Wales Bill

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

12: After Clause 3, insert the following new Clause—
“National Assembly for Wales: increased membership
The total membership of the National Assembly for Wales (Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru) shall be increased to 80 members.”

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, in moving this amendment that stands in the name of my noble friend Lord Wigley and myself, I can summarise the situation very briefly. The case for adding to the present 60 Members of the Welsh Assembly is irrefutable, because the Assembly is already badly understaffed as regards membership. That was the situation from the very start, but it did not matter a very great deal because in the first instance, in 1998, the Assembly was not essentially a legislature, as has already been mentioned in this debate. It dealt only with delegated legislation and spent only 4% of its time reviewing legislation; it had a tangential function with regard to legislation—but things are very different now. Since the referendum of March 2011, a wholly new situation has been developed.

Without wishing to overstate my case, I would say that it was ludicrous to consider that the small number of Members that constitute the membership of the Welsh Assembly can possibly carry out the task of scrutinising legislation properly. Put in other words, if we wish to limit the Assembly to nothing much more than an Executive and a talking shop, all we have to do is nothing. We will emasculate the possibilities of it being a legislature because it does not have the critical mass to be that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, made his case in masterful fashion and has given a political explanation of why he confines his proposal for an increase in the size of the Assembly simply to 80, not a higher number.

As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said in the debate on an earlier amendment, in constitutional change form should follow function. A rigorous analysis is needed of the functions that the National Assembly for Wales already has to perform and the functions that are increasingly to be devolved to it. This legislation provides that the Assembly should take control to a significant degree of income tax and borrowing. The obligations that will fall upon the Members of the Assembly are not therefore solely in terms of additional legislative scrutiny but invigilation of public expenditure, authorising expenditure, and controlling and examining its quality. Whether the National Assembly for Wales would wish to replicate the sort of committee structure that we have in this Parliament, such as the Public Accounts Committee in the House of Commons, I do not know. That should rightly be a matter for the Assembly. However, what is beyond doubt is that the scale, range, complexity, difficulty and importance of the tasks that the Assembly has to undertake have been growing, are growing and will continue to grow.

Therefore, following the example already given by the Electoral Commission in Wales in certain respects, further analysis should be made of the membership required in order for the Assembly to manage to perform the tasks that the people of Wales, and indeed the United Kingdom, will expect it to carry out. For that reason, I very much welcome the spirit of the amendment. I would be happy if it were to be accepted but it would be seen only as a provisional step. It might be preferable that further work be carried out on this proposition, so that we can see exactly where, in practice, it should take the National Assembly for Wales.

The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, wisely and realistically observed that there is a constraint on physical space in the Assembly building. However, we should not be unnecessarily deterred by that factor. After all, when the House of Commons was reconstructed after the war, Winston Churchill, as Prime Minister, thought it appropriate deliberately to recreate a Chamber that would be a pretty tight squeeze for all its Members. That works rather well so we should not be worried.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

The words Churchill used were, “a sense of crowd and urgency”.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

The noble Lord always has a sense of historical drama. He imports that even to these very proceedings. We are grateful to him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

My Lords, for at least the second time today, the angel of good will and of progressive tolerance has been with us, and I am deeply grateful to all who have spoken and for the tone of each contribution. I appreciate, in the case of the noble Baroness, that we are clearly looking in the same direction. She does not challenge the basic tenets of the argument. I would respectfully suggest that once one does that there is an inevitability as to the conclusion that a person should eventually reach. It is not only a matter of absolute necessity for the future of the Assembly. The second Silk report of March this year has this sentence which encapsulates it all:

“Good scrutiny means good legislation and good legislation pays for itself”.

Be that as it may, I have no doubt that we shall, on many occasions in the future, be debating this matter, but I hope that it will be in a spirit of the near inevitability of progressiveness here and the acceptance of indisputable realities. I was not able to accept the undertaking so generously given by the noble Baroness today in relation to Amendment 1. I explained to her my reasons and I hope that she accepted my sincerity in the matter. However, on this occasion, I am very happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 12 withdrawn.