, both generally and specifically. Generally, one tends to welcome all such legislation because it is part of a process that Part 3 was intended to allow to run, and to run regularly. Secondly, every piece of such legislation, quite apart from its own individual merits, tends to strengthen the foundation for legislative possibilities that the Welsh Assembly has. It assists in building up a cadre of people who are well qualified in this field, and it is only by the greater and more constant evolution of this process that one will bring about that result. In addition, I think one can say that not only is Part 3 intended to transfer, bit by bit, authority to Wales to legislate in the same way as Acts of Parliament allow that to be done from time to time but it also forms what might be regarded as a pathway or bridge to Part 4. If we are ever to have a referendum—I very much hope that we will and that it will be carried, although I know that that is not of necessity the view of everyone in this Committee—then it is imperative that Part 3 will have been exploited to the fullest possible extent. Nothing will give Wales a better picture of what Part 4 could mean than the full exploitation of Part 3. Having made those obvious points, I turn to the first of the two orders—the one relating to social welfare. I welcome it. It is very necessary that the greatest attention is paid to this situation. The problems in Wales are not basically different from those in other parts of the United Kingdom but they affect Wales much more harshly and with more impact. The point has already been made by the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, and other noble Lords that Wales scores very highly in many of the categories of disadvantage in this area. Indeed, we have a much greater dependence on carers. It is proper to remind ourselves that 70 per cent of all carers in the United Kingdom perform an unpaid service. The community is massively in their debt. Of course, this situation will develop much more acutely over the next few years. There are more disintegrated families and more dispersed families, and there are the very welcome tendencies against institutionalisation—I hope that I have said that right; it is one of the most difficult words in the English language to pronounce. In addition, there is greater longevity—something in which someone of my age has an interest. If we put all those matters together, along with many others, it is clear that the need for carers will increase very sharply over the years. Wales has a much higher rate of people suffering from long-term sickness and disabilities. Another feature is the age profile of the community. The age profile in Wales is very different from that in England and is getting more and more pronounced in relation to those over the age of 65, particularly in the rural areas. I declare an interest here. For my sins, I am the chairman of a working group reporting to the Welsh Assembly on rural health. One piece of evidence that we found had great impact was the fact that over the next 23 years an increase of at least 30 per cent is anticipated in the proportion of people in Wales over the age of 65. That trend is present in England but in Wales it is far more pronounced and is extremely germane to the issues raised today. That deals with the first order, which I greatly welcome, as does everyone else in this Committee. Turning to the second order, I congratulate—I was going to say "my noble friend"; indeed, we are friends—the noble Lord, Lord Rowlands, on his assiduity in spotting what I think was a fundamental flaw and one that unhappily cost 12 months’ progress of this draft order. The noble Lord is absolutely right to say that amending Schedule 5 is not a sin because every LCO that we pass makes amendments, but amending the main timbers of the 2006 Act is a serious matter. I congratulate him on being a constitutional eagle on this matter by discovering a weakness and very properly pointing to it. On the exact way in which the mechanism operates, I am with the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, on this. Although I have been a lawyer of one sort or another for a long time, I found it difficult to understand the order, certainly on first reading it. It made me think of that story about a person standing on the quayside in Hong Kong seeing a huge packing case which has printed on it the words, "The bottom of this case is labelled ‘Top Uppermost’ in order to avoid confusion". Indeed, the more I read the order, the more confused I became, but I think I understand it by now, and I warmly welcome both orders. One should remind oneself that these orders do not in themselves create new laws. They peg out an area of jurisdiction on which—to use the idiom of a field—the Welsh Assembly can build something worthwhile. Too little building is taking place at the moment and I hope that it will speed up in the near future.