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Legislative Programme and Budget Statement (Wales)

I welcome the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary, whom I wish well in office. This morning was a bad start for the Committee in this Parliament. When the Secretary of State was my shadow and the shadow of my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath, we always discussed the issue of ministerial statements together to arrange proper time for the Committee to deal with the issues before us. We did not have that this morning. We had an exceedingly unexciting statement from the Chief Secretary, who gabbled his way through it probably because he wanted to get out of the room as quickly as possible. It did not add anything to the debate that we are having now or the debate we could have had if things had been done properly. I hope that we will see a better way of dealing with the Committee’s business in the months ahead. This morning’s events show what this Tory Government with Liberal Democrat support, propose to do on the constitution, parliamentary procedures and how we govern ourselves. This morning’s example was classic: riding roughshod over convention, the Opposition and the sensible policies that have been adopted over the years regarding our constitution. For example, we were told in the Queen’s Speech that we will have a constitutional or a political reform Bill on which the Deputy Prime Minister will lead. That will not deal—although we are told that the issue will be before us—with the stuffing and packing of the House of Lords with people from the Conservative and the Liberal Democrat parties to, again, ride roughshod over the democratic processes in the other place. This morning I spoke briefly about the 1832 Reform Act. Those who know the history—I was taught by the great author of ““The Great Reform Act””, Michael Brock—know how the then weak Liberal Government had wanted to pack and stuff the House of Lords to get the 1832 Act through. We are now in different circumstances, but the methods are exactly the same. The Committee will know that for 13 years the Labour Government had no majority in the House of Lords. They could have stuffed and packed it with peers from the Labour party, but they did not do so. The other thing that the Government are doing—it will also be part of the Bill—is to change the procedures for a vote of confidence in the House of Commons. I have no doubt that there is universal opposition to that outside the House by those who know about such matters. I want to the concentrate on the part of the Bill that will directly affect Wales, and that is the changes to our parliamentary constituencies. The logic on which that daft policy is based is that it is a popular thing to do. Well, it is a populist thing to do, which is not quite the same. I have not come across, in my constituency or elsewhere during the election campaign, any reference whatsoever to the need to reduce the membership of this House to satisfy the populist ambitions of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties. I said this morning that in 1832 there were 32 Welsh Members of this House when Wales had a population of less than 1 million. We now have 3 million people with 40 MPs, which is an increase of eight seats. However, if you look at the country as a whole, there has been a 3% increase in the number of House of Commons seats since 1950, but a 25% increase in the size of the electorate of Great Britain and Northern Ireland over the same period. There is no evidence whatsoever of any outside opinion that wants the reform, except within the Conservative and Liberal parties, or of any logic behind the claim.