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

I congratulate my noble friend on his position in the Government and I thank him for his exemplary introduction of the orders. Surely no one would want to halt them. They are the progeny of the Westminster process and the Assembly in Wales has all the competence necessary to do good work with them. They will and should go through today, because certainly our carers in Wales do magnificent work. Are these orders also pointers to the future governance of our country? I think that they are, and perhaps they are fingerposts on the Westminster parliamentary lanes that may point to more, not less, devolved government. The Assembly in Wales has acquitted itself very well since its inception, and the handover from Whitehall to Cardiff was almost seamless, which was a bureaucratic miracle. It is a considerable achievement in modern governance. I took part as a Minister in the 1979 referendum, and in the subsequent referendum held in the 1990s, which helps one gain an overview and insight into the context of Wales’s governance. These orders conjure up a consideration of where the Government of Wales are travelling to, as does the now traditional opening, post the Wales general election, of the newly elected Assembly in Cardiff Bay by Her Majesty the Queen. To see Her Majesty, her consort, her heir and the Duchess of Cornwall seated in a line facing the Assembly Members in the graceful Assembly Chamber also concentrates the mind. The conclusion in any consideration of this is that the Assembly has certainly arrived. These orders concentrate the mind on our governance in the principality, and they have convinced me that in the future there will be more, not less, devolved government in Wales. My guess is that via Calman, Scotland will gain more powers and that Wales will, at the very least, gain some of the powers Scotland will gain, or powers which Scotland already has. I think that there is a report outstanding about governance in Wales which may be published. The orders prompt me to predict that in next year’s general election, if it is next year, each of the major parties will have proposals in their manifestos for more devolved powers for Wales. Modest though they are, these orders are harbingers of change. I think that the national party leaders will be proposing more than legislative competence orders. The context of these orders is that the Welsh Assembly is very much a body that is up and running. It is confident, and clearly it is organising and lobbying for considerably more authority than it has now. This context includes an astounding development in British governance; in Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff the nationalist parties are very much in power, or are sharing power, most positively with others. I believe that soon after these two orders are well and truly used, the pre-election political manoeuvres will ensure proposals for more significant devolved measures. Where that will leave the position of our excellent Welsh Members of Parliament and the post of Secretary of State for Wales we do not yet know, but surely that is a subject for later debate. It is sufficient to say now that today we are heading towards a decisive moment in the constitutional history of the Celtic nations.