Wales Bill

Debate between Lord Richard and Lord Wigley

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Richard]

My Lords, I support my noble friend on this. I am not a tax lawyer and I have given thanks for that ever since I was called to the Bar. I am bound to say that I read this new section with incredulity. It is designed to cover a Scottish parliamentarian as well as a Welsh parliamentarian—Mr Mac ap Jones, I suppose we can call him. That individual is covered here in such a way that it is a masterpiece of almost Proustian complexity. Even for one who is reasonably familiar with looking at legislation, I found it almost impossible to understand. I did what my noble friend did and went to the Explanatory Notes, but they are almost impossible to understand, too. Why on earth are we legislating in this way? Some 40 years ago, I was a member of a committee presided over by the late Lord Renton on the drafting of legislation. It was an interesting committee and we said that the practice of legislating by cross-reference meant that you had to have half a dozen books open at the same time to get even a glimmer of understanding of the subject. We said that that was bad and something should be done about it. Of course, successive Governments said, “Yes, we agree entirely that it should be changed”, but it never is. It just seems to get worse as time goes on—until we arrive at the nonsensical drafting that appears in this Bill.

Perhaps I may make a simple suggestion to the Minister. It is obviously designed to deal with a person who may be working in one jurisdiction and has residency in another. It is meant to make sure that the person does not pay two lots of tax in two different jurisdictions. Why can we not have a simple residence test? I would suggest tentatively that the Minister should look at proposed new Section 116E, which states at the end of page 9:

“For any year, a Welsh taxpayer is an individual”,

and thereafter it sets out an enormously complicated structure. Why can we not say that in any tax year, a Welsh taxpayer is an individual who is resident in Wales? We could have similar rules for Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. With any luck, Mr Mac ap Jones would be successively reinterred and we need not bother about him again. Really, the way this has been drafted is too much. I agree totally with my noble friend that perhaps it is time for this Committee to say, “We do not like this drafting. We don’t understand the purpose of it, and we think it could be simplified so that people can understand it. The Government should take it away and try again”.

[Lord Wigley]

I want to join briefly with colleagues who have raised these points. Over many years I have often heard the argument made that matters of substance are passed through Parliament by order—by secondary legislation and so on. Here we have the reverse position, where there are matters that should surely be set out in orders. Ministers should be empowered to introduce orders to deal with a variety of circumstances that certainly do not warrant taking up the face of the Bill. If that were the case, there would be flexibility within the orders to deal with other cases which possibly have not been thought of. Putting this in the Bill in this way is surely a nonsense.

Wales Bill

Debate between Lord Richard and Lord Wigley

Monday 13th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I can readily identify with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely. I agree that these matters should ideally be in the hands of the National Assembly to decide. None the less, we have guidelines that have been laid down from here. By virtue of speaking to Amendment 5, I want to draw attention to the fact that there are real dangers when a Westminster election overshadows an election to the National Assembly.

Amendment 5 provides that the poll for a National Assembly ordinary general election should not be held within 355 days of the date of a UK general election, although I accept entirely that it should be a matter for the Assembly finally to decide on these matters if we can give it the power to do so. The amendment mentions 355 days rather than 12 months to allow situations to arise whereby one vote could be held on 7 May one year, followed by a poll on 1 May the following year, or similar circumstances.

The truth, which may not be immediately apparent to colleagues from other parts of the United Kingdom, is that the UK media are heavily biased in favour of England-only issues. That is understandable because most of the media are based in south-east England and look through a prism from that perspective. In the leaders’ debates in the run-up to the previous general election, for example, party leaders answered questions relating to healthcare and education, without mentioning that those policies were applicable only in England and not in Wales or Scotland. These considerations spill over to arguments in relation to the settlement that will be made to Scotland as well.

Circumstances such as these are highly confusing for viewers, listeners or readers in Wales and can lead to voters making choices based on policies that would not in fact affect them. Wales has a number of daily newspapers such as the Western Mail and Daily Post, as well as very good local newspapers, but the majority of people still get their news and election coverage from London-based outlets. Were an election to the Welsh Assembly to occur in quick succession following a UK general election, or in inverse circumstances, it is certain that any debates surrounding Welsh policies would be totally drowned by UK election coverage. The Electoral Reform Society Wales has said that combining polls would always have a detrimental impact by causing confusion for voters, and that Welsh elections would be “subsumed” into media coverage of the UK general election.

To ensure that voters’ decisions are well informed, we believe that provisions similar to those contained in Amendment 5 would be necessary to mitigate such media distortion, although I repeat that I would prefer that initiatives along those lines should come from the Assembly itself.

[Lord Richard (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with the thrust of the amendment but I am bound to say that I am not sure that I fully understand the wording of the first part of it. If one actually looks at the text, it would seem that the amendment proposes that the Welsh Assembly should revert to a system in which the First Minister of the Welsh Assembly, with the consent of the Assembly, would be able to determine to hold an election at any moment that he thinks fit. In other words, we would be back to the situation that we were in before we passed the Act a few years ago that set up the five-year Parliament gap.

If the intention of the amendment is that the Assembly should be able to fix in advance a particular term at the end of which an election should be held—in other words, that the Assembly should decide whether it should be a five-year, four-year or even perhaps a three-year term—that I understand and fully appreciate. If the intention is, however, to give the Welsh Assembly the additional powers that the Prime Minister had in the old House of Commons, to call an election at the time of his own choosing, I am bound to say that I am not sure I agree. I accept the thrust of the amendment, which is that decisions on the timing of an election should be a matter for the Assembly, but I am not sure whether the wording of proposed new subsection (1) in the proposed amendment goes anywhere near achieving that.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Debate between Lord Richard and Lord Wigley

Friday 24th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley]

Yes.

[Lord Richard]

My Lords, my name appears on the amendments. Obviously, I very much support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Wigley. This is an important issue in Wales. The language is a strong issue. It could be a divisive one but it is not at the moment, or not greatly so, because by and large English and Welsh are treated increasingly on a basis of equality. If we have the English version in the Bill, it seems only right that we should have the Welsh version too. I say to my noble friend that as a south Waleian, I did not entirely understand his pure accent as he comes from north Wales. Doing the best that I can with the Welsh language, which is not a great deal but is something, it seems to me to be a totally accurate translation.