Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Lord Morgan Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Morgan]

I lend my support to this amendment, which has been so admirably moved; there have been a number of excellent speeches. I see that I do so in the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, who, among other things, represents the powerful traditions of David Lloyd George, whose spirit hovers over this debate. I think that the proposals to reduce Welsh representation in this way are deeply unfair to Wales as a nation and deeply damaging to its interests, to the House of Commons and to the United Kingdom.

Parliamentary representation is central to what has happened in the modern history of Wales. We heard the famous quotation from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It was a Welsh Bishop—not the Welsh Bishop who is the distinguished ancestor of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, but another, the Bishop of St David’s—who said that there was no such place as Wales. He said that it was geographical expression, as Metternich had described Italy.

Since then, Wales has advanced rapidly. It has acquired increasing recognition of its nationhood and its identity. It has, in important ways—if the Minister will allow this thought—achieved equality with Scotland, and with other areas on the rugby field, more than equality, I think. This has been acquired through parliamentary persuasion. It has been in large measure political, but it has had social and cultural aspects as well. The interesting feature to me, and a feature of the history of modern Wales, is that this recognition of nationhood has gone along with ties with the Union of the United Kingdom remaining extremely strong, even after devolution. Therefore, the history of Wales in the United Kingdom, and the history of Ireland in the United Kingdom have been manifestly different.

The motor of change has been democracy; that means the use of the parliamentary persuasive method. I note the very sound point made by the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, that the quality of the people involved is important. If Wales were represented by 40 idiots or people of mediocre talent, perhaps it might not matter how many you had. If you had a genius, Wales could be represented by one person. But I also think—to quote a famous advert—size matters, and a significant number to make a collective point at all levels of the legislature of the United Kingdom is extremely important.

If we look back, as I am prone to do, we find that the achievements of Wales have relied very heavily on the parliamentary pressure that Welsh MPs have been able to bring. A great landmark was the beginnings of legislation for Wales alone. That legislation was the ill starred Sunday Closing Act 1881, which is commonly thought of in a moral or religious context, but it was very important because it stated for the first time that you could have a statute that applied to Wales—a distinct legislative principle that did not apply to England. Obviously, that depended heavily on Welsh parliamentary pressure and representation. It was followed by the famous Act that set up the county schools in Wales and eventually, as it was seen then, the great triumph of the disestablishment of the church in 1920. There have been many cultural aspects associated with this, such as the National Library, the National Museum of Wales and the University of Wales, for which I had the honour to be vice-chancellor for some years. All of that depended on effective political pressure through Parliament. That was the way the Welsh chose—the method of persuasion. It is significant that throughout this period not only did Welsh parliamentary representation increase in quality but the numbers of Welsh Members of Parliament went on increasing, from 34 to 36.

In the period after the First World War, parliamentary achievement stalled. I think that that was because the United Kingdom was involved in social and economic problems of a great kind. Trade unions were strongly unionist in sympathy. The Labour Party changed quite remarkably in the interwar years from support for local devolution shown by people, such as Keir Hardie, to a strong commitment to centralisation. There was no advance between the wars but no retreat either. What we have heard about the Speaker’s Conference of 1944, including the very sensitive approach adopted by Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister at that period, shows how the point about Welsh nationhood and identity had been absorbed.

From the 1960s, as everybody knows, there was a period of very dramatic change. We had the Welsh Office, devolution and associated major changes in the cultural life of Wales, including aspects of a culture in the visual arts, for example, not traditionally associated with Wales. The movement for Welsh recognition has gone on but, as we have heard, the connection between Wales and Westminster and Whitehall has remained extremely powerful. We have heard of many areas such as social services, justice, and so on, indicating the enormous importance for Wales in having strong representation and pressure to sustain its interests. Throughout that period, representation went up until it reached a total of 40 in the Act of 1986.

One important point that strikes me from this historical background is that all the parties have contributed. It has been profoundly to the advantage of Wales that all the main parties have adopted a non-adversarial and constructive approach. The Liberal Party played a glorious and distinguished role before 1914. It is interesting to see how the Liberal Party changed its approach to Welsh matters. Gladstone, that great man who was concerned with home rule for Ireland, came to realise that Ireland and Wales were different. If you had, for example, disestablishment of the church in Ireland, that was taking you along the road of separatism. In Wales, that disestablishment of the church was an alternative to separatism and was committing you the more strongly to being in the United Kingdom.

The Conservative Party has been increasingly sympathetic, if the Bishops’ Bench will allow me to say so, since the disestablishment of the church. That was the great incubus for the Conservative Party in Wales. It was thought of as an English party and the party of the Church of England in Wales. Since the disestablishment of the church, the Conservative Party has been able to be hugely more constructive. Winston Churchill set up a Ministry of Welsh Affairs. We heard the recollections of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, on setting up the Welsh television channel, which I was fascinated to hear. We have had a series of remarkably sympathetic Administrations under the Conservatives in the Welsh Office. I recall the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and when I was in Aberystwyth, Lord Walker. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is remembered with great affection; Mr Redwood, I do not recall with quite the same warmth and affection. However, we had the talisman of the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, who was enormously valuable and deeply sympathetic. I used to argue that the Conservative Party would benefit enormously from devolution in Wales and that it would have a much more positive and central role in Welsh life. So it has proved.

The Labour Party has oscillated. It began with a very devolutionist view, then became a very centralist party, perhaps in the 1920s to the 1960s or 1970s, and has suffered from that electorally. The Welsh Office and devolution were the work of a Labour Government and the Government of Wales Act took the process of devolution considerably further. We will have the referendum on further powers for the Welsh Assembly in March and I hope very much that it will be successful. All that will create a more diversified but more durable United Kingdom and sets Wales firmly in its place.

I worry that this Bill is quite different. It gets away from this all-party constructive approach to Welsh politics. It inflicts greater damage on the Welsh political system than any legislation we have had since the mid-19th century. The ties of Parliament with Wales will be weakened at a time when the powers of the Welsh Assembly call for a strong Welsh presence in Parliament and when, as the noble Lord, Lord Howard, said, the economic recession will make the need for a strong protective mechanism for Wales in Parliament more necessary than ever, given the greater importance of the public sector in Wales. This is a very damaging change of stance by the present Government and I find it deeply ironic that the party of the union is proposing a step that will weaken the ties between Wales and Westminster.

As the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, observed, the perception is deeply important, and perception can lead to other things. It has been done in a thoughtless and casual way. We look forward to what the Minister will say, but so far there has been no compromise, no consideration or alternative views. We had the rejection of an idea of a Speaker’s Conference. There is no suggestion that we might have the kind of Boundary Commission that would take local views into account and reflect on a range of issues. As my noble friend Lord Touhig observed, a mishmash of new constituencies will be created, based on the crudest mathematical formula without concern for geography, history or community—the idea for which philosophers whom the Conservative Party reveres, such as Edmund Burke, have called across the centuries. The crudity of the process ignores the subtle variations within Wales, which as we have heard has very large constituencies, where the connection between electors and the Member of Parliament can be very difficult to sustain. It is particularly harmful to the Welsh-speaking areas of Wales. Again, slightly demurring from the stance of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, I believe that what is important is preserving Welsh communities. It is quite true that most Welsh people live in south Wales—the Cardiff et cetera bourgeoisie—working in the public service. The huge concentration of governmental machinery in south-east Wales is a major reason for that. We want to take account of communities in sparsely populated rural areas. As I mentioned the other day, I have a Meirionnydd mother and a Cardiganshire father divided by the River Dovey. There are subtle variations that the mathematical formula pays no heed to at all.

I dread the thought of some of these new constituencies coming into play. We have already had aberrations in the reorganisation of Welsh local government. I well recall when I was at Aberystwyth dealing with a monstrous aberration called Dyfed, and confronting the councillors in Llanelli and Burry Port, trying on occasion perhaps to play the Labour Party card and totally failing because they did not really regard that area of the frozen north, as they saw it, as a part of Dyfed at all.

We must have a formula for the size of constituencies that is flexible. I find the irrational process in which this change has been conducted deeply distasteful. It is a result, as with so many of the policies we currently have, of secret backstairs private discussions within the coalition. But we have not had them within Parliament so far. The House of Lords is doing, as it so often does, what the House of Commons was not enabled to do. There was no debate on these dramatic changes in Wales that occurred because of the use of the guillotine. I regard these proposals as a throwback to the cultural imperialism of the 19th century, with a coalition claiming, in effect, that there is no such place as Wales; that they really do not care about it and they are not prepared to listen. That is, unless their policy changes, very deeply to their discredit.