Wales Bill

Lord Crickhowell Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 10th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Crickhowell (Con)]

My Lords, I begin with some general thoughts, some of which have been touched on by both noble Baronesses who have spoken. The Constitution Committee of this House, in its report The Union and Devolution, drew attention to the way in which power has been devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in a piecemeal fashion, without proper consideration of the cumulative impact of devolution on the integrity of the United Kingdom. The committee concluded:

“The Government needs fundamentally to reassess how it approaches issues relating to devolution. What affects one constituent part of the UK affects both the Union and the other nations within the UK … The new mindset will require abandoning a ‘devolve and forget’ attitude. Instead the … Government should engage with the devolved institutions across the whole breadth of government policy, co-operating and collaborating where possible. In particular, the Joint Ministerial Committee should be reformed to promote co-operation and collaboration, rather than grandstanding and gesture politics”.

That was the view of the Select Committee. It commented that,

“to perpetuate the use of the Barnett Formula, which takes no account of relative need, makes a mockery of the Government’s duty to ensure a fair distribution of resources across the UK”.

In an earlier report, Inter-governmental Relations in the United Kingdom, produced when I was a member, the committee expressed the hope that,

“the increasing complexity of the devolution settlements will spur greater parliamentary scrutiny of inter-governmental relations, aided by a more transparent JMC and improved departmental reporting”.

The Select Committee on Economic Affairs, in its report A Fracturing Union? The Implications of Financial Devolution to Scotland, agreed with the Constitution Committee that,

“retention of the Barnett Formula is the wrong decision”.

It said:

“In future, HM Treasury needs to be much more transparent about how funding is allocated to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and an independent body such as the Office for Budget Responsibility should scrutinise this and the operation of the fiscal framework. There is also too little Parliamentary scrutiny of the funding arrangements. The UK and devolved legislatures should co-operate to remedy this”.

The committee suggested that,

“a decision to devolve nearly all revenue, uniquely amongst countries in a similar position to the United Kingdom, has been adopted with undue haste and little assessment of the economic and political consequences. It may not be clear to people in Scotland”—

I add, “or in Wales”—

“how they fund reserved services and which Government is accountable for them”.

All these conclusions and recommendations form a useful starting point for our consideration of the Bill, along with the thought that almost all modern Acts of Parliament are too long and complex and therefore do not provide clarity where it is needed. However, at this point I pay tribute, as my noble friend Lord Bourne has already, to the former Secretary of State for Wales Stephen Crabb for the role he played in the preparation of this Bill and for the manner in which he consulted and took account of the suggestions and criticisms made in its preparation—a process that has been continued by the present Ministers. We have had the Wales Act 2014, the report of the Silk commission Part 2, the St David’s Day process, the publication of a draft Bill, and pre-legislative scrutiny by the Welsh Select Committee in another place and other interested parties, as well as the passage of the Bill through the Commons, albeit with a somewhat hasty Committee stage. All this represents a great improvement on some of the earlier steps along the devolution trail.

I will refer only to a few matters to which we seem certain to return later. Employment and industrial relations policy has not been devolved. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, who is to speak immediately after me, is likely to table an amendment to remove devolved public services in Wales from the reservation. I will support the Government if they resist that amendment.

The joint government review of the Silk recommendation that legislative competence for water be aligned with the national border was completed in the summer, and the Government have still to present their decisions. Based on my experience as chairman of the National Rivers Authority, I have considerable doubts about the good sense of the proposal, but I will reserve judgment until I know the conclusions of the review and the decisions taken by government.

The Minister has already made it clear that the maintenance of the single legal jurisdiction of England and Wales remains a red line for the Government. They will have my total support for that position, but the working group of officials, including those from the Lord Chief Justice’s office and the Welsh Government, is considering the implication of diverging Welsh laws within the justice system and the need for distinctive arrangements to reflect the emerging body of law made by the Welsh Government. Once again, I will reserve my final judgement on the detailed arrangements—which, we have been told, will be presented to us later in the autumn.

Another government red line concerns crime, public order and policing. While I understand and am sympathetic to the general principle underlying the Government’s stance, I hope that Ministers will be able to explain why they appear to be giving powers over policing to some English city regions while not granting them to the Welsh Government.

The noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, a particularly good friend of mine, may not be pleased when I say that I am also with the Government in their opposition to the devolution of air passenger duty. I suppose that I should declare an interest as I fly more frequently from Bristol than I do from Cardiff—but it would be wrong to distort competition between two airports that are in such close proximity.

The Government say that discussions between HM Treasury and the Welsh Government on the fiscal framework are ongoing and that it would not be appropriate to place block grant adjustments on a statutory basis. I have already referred to the need for openness and parliamentary scrutiny. I hope that we will be given a great deal more information about the fiscal framework before we take the Bill much further.

It is all too clear from what has been said that in Committee and on Report there will be a great deal of vigorous argument about the reservations. We have moved to the reserved powers model, but the number of reservations is still lengthy. Although Stephen Crabb reduced the original list very considerably, I wonder whether we cannot do still more. We have been told that a “roll back” of the Assembly’s legislative competence may have taken place. The National Assembly’s research brief raises legitimate questions that deserve a response. In a letter to the Secretary of State in June, the First Minister wrote:

“You need to press Whitehall Departments to focus on the issues that really do need to be dealt with on an England and Wales or UK level; this requires a laser-like focus rather than a blunderbuss”.

All this takes us back to the general points that I made at the beginning of my speech about the need for simplicity and a new mindset. The Wales Office has done stalwart work, but Ministers must ensure that every government department is equally committed to the process. It will be greatly to the credit of the Government if in the Lords we are able to clarify, simplify and improve the Bill even more than it has been improved already.