Wales Bill

Lord Hain Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State explain how, with income tax devolution, Wales will continue to benefit—like, for example, north-east England, a comparable area, does—from the redistribution of income and wealth that comes through the Barnett formula, albeit imperfectly, from the 40% of GDP that exists in London and the south-east of England if income tax is devolved?

[Mr Jones]

That is an important point and it is a matter that would have to be debated in a referendum. My own view, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, is that Wales would benefit from a modest reduction in the rate of income tax, but I have to remind him that all we are talking about is a referendum that would empower the Welsh Government to decide on the rate of tax they want to charge the Welsh people. If they decided they did not wish to do that, there would be no compulsion on them to do so. However, it would provide Wales with an additional borrowing stream referable to the level of income tax devolved. It would also provide a powerful incentive to the Assembly Government to grow the Welsh economy, because clearly the more the economy grows, the more would be the revenue.

[Mr Hain]

I understand the Secretary of State’s point. However, I find it very interesting that he has not got an answer to my question—namely, how would Wales continue to benefit from the vast wealth that exists in a relatively limited area and is redistributed right across the UK? The fact that he does not have a clear answer makes me extremely sceptical about this entire proposal.

[Mr Jones]

Clearly, Wales would not be deprived of Barnett consequentials; the right hon. Gentleman knows that. We would have an additional tool for the Welsh Government to use, should they decide to do so, in growing the Welsh economy. I would have hoped he would be bold, because he has spoken in the past of the need to grow the private sector in Wales. I would have thought a small differential in the rate of tax would be a significant incentive to that private sector growth.

[Mr Hain]

The Secretary of State is being generous in giving way, but this is an important point. The Barnett consequentials will continue to come through from that portion of income tax which remains reserved to the Treasury, but the bit that is devolved under the scenario the right hon. Gentleman proposes would not, unless there was some kind of compensating mechanism which is not described. That is what makes me extremely sceptical about this.

[Mr Jones]

Some of what is passed to the Assembly would be subject to indexation every year. This would take into account both growth and contraction in the wider UK economy, so there is a mechanism built into the Bill that addresses the right hon. Gentleman’s point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Gillan]

My hon. Friend is right. The trouble is that in Wales we never get a breathing space from elections. We have an election almost every year. When we looked at the timetable over the past four or five years, we were relieved of an election in only one year. There is much to be said for putting the elections on one day, but particularly the Assembly elections and the general election.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will not be surprised to hear that I am sad about one particular omission from the Bill, although I will probably attract howls and squeals from both sides of the House. I am sorry that we did not take this opportunity to reduce the number of Westminster constituencies in Wales. When Scotland gained its additional primary legislative responsibilities, the Labour Government reduced the number of MPs in Scotland, and that should have happened in Wales. The job that is done at a cost of £66,396 in an English constituency is done by an MP, an Assembly Member and half a list Assembly Member in Wales, at a cost of some £147,000 in salaries alone. Democracy is expensive, but the boundary changes should have been made and the number of MPs from Wales reduced.

[Mr Hain]

Is the right hon. Lady saying that somehow Welsh MPs work less hard than they used to, or do not work as hard as she and others with English constituencies do?

[Mrs Gillan]

The former Secretary of State and I have engaged on this topic before. A constituency such as Arfon has only 41,138 electors and Chesham and Amersham has 70,000, so—in the interests of fairness and equality, the need for which is often spouted by the Opposition—we should look at equalising the number of constituents across constituencies. Democracy costs dearly—

[Mr Hain]

The right hon. Lady has not answered my question. All she has to say is yes or no. Do Welsh MPs work harder or less hard than she and her colleagues in English constituencies do?

[Mrs Gillan]

The right hon. Gentleman knows that many Welsh seats have fewer constituents than many English seats, and he also knows that many of the responsibilities are devolved—

[Mr Hain]

Yes or no?

[Mrs Gillan]

Well, the right hon. Gentleman can answer yes or no to my question. Does he think that the salary costs alone for every Welsh constituency— amounting to £147,00 compared with just over £66,000—are fair? Yes or no?

[Mr Hain]

The right hon. Lady has not answered my question. She has changed the question. She has traditionally been hostile to devolution, so she is now inventing all sorts of other issues. The simple fact is that we are not second-class MPs because we are from Wales: we are on the same level as she is, until her Government change that.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am not going to trade insults with the right hon. Gentleman. He has 57,823 constituents on the roll, as of 1 December 2010. I have never, ever said that a Welsh MP was a second-class MP, as well he knows. However, if he chooses to go down that line, I have to say that the boundary change and the reduction in the number of MPs should have been carried out and I am sorry it was blocked by vested interests.

Let me turn to the financial provisions in the Bill. I have long thought that the Welsh Assembly Government—soon to be known as the Welsh Government—should understand better and share the responsibilities of tax raising that go with the luxury of spending taxpayers’ money. I therefore welcome the steps in the Bill to bring that sense of responsibility and stronger financial accountability for Welsh Assembly Ministers, as well as the option for Welsh residents to make their views on tax powers known through a referendum.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

I rarely agree with the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), but I always get great entertainment from his sincere and intelligent extremism. He made a very thoughtful speech, for which he deserves credit, but may I correct him on one point about the national health service? I think he will find that more people cross the border from England to be treated in Welsh hospitals than go the other way.

[David T. C. Davies]

That is true, but these people do not do that by choice; they have no choice, and many of them are actively campaigning to be treated back in England and do not want to be treated in Wales.

[Mr Hain]

The facts seem to speak for themselves. We can have an argument about the degree to which people can express a preference, but the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues, led by the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, persistently rant against the Welsh national health service as part of their war on Wales and completely distort the facts on the ground.

[Mr Harper]

rose—

[Mr Hain]

I will give way, although my speech is not about the Welsh NHS; I am merely responding to a point made by the hon. Member for Monmouth.

[Mr Harper]

I was not going to respond, but I cannot let what the right hon. Gentleman just said stand. Thousands of my constituents live in England and passionately want to be treated by the English NHS, according to the rules and the rights they have in law, but because their GPs based in England are registered with the NHS in Wales they are forced to be treated in Wales according to the NHS rules. They do not like that prospect and I am doing my best to change it, so please do not pretend that they have run away from the English NHS by choice, because they absolutely have not.

[Mr Hain]

In that case, I think the hon. Gentleman will find that the same applies for Welsh citizens on the Welsh side of the border. All I am saying is: let us have an intelligent debate about this, rather than rantings based on a misrepresentation of the facts on the ground.

Let me get down to my speech. In focusing on clause 2 of the Bill, I wish to record my pride at taking the Government of Wales Act 2006 through Parliament as the then Secretary of State, not least because it provided for the full law-making powers the Welsh Government are now using to protect the people of Wales from this Government’s disastrous policies, including on tuition fees and on the creeping privatisation of the national health service, which is not being applied by the Welsh Government. The fact that the Conservative party, the only party in this House to vote against the 2006 Act, now seems to have accepted that devolution is a sign of progress—I welcome that—but on the question of dual candidature it has sadly regressed. In section 7 of the 2006 Act, I amended one clause from the Government of Wales Act 1998 in order to prevent candidates from simultaneously standing both in a constituency and for a region, whether as a list candidate or as an individual—this Bill will disgracefully reverse that reform.

[Alun Cairns]

On that point—

[Mr Hain]

I am going to develop the point and then I will take an intervention. I want to remind colleagues of the reasons for the 2006 change. I did not act for politically partisan reasons, as was alleged by opponents of the change; I acted for democratic reasons. As one of the Ministers who also took the original 1998 Bill through the Commons permitting dual candidature, I never imagined for a moment then the abuses it would produce and the antipathy it would create among voters in Wales. Voters have never understood the widespread practice that has occurred since the Assembly was established in 1999, whereby candidates rejected by a particular constituency then secured back-door election as Assembly Members through the regional list and were even able to claim to represent the very constituency that had rejected them. Three of the four defeated candidates in Clwyd West in 2003 were subsequently elected to the Assembly through the regional list. Those very three people in Clwyd West—in the Secretary of State’s constituency—who were booted out by the electorate ended up as Assembly Members, competing against winning Assembly Member Alun Pugh.

[Alun Cairns]

The right hon. Gentleman talked about the Welsh electorate’s antipathy to the arrangements. Will he remind us what the Electoral Commission’s view was, following its long consultation on whether or not there was a need to change policy? What advice did it give him as the then Secretary of State for Wales?

[Mr Hain]

The Electoral Commission disagreed with me, and, not for the first time from my personal experience, it was wrong.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that the Labour party has also had candidates that stand on the list and in constituencies? In 2003, on the North Wales regional list, Sandy Mewies Lesley Griffiths, Carl Sergeant and Karen Sinclair stood both in constituencies and in the region. In South Wales Central, Rhodri Morgan, Lorraine Barnett, Sue Essex, Jane Davidson, Jane Hutt and Leighton Andrews stood in both the region and the constituencies, and in Mid and West Wales, Christine Gwyther stood in both.

[Mr Hain]

Yes, indeed. That is my exact point. I am not making a politically partisan point; I am making a democratic point. The practice clouded political accountability and denied voters their right to reject a particular candidate at the ballot box. A change made by the Government of Wales Act 2006 requiring candidates to choose whether to stand for a constituency or on the regional list put the voters back in charge. It cannot be right for losers to become winners through the back door, despite having been rejected by voters. That is an abuse of democracy.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Surely the rejection is of the party in question. The system is there to get a little bit of equality across the parties. It is not about the individuals.

[Mr Hain]

That intervention interests me. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that whoever stands for whichever party, even if they are deeply opposed by the particular constituents whom they seek to represent, cannot be challenged because they are standing on a party label?

[Chris Bryant]

Is not the point also that Wales is not the only place in the world that has a top-up system to enable diversity within the legislature, but it will be the only place in the world where that practice of standing both on the list and for the first-past-post seat is used?

[Mr Hain]

I bow to my hon. Friend’s superior experience and knowledge. I think that the system applies in Scotland.

[Chris Bryant]

It does in Scotland, but I mean outside the United Kingdom.

[Mr Hain]

It may well be the case that it exists outside the United Kingdom.

[Mr David Jones]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is entirely wrong. Is it not the case that Wales is the only country in the world where, under this electoral system, dual candidacy is presently banned?

[Mr Hain]

I am not sure about that, but what I can say is that we should look at the experience in Wales. If there is no such bar in other countries, then perhaps there was no such abuse there. There was widespread abuse in Wales, practised by 15 of the 20 list Assembly Members who used taxpayers’ money to open constituency offices in the very seats in which they were defeated. They then used those resources to try to win at the following election by cherry-picking local issues against the constituency AMs who had beaten them.

[Alun Cairns]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hain]

I will not give way, because I want to make some progress. While all that was going on, someone in Wales said to me:

“If I want to defeat constituency candidates because I don’t like them and I succeed and they are defeated, why should they pop up on the list claiming to represent me?”

That is the point. There is an honourable, constitutional and necessary role to be played by list Assembly Members across the whole region that they represent. There is no justification for seeking to abuse the system by getting involved in local constituency matters to try to win back a seat at the following election using that position and that resource. That is the fundamental point.

[Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Hain]

Not for a moment, no. The Government of Wales Act 2006 put the voters back in charge. If they did not want to elect somebody, they did not have to do so. The Act stopped the prevailing situation before then in which Assembly candidates could decide to place a “both ways” bet, by standing in both categories in order to win, even if they were kicked out by the electorate. To his shame, the Secretary of State is seeking to reintroduce that both ways bet.

There was an unholy coalition of Conservatives, nationalists and Liberal Democrats opposed to abolishing that abuse. Now they have reincarnated that unholy coalition in defiance of the popular will. Why are they so afraid of taking their choice to the people? Why are they so afraid of losing constituency elections that they need the lifebelt of standing on the lists as well?

[Guto Bebb]

rose—

[Mr Hain]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can answer that question.

[Guto Bebb]

It is the case that the Welsh system of electing Members to the Assembly is replicated in many parts of the world, but the only country that has a similar ban is Ukraine. The Bevan Foundation, a Labour party think-tank, is of the view that the ban should be withdrawn.

[Mr Hain]

I have no idea whether the abuse that we have seen in Wales, which I am now documenting for the House, applied in Ukraine as well. Lord Richard chaired the commission—[Interruption.] I will now present a lot of detailed evidence on that abuse for the sake of the hon. Members who are seeking to intervene and the whole of the House. Lord Richard chaired the commission that reported in 2004. He recommended the extra powers for the Assembly, which my 2006 Act delivered. He told the Welsh Affairs Committee:

“There is something wrong in a situation in which five people can stand in Clwyd, none of them can be elected, and then they all get into the Assembly. On the face of it, that does not make sense. I think a lot of people in Wales find that it does not.”

That is not me, a former Secretary of State who banned the abuse, speaking, but Lord Richard who carried through an eminent report.

The eminent Welsh Academic, Dr Denis Balsom—again, not a politically partisan figure—said in his evidence to the Richard commission:

“Candidates use the list as an insurance against failing to win a constituency contest. This dual candidacy can also confuse the electorate, who may wish to consciously reject a particular candidate only to find them elected via the list. It should remain a basic democratic right not to elect a particular candidate or to be able to vote a Member out.”

That is a right that the Government, supported by Conservatives and members of other parties in Wales, are seeking to deny the electorate. That is not democratically defensible.

[Mr Harper]

I am listening to the right hon. Gentleman’s argument, but I do not follow it at all. When we get a ballot paper in a first-past-the-post election, we have to choose a candidate—we have to vote for somebody. There is no option to say I do not like this person and to cast an anti-vote. I do not follow the idea that someone can vote against someone. They are choosing to vote for who they want to represent them in the Assembly or in Parliament. I do not follow the argument.

[Mr Hain]

I do not know what happens in the Forest of Dean, but in every other constituency if a candidate loses, they lose. If the electorate rejects them, if the voters vote against them, they lose. They do not find themselves parachuted back in to the Assembly, from which the voters have barred them, via another route.

[Mrs Gillan]

It was the right hon. Gentleman and I who sparred across the Dispatch Box on that very subject. I think he has a selective memory when it comes to the Richard commission. As I recall it, Lord Richard not only objected to the list system, but recommended that there should be 80 AMs and that Wales should move to that system and employ the single transferable vote, neither of which the right hon. Gentleman chose to take up. That is almost proof that the direction in which he took it was indeed partisan.

[Mr Hain]

Wait a minute, Madam Deputy Speaker. Far be it from me to question whether the right hon. Lady was in order with that point, but the questions about numbers of Assembly Members and a proportional representation system are not within this Bill. They have nothing to do with this Bill. What is in this Bill is restoring the ban on the abuse of dual candidature which was in the 2006 Act, and it is that point that I am addressing.

[Wayne David]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a telling comment tucked away in the impact assessment produced by the Government? It says that the smaller parties want to change to a dual candidacy rule because they

“may have a smaller pool of high quality candidates”.

[Mr Hain]

I could not possibly comment, but since the Government say that, perhaps it is true on this occasion.

I have quoted a Labour figure, Lord Richard, in support of my case, so I shall now quote a Liberal Democrat. Lord Carlile, the former Welsh Liberal Democrat leader, said in June 2005 that

“many in Wales will welcome...the removal of the absurd dual candidacy opportunity.”

In the same debate in the Lords, the former Conservative Secretary of State for Wales, Lord Crickhowell, said:

“The present arrangements are really pretty indefensible“.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 June 2005; Vol. 672, c. 1216-1217.]

A Liberal Democrat, a former Labour Member and a Conservative former Secretary of State all agree with me. I think that that helps my case.

I recall, as Secretary of State for Wales, receiving on 9 January 2006 a press release from Helen Mary Jones, in which she described herself as a Llanelli-based Assembly Member, although she was on the list. In it, she complained about money being spent on a hospital in Carmarthen instead of one in Llanelli. However, as the list Assembly Member for Mid and West Wales, she represented both towns and should really have been supporting both hospitals. Had she been discharging her list Member’s duties properly, she would not have discriminated between the two towns or their hospitals.

[Owen Smith]

Why did she?

[Mr Hain]

Indeed, why did she? Why, of all the parts of the list area that she represented, did she target the one place where she had only been very narrowly defeated in 2003, invariably describing herself as the Llanelli-based Assembly Member? As it happens, I admire Helen Mary Jones for her ability and commitment, although not for her belief in an independent Wales. The 2006 Act stopped her describing herself as the Assembly Member for Llanelli, because there was one and it was not her. In the meantime, she campaigned hard and won the seat back in 2007.

The list Assembly Member for South West Wales, Bethan Jenkins, is often described as the Neath-based Assembly Member and is more active in the Neath constituency than anywhere else in the region. She has not yet had the courage to stand in the Neath constituency, but if the Bill goes through with clause 2 remaining within it, perhaps she will do so, safe in the knowledge that being defeated in Neath will not prevent her from being elected—[Interruption.] I will not respond to that intervention from the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards).

In a leaked memorandum written in August 2003, a Plaid Cymru list Assembly Member—now the party’s engaging young party leader—Leanne Wood, was embarrassingly blatant in encouraging abuse of the system using taxpayers’ money. Let me quote from that memorandum for the benefit of the House and my case. She urged Plaid Cymru Assembly list Members to concentrate tens of thousands of pounds of their local Assembly office budgets in their party’s target seats. She urged her party’s list Members to do casework only where it might benefit Plaid Cymru in those target seats and to attend civic or other events the constituency only if they thought there were votes in it.

I will now quote directly from that memorandum, entitled “What should be the role of a regional AM?” It perfectly illustrates the problem we faced before the 2006 Act banned dual candidature in Wales. Leanne Wood was hardly shy about her objectives:

“Each regional AM has an office budget and a staff budget of some considerable size. Consideration should be given to the location of their office—where would it be best for the region? Are there any target seats…within the region?”

She went on:

“We need to be thinking much more creatively as to how we better use staff budgets for furthering the aims of the party.”

She finished off with a refreshing burst of honesty:

“Regional AMs are in a unique position. They are paid to work full-time in politics and have considerable budgets at their disposal. They need not be constrained by constituency casework and events, and can be more choosy about their engagements, only attending events which further the party’s cause. This can be achieved by following one simple golden rule: On receipt of every invitation, ask ‘How can my attendance at this event further the aims of Plaid Cymru?’ If the answer is ‘very little’ or ‘not at all’, then a pro forma letter of decline should be in order.”

I could not have presented my case better than she revealingly did.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I am absolutely astonished at what I am hearing from my right hon. Friend. Would he, like me, welcome an intervention from the two Plaid Cymru Members present in the Chamber to distance themselves from that startling abuse of taxpayers’ money?

[Mr Hain]

That is not a matter for me, but I take my hon. Friend’s point with acclamation.

[Wayne David]

Is not my right hon. Friend’s case substantially weakened by the fact that nobody seriously believes that Leanne Wood can be party leader for much longer?

[Mr Hain]

I think I shall move on from that point, despite the great respect I have for my hon. Friend.

All the arguments and evidence I have cited demonstrate conclusively that the ban was not partisan but enhanced democratic standards among Welsh Assembly Members. Indeed, I reminded the House that six Labour Assembly Members, including three Ministers, could have been defeated in the 2007 Assembly elections by a swing of 3% against them—a very small swing. They would no longer enjoy the safety net of the regional list and two subsequently lost. The reform affected Labour candidates, just as it applied to candidates from other parties.

[Alun Cairns]

rose—

[Susan Elan Jones]

rose—

[Mr Hain]

I think I really ought to conclude my remarks.

Surely the principle behind the 2006 Act is right: namely, candidates must make their choices and then voters will make theirs. My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), also a former Secretary of State for Wales, put it well in a debate on the then Bill in January 2006:

“The additional member system that we have as a result of the 1997 settlement is fundamentally flawed. People do not understand it. They do not understand how an individual can stand in two ways for the same body on the same day in the same election and be defeated, then get elected a matter of an hour or two later. Equally if not more confusing is the fact that, in my constituency and in those of my right hon. and hon. Friends in the south Wales valleys, thousands upon thousands of people vote Labour on their second vote, yet none of those votes is counted. I do not understand the logic of that. I can understand the technicalities, because I taught the subject many years ago when I was a teacher in a college of further education, but as an elector or as an elected representative, I think that it is terribly confusing and ought to be changed.”—[Official Report, 9 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 63.]

My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr Francis), as the then Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee, said in the same debate:

“Electoral reform should not get caught up in internecine party politics...the present system is an unloved and confusing creature that causes more grief than it is worth.”—[Official Report, 9 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 69-70.]

My hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) said:

“Following the last Assembly election, many people asked me how candidates who stood at the election and were defeated—and, in many cases, defeated by a country mile—could find themselves sitting in the Assembly, claiming not only to represent constituents but having equal status with the people who defeated them. How would we feel if a third of this Chamber”—

by which he meant this Chamber—

“were made up of candidates that had stood against us”

before appearing on the list

“they would not have come up with such a system even in North Korea”,

although I confess to having come up with it as a Wales Minister in the 1998 legislation. My hon. Friend continued:

“Once getting into the assembly via the back door, these characters spend much of their time cherry-picking issues and targeting seats that they or their party are looking at for future elections.”—[Official Report, 9 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 96-97.]

Those are some of the reasons why I introduced the bar on dual candidature. It is astonishing that, for narrow partisan party reasons, the Secretary of State is assisting his own party members in Wales and those of other parties who complained about the ban. After the 2006 Act banned dual candidature, the well-known democratic abuses that had occurred before were not repeated. I find it astonishing that the Secretary of State is reinstating a regime that brought democracy in Wales into such popular disrepute. If he persists, I hope the House of Lords will delete clause 2.

I want to pick up on an earlier point relating to the interesting exchange I had with the Secretary of State. I will read the exchange in Hansard carefully. I was not at all convinced by his answer. Indeed, I remain very concerned, on the question of income tax devolution, that Wales will be cut adrift from richer parts of the United Kingdom and lose out. There have been a lot of warm words about indexation, but I do not find the answers we have been given, or the references in the associated financial documents, to be at all compelling or convincing. I respect the Holtham commission and I respect Gerald Holtham. I understand his points on indexation, but I do not trust a Conservative-led Treasury to honour the commitments in the Holtham commission.

I would be more reassured—this is a cross-party point, because we all want to see Wales doing the best it can—if a clear and absolute commitment was embedded in the proposed legislation for Wales to continue to benefit, regardless of income tax devolution, from the wealth of the United Kingdom. My politics come from a belief in fairness, and the redistribution from richer to poorer regions and from richer to poorer individuals. I do not see how tax accountability, which the Secretary of State exalts, can be a two-way bet. I do not see how having devolved income tax and giving, in the main, the Assembly greater accountability to local voters, will then be protected, according to the Secretary of State’s reassurance, by a kind of indexation that undermines that accountability. That makes me even more suspicious of it. I will be extremely sceptical of, if not opposed to, income tax devolution until I am absolutely sure that Wales will not lose out, for the reasons I have described.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I will make a little progress before giving way again.

Let me divert a little to address the points on which the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) focused his speech, which relate to clause 2. I did not follow his argument at all. Although he was making a point about the amendment in the Bill, the thrust of his speech seemed to be a criticism of how the list system operates in Wales. He said that it was a system that we could find only in North Korea, but then he rather shot himself in the foot when he had to admit that he was the system’s author. I know that he is a supporter of proportional representation—

[Mr Hain]

I am not, actually.

[Mr Harper]

Oh, he is not a supporter now; I thought that he was. The system is the one he invented. Given that the Electoral Commission, which is independent of any party, and three of the four parties in the Assembly are perfectly happy with what is proposed in the Bill, I do not think that he can claim that this is being done for partisan reasons.

[Mr Hain]

I was one of the authors, under the Secretary of State at the time, Ron Davies, of the Bill that allowed candidates to stand in both the lists and the constituency, which the Secretary of State is now seeking to reinstate, but I had no idea of the abuse that would take place, for which I think I have provided more than ample evidence. That is the point.

[Mr Harper]

The right hon. Gentleman made two points, one of which I agree is an abuse, from the way he outlined it. Of course, parliamentary resources—I presume the same is true for the Assembly—are given to us by the taxpayer for parliamentary work, not party political campaigning. If that was the thrust of the Plaid Cymru document he quoted, that would have been quite wrong. He suggested that there is something wrong with candidates standing for a constituency and then being elected from a list, but that simply reflects the fact that in a list system, and certainly in the one that was put in place in Wales, it is the party label that gets a candidate elected, not their individual qualities. It seems to me that candidates getting elected by virtue of their place on a list might be a good reason for not having a list system, but it is not particularly offensive or undemocratic.

On voting for or against people, about which the right hon. Gentleman and I had an exchange, perhaps I am naive, but I happen to think that when people vote in a general election they are voting for somebody. I certainly conduct my election campaigns by trying to give people reasons to vote for me at a constituency level and reasons to vote for my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) as Prime Minister, for example, rather than by thinking up lots of reasons why they should not vote for my opponents. I hope that is how my opponent in my constituency will conduct himself as well. That might not be what happens in Wales, but it is how I try to conduct things in my constituency.

[Mr Harper]

I suspect that my right hon. Friend, as ever, is spot on. The right hon. Member for Neath, in his lengthy speech, gave some anecdotes about one or two people who did not like the fact that a candidate who had stood in the constituency was then elected on the list, but I heard no evidence of a wider view.

[Mr Hain]

With all due respect, I represent a Welsh constituency, which is not the case for either the hon. Gentleman or the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), I was Secretary of State for Wales and I travelled the length and breadth of Wales, and that matter was raised with me all the time. He mentions the Electoral Commission, which often adopts a kind of academic approach to these matters. That contrasts with the findings of Denis Balsom and other sources of credible evidence from Wales.

[Mr Harper]

Based on what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, it sounds as if he has a number of anecdotes, but in my experience the Electoral Commission, with which I worked closely when I was the Minister with responsibility for political and constitutional reform, takes positions based on evidence. It carries out thorough research and is always scrupulous about not taking a position that could be portrayed as partisan, and it guards that reputation jealously. It does not agree with him, as he acknowledges—I have not always agreed with it—but I would put rather more weight on its views than on his.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for that point, which shows that the Government position is joined up across not just the Wales Office but the Treasury. The right hon. Member for Neath showed an astonishing lack of trust in the Treasury led by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, whose excellent recent Budget cut taxes for those on modest incomes. The Labour party voted against those—against the fuel duty cut and the tax cuts for modest earners. I find that surprising.

[Mr Hain]

I do not trust the Treasury whoever is in power.

[Mr Harper]

I defer to the right hon. Gentleman, who has been a spending Minister in a number of Departments. For much of that period, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) was Chancellor, so perhaps it is not surprising that he takes that jaundiced view. Having dealt with my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, I have a more positive outlook on Treasury Ministers, and I have yet to be proved wrong.

[Mr Hain]

The only Treasury Minister I trusted was Madam Deputy Speaker, when she was in that Department.

[Mr Harper]

Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall not draw you into the debate. I am sure that, for the sake of your reputation at the Treasury, you would, if allowed, cast off that foul calumny. If the right hon. Gentleman thought that highly of you when he was a spending Minister, you could not have been doing your job as a Treasury Minister properly. We all know that you absolutely were; otherwise you would not have found your way into that Chair. I will close this aspect of the debate just there, before I find myself cut off against my will.

I have some questions for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, although I do not necessarily want him or the Minister to respond today; perhaps we can touch on the issues when the Bill returns to the Floor of the House in Committee. If the income tax provisions were devolved, how would they work? I looked carefully in the Bill at the definition of an individual Welsh taxpayer; it is to do with their usual place of residence. How complex will operating the system be for businesses, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises? In a constituency such as mine, businesses will have staff resident in both England and Wales. If income tax varying powers were to be used by the Welsh Government, I would want to make sure that the burden placed on employers of English and Welsh residents was not significant and that the system was as easy as possible to operate—preferably with as little burdensome administration as possible. I will return to that issue in Committee, to make sure that it has been properly thought through.

I also want to check on the issue of stamp duty land tax. The shadow Secretary of State touched on it in a slightly facetious way when he discussed properties that straddled the England-Wales border. I want to make a serious point about the quality of the mapping involved. May I make a plea for us not to use postcodes in determining which nation the land is in? It is not the Post Office’s fault, but a lot of organisations are sloppy and do not use postcodes properly. They assume that everybody with an NP postcode lives in Wales, including my constituents in the southern part of my constituency. A lot of my constituents, who live in England, get bilingual letters from all sorts of organisations that assume they live in Wales. I hope that my hon. Friend can assure me that we will use a proper mapping system when looking at stamp duty land tax so that we make the right decisions about whether property is in England or in Wales and do not have the sorts of cross-border issues that I have seen as a result of devolution so far.

I support the proposal to move to fixed-year terms offset against the terms for this place. On balance, it is better to have elections in Wales that focus on the issues important to the people of Wales—and ensure that those running the Welsh Assembly and those wanting to be elected to it are properly held accountable—than elections that take place on the same day as a UK general election, because then the arguments would blur. One can argue it both ways—the hon. Member for Rhondda, who is no longer in his place, did so, as did several others when we were passing the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011—but I am pleased with the measure.

I have already said that I am happy with the proposal to reverse the change made by the right hon. Member for Neath, and I will say no more about that. We have had a lot of debate about it already, and I do not want to provoke any more.

I notice that the borrowing powers are already available to be used for the M4 development. That is a helpful proposal. I have been having an ongoing debate with some Labour Members about the Severn bridge tolls that is driven by the desire for improvements on the M4 to improve the economic benefits from that corridor. I have proposed a third Severn crossing, although that is not welcomed by all Labour Members if it means an extension of toll revenues. Some of the borrowing powers could enable improvements to the M4 link, which is very important for the economies not only of south Wales but of constituencies such as mine. The proposal is very welcome.

Overall, I welcome the Bill. I am glad that it has been well thought through as a result of the proposals from the Silk commission and that it had pre-legislative scrutiny in this House. I will certainly support it, and I look forward to debating it further on the Floor of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)]

It is a pleasure to close this important debate and it is good, as ever, to follow the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith), who on this occasion gave an uncharacteristically churlish speech. I want to call her out on her comments about the contribution by my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who is always the model of courtesy and graciousness in his contributions in this House. His remarks about Wales were based on evidence and truth and were carefully made, so I commend him. He is a former Cabinet Office Minister, so he is familiar with issues pertaining in particular to fixed-term Parliaments. This debate has been enriched by his participation. It has also been enriched by the speeches of not one, but two former Secretaries of State. It was good that the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), who is no longer in her place, both gave very thoughtful contributions on issues about which they have a lot of experience.

We also heard from the Chairman of the Welsh Affairs Committee, which did a fantastic job in scrutinising the draft Wales Bill. The speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) in fact attracted not just praise from Liberal Democrats, but a slightly backhanded compliment from the right hon. Member for Neath, who described him as having “sincere and intelligent extremism”. As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman knows better than most hon. Members in this House, extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice at all.

We have had a fascinating and wide-ranging debate during the past few hours on matters directly, and sometimes indirectly, related to the Wales Bill. There were excellent speeches from both sides of the House, and I thank all hon. Members for their speeches.

I will limit my remarks to the Bill, but I first want to say that, regardless of points of disagreement, there has been a broad measure of consensus on and support for the Bill by all parties in the House. Just as a Dulux colour sheet has different shades, there have been different shades of support—ranging from frosty and cold by my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth to rather grudging and unenthusiastic by Opposition Members through to warm by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham. There has been support for the Bill and, as we go into Committee, we should not forget that this wide-ranging Bill enjoys broad support from hon. Members and parties across the House.

The vast majority of hon. Members clearly support the Government’s move towards achieving a strong measure of fiscal devolution that will give the National Assembly for Wales control of devolved taxes for landfill and land transactions, and enable the Welsh Government to borrow for capital investment. I hope that such a positive position continues as the Bill progresses.

I should perhaps start with the lockstep, a term that few hon. Members had probably heard before the Silk commission did its work, but one with which we are certainly becoming increasingly familiar. I know that the Government’s proposals to allow the Assembly to vary income tax rates uniformly—in other words, in lockstep—subject to a referendum, concern some hon. Members on both sides of the House. Let me be clear that this Government believe that the structure of income tax is a key mechanism to redistribute wealth across the whole of the United Kingdom, including Wales and, as such, that wealth redistribution is properly determined at UK level. The lockstep is consistent with the principle that fiscal devolution should not unduly benefit one part of the UK at the expense of another, which would result in what at least one hon. Member has called a race to the bottom. I am pleased that that position is one that now seems to enjoy the support of Labour Front Benchers, although that was not clear when we last discussed it in the Welsh Grand Committee.

There would be a real risk of a so-called race to the bottom if the Welsh Government were able to set substantially lower rates for higher or additional rate taxpayers without needing to change the basic rate. Far from making the income tax powers unusable, as some hon. Members have suggested, the lockstep makes the powers very usable, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State explained at the start of the debate. Devolving income tax would give the Welsh Government a crucial lever to reduce taxes across the board in Wales to make it a lower-tax economy and put money back into the pockets of hard-working people across Wales.

If electors in Wales decide in a referendum in favour of income tax devolution, the Welsh Government would become responsible for almost half the income tax generated in Wales. In reducing the tax burden on working people in Wales, the Welsh Government would reap the benefits of a growing Welsh economy and gain access to a significantly larger revenue stream to finance further borrowing. With vision and foresight, the Welsh Government could grasp that virtuous circle with both hands.

Some Opposition Members, not least the right hon. Member for Neath, raised concerns about how the application of devolved income tax will work in practice. There was some discussion of that in the last sitting of the Welsh Grand Committee, when there was a lot of confusion about whether Welsh budgets would be detrimentally affected by the devolution of 10p of income tax. Following the Welsh Grand Committee, I circulated a letter to all members of the Committee explaining, with a practical example, how that would work. I would therefore hope there would be some clarity, but the right hon. Member for Neath said that there is a risk that Wales will be cast adrift. Let me explain to him that the system of income tax devolution we are proposing protects Welsh funding in two ways. First, the lockstep retains the redistributive structure of income tax across the UK, as I have just described. Secondly and crucially, the block grant adjustment mechanism, which we are calling indexed adjustment, means that Wales is protected from UK-wide shocks. For example, if the UK tax base were to decline, the block grant adjustment will be reduced accordingly. Reducing the block grant adjustment thereby increases the Welsh block grant. Therefore, the finances of the Welsh Government are protected through that mechanism.

[Mr Hain]

I am grateful for the Minister’s views. Is he saying that, if the Welsh Government raise less, Westminster will compensate more?

[Stephen Crabb]

That is not what I am saying. A key principle of the mechanism is creating the incentive for the Welsh Government to create the conditions for the economy in Wales to grow, so that they can reap the fruits and benefits of a growing Welsh economy. The protection kicks in when there are shocks and changes that affect the overall UK tax base. When changes would otherwise have a detrimental impact on Welsh Government revenues, Welsh Government revenues are protected because of the indexation. I shall circulate further information to right hon. and hon. Members.