Constitutional Commission Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Griffiths of Burry Port
Main Page: Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Griffiths of Burry Port's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
(2 years, 2 months ago)
Grand CommitteeMy Lords, I am a shooting star for a minute and a half, with due thanks to my noble friend Lord Wigley.
In the time that I have been in your Lordships’ House, I have noticed a number of measures moving through to completion that had constitutional dimensions to them. Therefore, I feel that a situation we thought we understood has, either by accretion or erosion, been sometimes quite severely affected. What I pick up from the Question as central to a need felt more keenly now than it could have been before is that we need to take time out to have a convention—call it what you like—where we look at what is happening in a situation where, if we are honest, power is not only held and disposed of centrally but disposed of by the Executive at the expense of other aspects of government.
Granted the anomalous situations that exist in Scotland and in Wales, and ominous possibilities of what might or might not happen in Ireland, this should be a moment where we stand apart and take a good look at what has become of us. I would like the methodology that underpins such a convention to resemble more what happened to bring the Good Friday agreement into being in Northern Ireland: namely, endless talks behind and out of sight to achieve something that gives us an opportunity to create ideas we can live with.
I do not think a debate of this kind, for all the worthiness of some of the things put forward, can possibly achieve the outcomes we are looking for, but it can hint at something. I end simply by taking other lines of WB Yeats’s poem that was partly quoted earlier. Yes, it is true that “Things fall apart”, and “The centre cannot hold”. It is true that
“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”
and that
“The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
Was there ever a description of now better than that, although it is 100 years old? Was there ever a statement of how things are that better describes our need radically to look at where we are and how we can move forward, with trust and respect, one for another?