Representation of the People Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd November 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

I advise the Committee that if Amendment 1 is agreed, I cannot call Amendment 2 by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord made a very interesting speech, most of which I disagreed with. I understand the issues, but to say that there is no mandate, constitutional basis or any political support for this measure is absolute nonsense. It was in the manifesto of the Labour Party. When people voted in Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England, they voted, among other things, to agree to voting at 16, so I see no conceivable argument against it constitutionally because it is a constitutional principle—the bedrock of our constitution—that a manifesto commitment is the same as a referendum.

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[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I think the most interesting thing in this debate is the things that were not said. When the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, went directly to the point that everyone else had been tiptoeing around and, slightly indelicately but deliberately, said this was a partisan Bill that was psephological in its content and was actually about advantaging one party over another, I watched very carefully the expressions opposite. The Minister did not swoon theatrically; there was no clamour of outrage, with people demanding that either of the noble Lords should withdraw. In fact, with the honourable exception of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, who at least tried to reject it—she said she refuted it, but I am not sure she did—the reaction everywhere else was some studied looking at screens. The reason was that the noble Lords were not saying anything remarkable.

Lest that noble Lords think I am being partisan about this, this has been the case with every change in the franchise. In our entire long history, I cannot think of one Representation of the People Act that has not been manipulated for partisan advantage by every party at the time. It happened in 1832 and 1867, it happened in the 1884 and 1885 Reform Acts, it happened in 1918, and it happened when the voting age was last changed in 1969 by Harold Wilson. It happened when the Triennial Act was introduced in 1694, when the Septennial Act was introduced in 1716, and when the quinquennial Act was introduced in 1911. On every occasion, people have—perfectly understandably, because politics is politics—tried to game who would benefit.

As King Solomon said,

“there is nothing new under the sun”.

I will of course with great pleasure give way.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

The noble Lord might recall that I was a history tutor, and I am going to disagree with him. In Wales, the first time—I think it was the first—that 16 year-olds voted, the Labour Party, which had been in power in Wales for over 100 years, was reduced to nine out of 96 seats.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Non-Afl)]

I am always very grateful to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen. There is a reminder in what he said that you should be careful what you wish for and that it may just be worth considering what has changed in the opinion polls between when this measure was put in the manifesto and now. Of course, however, we do not need to worry about that sort of thing in our elevated position here.

What makes this one a little bit different from all those others is not the fact of the electoral calculation and manipulation, but the flagrancy. What I mean by that is the list we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley. It is not just that parties on all sides have agreed on 18 as the standard age for maturity: the age at which you can make a contract, use a credit card, get a mortgage, serve on a jury and stand as a candidate. It is that, in many cases, the age has been raised from 16 to 18 as the age of consent by the same people who are now saying we should lower the voting age.

One of the first debates I took part in as a newish Member of your Lordships’ House was on raising the age from 16 to 18 to get Botox treatment. It was supported on every side. People said, “Well, this is just closing a loophole. This, after all, is the age we already use to get a tattoo and buy a knife, a bottle of wine, a scratchcard or some fireworks”. Absolutely true. As we heard, the last Labour Government raised the age of consent for a lot of these things, and certainly voted for it when other parties did.

The difference is not that it is happening; it is the sheer brazenness and flagrancy of it. That serves to undermine confidence in the system. It makes people cynical, because it confirms all the negatives that people have about politicians. If we have decided, as a country, that people below the age of 18 are legally children, are we really going to say that they are not responsible enough to buy or knife, scratchcard, firework or pint of beer, but that they should have the right to decide whether anyone else can do those things? Is that a reasonable proposition?

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For reasons of normal constitutional logic and international comparability, and to stop politicising something so fundamental as the electoral mandate, we need to look at this again. The national Government have a responsibility to look at the issues and consequences for the wider country. Devolution allows different parts of the UK to govern themselves differently. It does not follow that each must have an independent power to determine the basic qualifications of those who are entitled to elect a legislature. I contend that those qualifications ought to be settled nationally through this Parliament and that we can and should preserve different Governments and policies without dispersing responsibility for the democratic foundations of the state.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Frost, will not be surprised to learn that I do not agree with him on these issues. I understand the difference between franchise and the whole business of elections and the institutions to which we elect people, but we have to be extremely careful that we do not undermine a devolution settlement that was set up not just by Act of Parliament but by referenda in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and, in Wales, by two referenda. To do that would be seriously damaging to the devolution settlement.

In Northern Ireland’s case, I had the privilege of chairing the Good Friday agreement talks that dealt with elections. There was an agreement among all the parties in Northern Ireland involved in those talks, and the two Governments of course, to ensure that the final Good Friday agreement would command consensus right across the board. If we start interfering with that, we are in deep trouble. The 1998 settlement was agreed in Ireland by a referendum in the north and south. I am not saying that we cannot change it, but those changes need to be made with the devolved Assembly itself.

In terms of Scotland and Wales, one of my predecessors as Welsh Secretary once said that devolution is a process. I did not agree with him at the time, but he was probably right. It is a process, and over the last 30 years that process has meant that the relationship between the United Kingdom Government and Parliament and the devolved Governments and Parliament has developed to a very sophisticated degree. If you interfere with that, you can seriously interfere with the devolution settlement. Although in some ways there is some merit in thinking that the franchise should perhaps be universal, the only way you could agree that is by having consensus with the devolved Administrations, and they would have to agree with it.

I am not a great lover of proportional representation; I have always been a first past the post person. I really believe in a link between the elected Member and his or her constituents. I do not particularly agree with the settlement we have in Wales with the 96 Members on a closed-list system—I am not sure that anybody really understands it all that much—but I agree with the right of the Senedd to be able to establish that system. Therefore, we ought to be very careful indeed about how we deal with these amendments.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to support my noble friend Lord Frost. I put my name to his Amendments 30 and 31, and the two consequential amendments.

I listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen. I thought I was the only person who was not keen on the d’Hondt system of voting. He put his finger on a very important point—that system does not allow the voters to hold a particular person or even party accountable. We have seen from recent evidence in the Welsh Senedd that someone can change their political affiliation and refuse to give way, even though they have de facto been elected as a party member rather than as an individual, as a candidate in a set constituency.

I support the amendments because their practical effect will be to create administrative consistency across the franchise rules of all elections, referenda and polls in the UK. In an era of fractiousness and bitter division in politics, which is growing stronger, having multiple election systems—which reduces the ability of the average voter, who is not engaged, to engage in the political system and to see that their vote has a consequence and that the person they voted for is likely to be elected—only adds to an undermining of the sense of common purpose and social solidarity and continues to make different parts of our country more fractious and divided.

It is perfectly possible to support these amendments and, broadly speaking, to agree with the concept of devolution. A country such as Scotland had a separate legal system and education system and a proud history, not least in building the British Empire many years ago. It is different from England, and I respectfully say to the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, that the people of England never had a vote on whether they wanted to set up the Welsh Assembly, as it then was, or the Scottish Parliament. Therefore, their ability to make key decisions was undermined—albeit he would probably say that the Blair Government had a mandate and were re-elected after the establishment of those two devolved Administrations.

My noble friend made some important points, which I will not belabour. A single nation state should have a common framework for democratic membership. The United States is many times bigger than the United Kingdom and has many more people, yet it has the same voting system. We will see whether it works tomorrow in delivering the votes that people want in the mid-term elections.

Local Councillors: Recruitment, Retention and Well-being

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is 53 years ago to the month that I was elected to my local authority in Torfaen. I fought four elections and I can honestly say that I had no abuse during the whole time I was a local councillor. There was a time I can recall knocking on the door and a factory worker was woken up because he had been on shift overnight. On another occasion, a German resident asked me why there was not a Conservative candidate. I was obviously the Labour candidate and I said that it was not my job to put up a Conservative. But that was it. Fast forward all those years later to a few weeks ago, at the elections that we have had, in our case in Wales for the Senedd, and for councils in England, and the world has changed.

I thought I would have been used to abuse, having served as Northern Ireland Secretary, but it came as a terrible shock a couple of weeks ago when I heard the stories of people who had knocked on the doors in the weeks before the election. There were stories of terrible, personal abuse on the doorstep and of online abuse on social media and the internet—neither of which was present 53 years ago. Politics has become so polarised that it is reduced to soundbites and, therefore, people do not read newspapers any more. I have never seen this vulgarity and ugliness in politics in my political life. We have to do something about it.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Forbes for raising this issue today and I look forward to hearing from my noble friend the Minister what solutions the Government have on this issue, particularly with regard to the Representation of the People Bill but also other measures, which need to be replicated in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Abuse does not stop at the border. I look forward to what she has to say, but I repeat what many of your Lordships have said: democracy itself is imperilled if we cannot find candidates to stand as a consequence of the level of abuse that they now have to put up with. It is a cheapening of politics and it is extremely sad.

Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

3rd reading
Friday 24th October 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen]

That the Bill do now pass.

[Lord Jamieson (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a councillor in central Bedfordshire.

The Bill is most welcome, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Murphy of Torfaen, for bringing it forward. It makes the necessary provisions to ensure that, where divergence has arisen across the whole of Great Britain, shared democratic values are brought into closer practical alignment. In doing so, it strengthens the unity of our democratic system while respecting the distinct identities of the devolved nations. We on these Benches have always sought to bridge the gaps between the constituent communities that make our country so unique and vibrant.

It is right to acknowledge that the Bill builds on the work of the previous Government, including the Elections Act 2022, which took important steps to reinforce the security and transparency of our democratic processes. That Act introduced measures such as digital imprints on online campaign materials and enhanced security for political funding—reforms that were both timely and necessary. It is therefore regrettable that legislative consent was not granted for those measures at the time. This Bill now goes some way to mitigate the effect of those divisions.

I also reiterate what my noble friend Lady Scott said at Second Reading: I urge the Government to reconsider any proposals to dilute voter ID requirements. Today we are legislating to make voting easier while maintaining appropriate safeguards. We must not, at the same time, take steps to weaken the security of our elections.

Finally, accessibility is vital, but so too is security. Protecting the integrity of our elections by guarding against fraud or interference is a core duty of any responsible Government. In the other place, my honourable friend Paul Holmes rightly called for Ministers to

“take decisive and proactive steps…to prevent malign influence, whether domestic or foreign”—[Official Report, Commons, 4/7/25; col. 594.]

as we modernise and reform our systems. I would therefore be grateful if the Minister could use this opportunity to set out what specific steps the Government are taking to uphold that commitment.

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[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is quite difficult for a Welsh Labour politician to talk about elections dispassionately, but I will try to do that. I thank all those who have been involved in the Bill—my honourable friend Tracy Gilbert from the other place and, of course, all the officials and parliamentary officials who have put the Bill through. I would like to thank all Members here who realised that this is a small but important step in the right direction, in the sense that now, at last, voters in Scotland and Wales will be able to apply online for postal and proxy votes for the Senedd, the Scottish Parliament and for Scottish and Welsh local elections.

There is one point I want to emphasise before I sit down, and I know the Minister is aware of this. Now that the Bill has gone through its parliamentary stages and will become law very soon, it is important, because there are six months left before those important elections next year, that the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government now properly look at these new arrangements and ensure that people can vote by proxy or by post at the next Senedd and Scottish Parliament elections. As I said at Second Reading, I will continue to vote at Llantarnam church hall.

I beg to move that the Bill do now pass.

Absent Voting (Elections in Scotland and Wales) Bill

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 5th September 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, in England, if you vote at any election, whether it is for Parliament, a local authority, a mayor or a police commissioner, you can apply for a postal or proxy vote online. In Wales and Scotland, you can vote having applied online only for parliamentary or, in Wales, for police commissioner, elections; there is no facility for applying online for a postal vote or a proxy vote for elections to the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Senedd or to local authorities in Scotland and Wales. What happened was that, when the Elections Act 2022 was going through its stages in both Houses, neither the Welsh Senedd nor the Scottish Parliament gave legislative approval for that Bill, for various reasons that your Lordships will probably recall. The consequence was that the ability of Welsh and Scottish electors to apply online for postal votes was not passed. This Bill will ensure that that anomaly is overcome—and it is absolutely vital, because it is very important that people in this digital age can apply for votes online.

Bizarrely, some 10 or so years ago, the then Prime Minister decided to make me the Minister for Digital Inclusion. It was a particularly odd appointment, alongside my being Welsh Secretary. But it was very interesting, and I discovered and learned a lot—how in those days 17 million people were not online. In this digital age, being able to apply online for a postal or proxy vote has become infinitely more important, to such an extent that in the last general election, of 2024, 84% of those who applied for postal votes in Great Britain did so online, as did 93% of those who applied for proxy votes.

The provision for online voting is made by the United Kingdom digital service, run by the United Kingdom Government, which is why we are debating this issue here in this Chamber and why it is not being debated initially in the Chambers of the Welsh Senedd or Scottish Parliament.

The Bill is supported by all the parties, and it is obviously supported by the United Kingdom Government. It has the backing of the Electoral Commission and, most significantly, it is supported by the Welsh and Scottish Governments. The Bill was sponsored in the other place by my honourable friend Tracy Gilbert, the Member of Parliament for Edinburgh North and Leith. It passed its Third Reading on 4 July 2025.

The Bill has three main provisions. First, the Scottish and Welsh Governments can bring forward regulations to enable electors to apply for postal and proxy votes online, using the United Kingdom digital service, which is a reserved issue. Powers would be given to Scotland and Wales to make secondary legislation to include an identity verification recommendation, which would be the national insurance number—or, if that cannot be used, alternative evidence. It will align postal voting cycles; electors will have to reapply for postal or proxy votes every three years, with renewals for devolved elections matching the reserved elections.

That is the basis of the Bill in front of us this morning. I shall briefly go through each clause—it is a very short Bill, as noble Lords can see. Clause 1 will enable regulations to be made that would allow electors in Scotland and Wales to make and submit applications online for absent voter arrangements for local elections using the UK digital service. Therefore, if you were voting for a Scottish or a Welsh council, this clause allows you to apply for postal votes online. To support this integration of absent voting applications for Scottish and Welsh local government elections into the UK digital service, it enables regulations to be made that will apply the same identity checking requirements used in reserved absent voting applications to devolved voting applications. Noble Lords will have heard me say that it is the national insurance number that will be the usual identification there. Clause 1 will also enable a route for any elector who is unable, for whatever reason, to provide a national insurance number to submit documentary evidence to confirm their identity.

The clause amends the time for which postal voting arrangements for local elections remain valid in Scotland and Wales. Postal voting arrangements are currently potentially indefinite, with a signature refresh requirement of five years for local and devolved parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales. This will now align it with the rest of the United Kingdom, so it will be set at a maximum of three years before the elector has to reapply. This is important for electors, obviously, who would find it confusing and inconvenient to have different postal voting arrangements lengths for different types of elections.

Amendments were made in Committee in the Commons to Clause 1 to enable Ministers of the Scottish and Welsh Governments to make transitional provisions for proxy voting arrangements for devolved local government elections.

Clause 2 enables regulations to be made to allow people to apply online for a postal or proxy vote for the elections to the Scottish Parliament. As the digital service is reserved to the United Kingdom, those provisions also ensure that Scottish Ministers may not make regulations under this clause without the agreement of a Minister of the Crown, where those provisions relate to the UK digital service. I understand that there have been extensive discussions between the Governments of Scotland, Wales and the United Kingdom on this aspect—I cannot see any difficulty on this in times ahead. Clause 3 does the same for the Welsh Senedd.

Clause 4 will provide for commencement and inserts a power to make a transitional or saving provision. That power allows provision to be made to align the expiry dates of postal voting arrangements of a person where they already hold a postal vote for both UK parliamentary and devolved elections and provides for the ending of existing postal voting entitlements for devolved elections. In some very limited cases, it may be necessary to end existing postal vote arrangements for devolved elections. Finally, Clause 5 refers to the territorial extent and name of the Bill.

When this Bill receives Royal Assent, it will then go to Edinburgh and Cardiff so that the Scottish Parliament and the Senedd Cymru can pass their own regulations. There are ongoing discussions with the devolved Governments about the timeframe for those changes. It is my sincere and earnest hope that, in Scotland and Wales in May next year, people will be able to apply online for postal and proxy votes for the hugely important elections in those two countries. I beg to move.

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[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been a short but very interesting debate, and I am grateful for the unanimous support across all Benches for this short but important Bill.

If one theme has come through, it is the theme of speed and the necessity for the Bill to go through Parliament, this House and any other stages it might have to elsewhere, but also for the Welsh and the Scottish Governments to pull out all the stops to ensure that next year, people will be able to apply for postal and proxy votes online for the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd elections.

Like all of us here, I am unable to vote for Members of the House of Commons. That means that the only postal vote I can apply for is for the police commissioner for Gwent. I hope that next year I will be in a position to apply for a postal vote for the Welsh Senedd, but I rather fancy I will be walking to Llantarnam church hall. I beg to move.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

Social Care Strategy

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, in 1983, I almost became the Labour candidate for Worsley. I did not, and I am delighted I did not, because we might not have had my noble friend Lady Keeley as the Member of Parliament for Worsley. She had a very distinguished career in the House of Commons and we all look forward very much to working with her.

Every Government have spectacularly failed on social care, including the one I was a member of. I want to refer very briefly today to the example of my own local authority in Wales: yes, I know the debate is about England but as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has said, it can also take best practice from somewhere else. Torfaen Borough Council has taken an initiative on adult social care. As we all know and have heard, there will always be people who will have to go into hospital and residential care, but most people do not want to do that; most people would prefer to stay at home. The impact of people going into hospital unnecessarily is, of course, delayed discharges and the enormous social and financial costs of that. Torfaen Council’s initiative is about ensuring that people remain in their homes as long as they can. It is a type of “care in the community plus”. I do not think that care in the community worked very well all those years ago, but the idea was good, and if there is an improved care in the community, as this initiative is, we can all learn from it.

My noble friend Lord Dubs referred to Hammersmith. Of course, if we look at individual local authorities, perhaps elsewhere can learn from them. Torfaen Council employs teams of community connectors, as it calls them, and these people liaise with carers, paid and unpaid, with the voluntary sector, with community groups, with churches, with community councillors, with the NHS and with GP surgeries. In other words, the whole local community comes together to look after its people and ensure that they stay in their homes. This might not seem possible, but I assure your Lordships that over the last couple of years it has proved very successful. Of all the local authorities in Wales, Torfaen Council is the best at dealing with and tackling delayed discharge. More and more people are staying in their homes. They have the confidence to do so and the ability and finance to do it. My plea today to my noble friend the Minister is, despite the fact that her remit does not go beyond the River Wye, nevertheless to be able to look at and even come to Torfaen and see the good work that it is doing. This work has been acknowledged by a substantial grant from research organisations; it is working; it is less costly than what is happening at the moment; and, above all else, it means that we can tackle, in the community, the problem that social care is at the moment.

Intergovernmental Relations Within the United Kingdom

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot recall intergovernmental relations ever being mentioned when the Cabinet committee considered devolution for Scotland and Wales in 1997. Indeed, after the elections to the Parliament and the Assembly, when I, as Welsh Secretary, had to deal with the Welsh Government, relations were very good. They were good, really, because of personal relationships. We had a Labour Government in Cardiff, a Labour Government in Scotland and a Labour Government in Westminster, so it was relatively easy for intergovernmental relations to be good.

In my case those relations were based on a telephone call to Rhodri Morgan at 10 o’clock every morning of the week. That helped things considerably, because that is how it worked. I returned to Wales after some years in Northern Ireland, and the world had changed. I was then given some responsibility for overall devolution, which meant that I had to deal with Alex Salmond. That was different. There was not a 10-minute phone call every day to Alex. There were, shall we say, challenging negotiations and discussions—always friendly, but extremely challenging. The world was beginning to change, with a separate Government in Scotland now, from Wales and from Westminster.

Of course, that was to change too, after the victories of the Conservative Government in the elections that were to follow. That is the basis of why relations have not been good. There have been different political parties in charge of those Governments, and in a way—here in Westminster and Whitehall, particularly—it was all about devolving and forgetting: devolve, and it is up to them now.

I remember many occasions in Cabinet, discussing matters such as health or education, when I reminded my colleagues gently that the issues we were discussing did not apply in the same way to the 15 million people who lived in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland. That was usually met with a great yawn or a rolling of the eyes. That is dangerous, which is why it is so very important that the indifference we have seen—until recently, anyway—to intergovernmental relations has to change,

This came to the forefront in the pandemic. People suddenly realised that things were different—that there were different Governments in Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland, dealing differently with that terrible tragedy of the time. That led eventually to the excellent report by the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, which I commend. I also commend Michael Gove for accepting most of it. There has undoubtedly been a change because of that—but it does not go far enough.

It is a coincidence that today, the Senedd in Cardiff received the report of the commission in Wales on the constitution, led by Rowan Williams and Laura McAllister. That is such an important report in the context of what we are discussing today. In it, they talk about why things have gone so badly. There has been virtually no prime ministerial engagement whatever with these intergovernmental relations issues—including, incidentally, in Northern Ireland, but that is for another day. There have been poor commitments from Ministers, as well as a huge turnover of Ministers, which does not help. The recommendations of the Welsh commission and indeed the simultaneous recommendations of the commission I sat on with Gordon Brown, on the British constitution, are to be welcomed. Whoever wins the next election has to look very carefully at how we deal with these internal relations in the United Kingdom.

Both commissions recommend a statutory council—in Gordon Brown’s words, a

“Council for the Nations and Regions”.

Both commissions talk about the need for parity of esteem, which has gone. It is a phrase we used in Northern Ireland a great deal in setting up the Good Friday agreement, but it applies also to how we look at each other in terms of our nations within the United Kingdom. It is a recognition of a new political landscape but also that better relations between the Governments means strengthening the union rather than the opposite, which is so hugely significant.

The other issue I want to touch on briefly is a parallel arrangement in the United Kingdom that was set up by strand 3 of the Good Friday agreement: relations between Ireland and the United Kingdom. There is the British-Irish Council, which has come to life a bit now—it went into atrophy for some years, but it is better now. However, most particularly I want to refer to the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, on which Members of this House have served for a number of years. That brings together the Parliaments of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey. It does remarkably good work, often unannounced. For example, I am currently sitting on an inquiry into security between these islands. In a way, that is a model of how to deal with relations between our Parliaments. However, it is not just about the Parliaments but the Governments of the United Kingdom and the need to strengthen our union. Whatever happens in the election, that must be a priority.

Constitutional Commission

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I have worked with the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, for the benefit of the people of Wales, I hope, for nearly 35 years and I have much respect for him, but I am not tempted by independence for Wales. I agree with him that there is a movement which goes towards that direction, but by no means anything like what is happening in Scotland. However, the thrust of the noble Lord’s speech was about the improvement of relations between the relevant parts of the United Kingdom and that is absolutely spot-on. The landscape has changed dramatically: he mentioned the situation in Wales, where there is now a legislative assembly called the Senedd; in Scotland, the SNP is of course dominating affairs; and in Northern Ireland, the Assembly and the other institutions are, unfortunately, currently suspended, but it has changed.

Many years ago, I held Cabinet responsibility for intergovernmental relations between the different Parliaments—very primitively in those days. It was not very good, to be honest, and over the last 20 years has got worse, if anything. The Whitehall departments still do not quite understand what devolution is all about. I sometimes think some government Ministers are ignorant of what devolution is all about, although the landscape has in fact changed dramatically.

I very much welcome the excellent report of the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop. There were some very good ideas in it. I welcome Michael Gove’s latest report, also excellent, on how to improve the intergovernmental committee and all the various ministerial committees that exist between the devolved Administrations of these islands. What could be improved is to have more reliance on the institutions of the Good Friday agreement—for example, strand 2 on the north-south relations in Ireland, strand 3 on relations east and west, and the British-Irish Council, which was set up by the Good Friday agreement. The British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference could be dealing with the issue of the protocol but it is not at the moment. There are institutions set up by the Good Friday agreement which could be used to improve relations between the various parts of our country.

I think your Lordships are aware that there is a commission in Wales looking at the constitution at the moment, chaired by Rowan Williams—Lord Williams. I gave evidence to it some weeks ago. It is an excellent committee and will come up with some very interesting suggestions. The Government of Wales are already looking at how the Welsh Parliament, the Senedd, is to be elected and the Labour Party has a commission, of which I am a member, led by Gordon Brown on what might be the nature of these intergovernmental relations in future. So although we do not have, as I think we should, a government-sponsored United Kingdom commission to look at those relationships, work has been done in Cardiff and in the Labour Party. I hope that the Minister can assure your Lordships that the Government are seriously looking at whether a commission could be used for the rest of the United Kingdom.