Wales Bill

Debate between Lord Bew and Lord Norton of Louth

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Norton of Louth]

My Lords, I, too, have sympathy with the amendment. I was recently in Cardiff Bay, speaking at a conference organised by the Welsh Government centre looking at the challenges facing the National Assembly. I focused on the challenges that derive from the fact that it is devolved, relatively new and small. Size does matter; it is especially important in a parliamentary system. As we have already heard, it affects the committees that are operating, not least because, with the small number of Members, there are problems setting up a comprehensive series of investigative committees where Members are not stretched by having to serve on several. That limits the capacity of the legislature to effectively scrutinise the Executive.

The other point about size is that the proportion of the Assembly that forms the Executive tends to be somewhat greater than with larger assemblies. The National Assembly is nowhere near the position in Gibraltar, where there are actually no Back-Benchers at all. However, the proportion of Ministers in the National Assembly is greater than it is in the House of Commons. In order for it to fulfil its functions effectively, you need members who can do that and to ensure that the Executive are not too prominent as a proportion of the Chamber itself. For these reasons, I have considerable sympathy with this amendment.

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 12 in the name of my noble friend Lord Elystan-Morgan and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. I am compelled to do so as a matter of natural justice because I come from a region of the United Kingdom where the local Assembly has 108 members on the basis of a significantly lower population than that of Wales. Even if it is the case, which is widely rumoured in Belfast, that the Assembly will be reduced in size to 90 before too long, there will still be a significant anomaly in relation to Wales.

I have never been an uncritical admirer of the Northern Ireland Assembly. I am currently the chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. As has been referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Lord Norton, that committee has made significant criticisms of some of the practices of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Those criticisms are nothing to do with its size. The better features of the Northern Ireland Assembly are its greater size and, I submit, a greater variety of opinion and debate. It also has a greater representation of parties and politicians who would not normally find their way to that Assembly in the face of the large battalions of local politics.

The argument has been eloquently made in favour of the need for the Welsh Assembly to have more members in order for it to deal with the volume of business in a more effective way. That is not the only argument, although I fully support it. There is also the argument that the larger Assembly will contain more variety of opinion—and therefore more vitality—and that can only be to the benefit of the people of Wales.