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Comprehensive Spending Review

I share that view, but discussions are one thing, and a result is quite another. I had plenty of discussions over the years with my ministerial colleagues, but I did not get my way all the time. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is right, but we will wait and see. The Secretary of State sits on Cabinet Committees, as I did, and her job on such committees is to fight the Welsh corner. I am sure that she is doing her job in that respect, but my fear is that many people in the British Cabinet and, certainly, on the Government Benches in the House of Commons—I exclude all Members here—really do not know much at all about the business of Wales and how we operate. We now have a totally different situation for dealing with the spending review from when the Government had the responsibility. The context in which we are dealing with spending and other issues in Wales has been deeply distorted by complete ignorance on the part of Members of Parliament not from Welsh constituencies—they may be on the Government Benches or, possibly, in the Cabinet. They see things in a very different way. Devolution means that the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly are not Departments of the Government, but are now Governments, Parliaments and Assemblies in their own right, and they have to be dealt with in a certain way. That is the new constitutional settlement, and I am not sure it is being dealt with in that respect.