Wales Bill

Debate between Lord Purvis of Tweed and Baroness Morgan of Ely

Monday 13th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

Before the noble Baroness moves on from that point—I do not mean to interrupt her speech, in which I find much common ground from a Scottish perspective—perhaps I may offer her one observation, although not necessarily one for her to comment on much further. It is certainly the case that we found in the referendum in Scotland that a considerable number of Scots did not appreciate that the NHS had been devolved to the Scottish Parliament since 1999, under a different model. Perhaps it is not just the fact that the power resides in the institution but the continuing need to have citizenship awareness among the population that is vital. Whichever model is going forward for the Assembly, perhaps that reflection may be of assistance.

[Baroness Morgan of Ely]

The noble Lord makes valid points about clarity about where the powers are and the fact that information to the public is crucial so that they understand who is responsible for what. There is still a degree of confusion about this and we need to think it through in a very clear way if we are looking at a much more structured response to the devolution settlement within the United Kingdom as a whole.

I now turn to Plaid Cymru’s amendment to link the reserved powers to an immediate transfer of the recommendations of Silk 2. It is worth emphasising that the whole Labour Party feels quite positive about the vast majority of the recommendations contained in Silk 2. The case for further devolution of power has been well made by the commission. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for his work on that commission and welcome him to the Front Bench. We are delighted to see him there. It is important that people understand that the Welsh Government have also responded positively to the recommendations.

With this amendment, Plaid has gone further than Silk in recommending, for example, the wholesale transfer of power over broadcasting, as was suggested, and energy, where the recommendations by Silk are far more nuanced. We are anxious to support many of the recommendations in Silk 2, but we feel that it would be more appropriate for us to include those recommendations within an election manifesto so that we can have the endorsement of the general public for this additional significant transfer of powers.

On Plaid Cymru’s Amendment 3, I do not blame them for attempting this power grab—that is what you would expect of nationalists—but to remove all current exceptions to current permitted areas of the Assembly would entail a huge extra amount of responsibility and the duplication of roles that are better shared at UK level. It would seem rather unnecessary that in the field of agriculture, where Wales already has legislative competence, we should establish our own legislation on, for example, scientific or other experimental procedures in relation to animals. Do we really want to establish our own agricultural import and export rules? Imagine the bureaucracy that that would entail. For every job that we would have to create to make that work, we would have to cut one from our health or education services or from another area that currently receives funding. We understand what the amendment is trying to do but think that it is going a bit too far.