Wales Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Wirral and Lord Cormack

Tuesday 11th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, in declaring my interest as recorded in the register, I mention in particular my chairmanship of the Society of Conservative Lawyers. In an attempt to satisfy my noble friend Lord Deben, I refer him to a very detailed report on devolution as a result of a group headed by a senior barrister, Anthony Speaight QC, which concluded that the time has come to move from a conferred powers model to a reserved powers model in Wales. That should be put in the context of other necessary changes.

I greatly welcome the consensus which exists, and which I have heard in this House today for us to move forward on the reserved powers basis in Wales. I, of course, agree with my noble friends Lord Crickhowell and Lord Thomas of Gresford that the timetable set out here is unrealistic. I look forward to hearing from my noble friend how we should proceed. My message is simply that the time has come, and let us now move on.

[Lord Cormack]

I shall be very brief. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, made an interesting speech and I have much sympathy with so much of what he said. He said that you cannot have your cake and eat it, but of course you can; you cannot eat your cake and have it. We should get that aphorism right in this House. We are in danger of getting things in a real muddle if we are not careful. My noble friend Lord Deben, as always, made an extremely persuasive, articulate and convincing speech, and I think that we have to move to a royal commission very soon before we get more tangled up in constitutional change that has not been properly thought through. When we were debating the future of this House, time and again people were saying that form must follow function. That is right. We have to determine what the respective Governments within the United Kingdom do before we make final decisions on how they relate to each other. While I accept that the Bill before us—one of a series of random Bills, as my noble friend Lord Deben said—has to be dealt with, I infinitely regret the constitutional incoherence with which this coalition Government have behaved over the last four years. They have not served the commonwealth in any way whatever.