Wales Bill

Debate between Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Anderson of Swansea

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My Lords, the last two amendments—and I hope I will not detain your Lordships too long—are in my name. They refer to the constitutional convention and the relevance of the Williams report: a report which is not mainly about the structure of local government but which contains important clauses on that. My contention would be that, just as we have looked at the relationship between the component parts of the United Kingdom, we should look also at the relationship between the Welsh Government and local government in Wales.

On the constitutional convention, there seems to be an increasing consensus that we need to look at the British constitution in the round. I fear that the response of the Minister would be: if you are so keen on your constitutional convention, why not put it in the manifesto for the next election when it can be debated? But that was Monday’s argument—since when, as we say, an amendment has been moved.

As an assiduous reader of the Western Mail I notice that, on the front page of yesterday’s paper, the Secretary of State, no less, is quoted as saying:

“Up to now, we’ve been saying, ‘Well, these are just matters for the individual parties and their manifestos at the next election’, but actually I think we can do better than that”.

Clearly, the noble Baroness appeared not to be on message on Monday; perhaps she will be a bit more on message today when she comes to respond.

So there is an increasing consensus. I hear the argument from time to time that to suggest a constitutional convention is no more than a device for delay and for kicking the matter into the long grass. The answer is that promises were made to Scotland—and some might argue that never has so much response been made by parties in the United Kingdom to one maverick opinion poll. When the Sunday Times YouGov poll suggested that there was a majority for independence, there was a certain panic among all parties, resulting in a response that may now be regretted at leisure.

The promises made to Scotland are clear and should be honoured, but they can be implemented on their own grounds. However, there are implications for the rest of the United Kingdom and, in my judgment, for the constitution—and I think that the Liberal Democrats have broadly been the leaders in this field. Clearly, the quasi-federal constitution needs to be viewed with all the difficulties that may arise. We need to have concern across the board, including in relation to your Lordships’ House. If there is to be a new regionalism, it should be reflected in the way that this House is elected, directly or indirectly—possibly, as in France, using the notables from local authorities. I think that the electorate of the French Senate is roughly 80,000. These are the people who are in the localities, the regional assemblies and the local authorities, and they come together having been elected indirectly to work together in the Senate. Your Lordships’ House should not be excluded from this consideration.

I think it was Alastair Campbell who said, “We don’t do religion”. That may or may not be the case but in the United Kingdom we don’t do constitutions—except for other people. We are pretty keen on delivering constitutions to colonial powers from high to low but we are not so good at doing it for ourselves. I have spoken to many groups from the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and have been tempted to use the phrase “the Mother of Parliaments”, but clearly things are creaking in our own constitutional structures at the moment. Perhaps the 45% vote for independence in Scotland is a means of alerting us to the fact that the status quo cannot continue.

I recall Lord Weatherill, who was both a distinguished Speaker of the other place and the Convenor of the Cross-Bench Peers in this House, telling me a little story. He worked in the family firm of tailors and on his first day there was an old Jewish tailor to monitor him. One of the senior people came to the old Jewish tailor and said they wanted a suit made. He said, “Do you want it quick or do you want it good?”. There is an element of that in terms of constitutions. After all, we have agonised over changes for so long, going from precedent to precedent with a little tweak here and a little tweak there.

Now there must surely be a case for a group to make an initial analysis by looking at foreign examples and then for the elected representatives, so far as they are able, to take a considered view. It may be a federal system. Even within a federal system or a quasi-federal system one can have a range of very different powers. We know that in the different autonomía of Spain, for example, it is federalism à la carte. An autonomía such as Valencia has relatively limited powers, whereas Galicia and Catalonia have far more extensive powers—all within the same system. There is no reason why, according to demand, there should not be asymmetric devolution.

The key question is: are we happy to continue with constitutional tinkering or do we feel that we have reached the point where we need to look at the whole constitution from this place and the other place. I recall that one of the major cogent arguments used when we were discussing the future of this House was that there was no attempt to place it in the context of the relationship between this House and the House of Commons. We need to look at the devolved assemblies, and we also need to look at local authorities.

If we are not happy to continue tinkering, it is clearly right that we should now recognise that after the Scottish referendum we are in a new context, and that the status quo has proved insufficient. I recall that when the three party leaders made a vow, they came together quite properly. If they accept the case for a constitutional convention that is good although perhaps not quick, what is now stopping them? Is there not a reason for them to now make a similar vow on a consensual basis that this country deserves a constitutional convention?

I turn now to my second point, on which I shall be quite brief, which is the question of the Williams report. I submit that it would be wrong to ignore the position within Wales: that is, the relationship between the Assembly and the local authority. I recall that during the initial debates on devolution in the 1970s the Welsh Office, as it was then called, totally ignored local government. It was only at a fairly late stage of the debate that it was recognised and brought within the discussion that there were substantial implications for local government.

There is clearly a temptation for Cardiff Bay to hold on to what it has. However, I am encouraged by the response of the leader and, indeed, all the parties in the Assembly. Although the Williams commission hoped that there would be action by Easter of this year, we know that on 1 July the overview on broad public service recommendations was addressed, and on 8 July the local government reorganisation was addressed with a general White Paper. Now we are promised that on 28 November there will be a voluntary merger of local authorities. On 28 February there will be a White Paper setting out the process for merging councils that do not want to merge. There is already a timetable in process.

I will not labour the point that there is no ideal local government structure in Wales. I recall that many years ago when I was the Member for Monmouth there were certainly at least a dozen local authorities: rural district councils, urban district councils and town councils. That was done away with in the Walker reforms, with counties and districts. Clearly, it was right that the counties had responsibility for education and social services, but the divisions were not easily made.

We have now had further elements of reform. City regions are being considered. However, perhaps the failures over food safety are very good examples of the fact that, for certain areas of expertise, local authorities need to be able to employ experts in the field. I end on the plea that we do not forget local government. There appears to be a consensus within the Assembly on implementing the recommendations of the Williams commission, and the timetable is such that these could well be implemented before the provisions of the Wales Bill become law. I beg to move.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, it is such a delight to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, who had a somewhat feckless youth when he was passionately anti-devolution. Clearly, somewhere between Monmouth and Swansea he was struck with the true light of liberal principle. As I understand his speech, he now supports not merely Liberal Democrat policy but also what was, in his feckless youth, Liberal policy.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

My position then was as it is now. Devolution within a unitary system is flawed in many respects, including the fact that there is no end position, whereas a federal or quasi-federal system with a constitutional court to adjudicate on the differences between the component parts is logical. We were embarking in the 1970s on a strange new journey and perhaps it was Mrs Thatcher, with her own form of centralisation, who was the major recruiting sergeant for me on that.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has disappointed me slightly with this recantation of what he said earlier, but never mind. I am entirely with him that we need a constitutional convention and that we should be looking for the abolition of the House of Lords and some form of federal, directly elected or proportionately elected Chamber that could consider the situation as a whole, perhaps with a Supreme Court charged with the sort of duties that attach to the Supreme Court in the United States. That is not, however, any reason for holding up the provisions of this Bill, which are urgent. The Bill needs to go through because Wales cannot wait for a future nirvana when we have got it all together, it is all very logical and all the problems are at an end. We cannot keep the Bill waiting for that moment.

Wales Bill

Debate between Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Anderson of Swansea

Monday 13th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Swansea]

That sounds a bit like double the number you first thought of. It is always good to follow the noble Lord. Certainly he cannot be accused of populism—perhaps courage, perhaps recklessness, but not populism.

I was tempted to go down his path of a second Chamber for Wales. There may, ultimately, further down the path, be a case for a second-opinion Chamber composed of some of the notables from the local authorities and elsewhere in Wales, but that is not a debate for today.

The noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, quoted, I think, the Electoral Reform Society, saying that these matters were too important to be left to politicians. That is a little patronising. The Electoral Reform Society consists no doubt of very worthy people who can help us by doing their analysis, but ultimately these decisions will be made by politicians, who have the experience and do not live in ivory towers. However, I agree with her that the whole matter—the matter of numbers—should be seen in the round and that one should look at the numbers in the Assembly and whether those numbers are capable of doing the job. One cannot exclude the number of those in local authorities. On that subject, I hope to move an amendment in respect of the recommendations of the Williams commission on amalgamations of local authorities in Wales, because I detect among the people of Wales a distaste for the number of people currently in the various authorities. Looking at it in the round, including local authorities and the Assembly, and not excluding the House of Commons, I am not convinced of her case for this House, because on the whole we have far fewer Members of this House than Wales warrants. That is, however, another matter.

The noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, spoke simply and put forward a simple proposition. There is a consensus around his suggested figure of 80. The starting point is that, after a somewhat bumpy start, the National Assembly has now bedded down, is accepted as a proper part of the Welsh political landscape and has been a pioneer for the United Kingdom in several aspects of policy, as I find when I go into my local supermarkets and am charged for bags, a matter that will come to England somewhat later.

The amendment that I am speaking to will not, as politicians often boast, kill two birds with one stone; it will kill three birds with one stone. In respect of the equality of men and women, it is clear that although the position in the Assembly in Wales is better than in most other legislatures, certainly better than in the House of Commons, there is still a disparity. Many parties and many parliaments have struggled with this problem. Selectorates, often with a majority of women, are frequently reluctant to select women for various levels of representation. My own party tried women-only shortlists in both the 2005 and 2010 elections; in the 2015 election, my own Swansea East constituency will have a women-only shortlist.

However, that is not without problems, as one sees in Cynon Valley, and it can be a matter of considerable controversy. It can be a problem when men find it difficult to find a place in the areas where they were born, brought up and worked for a long time. They are demotivated when there is no chance, because of women-only shortlists, of standing in their own constituencies. I put forward this proposal as a serious option for solving the problem. It is a far more acceptable device for ensuring equality and would make Wales a world leader, consistent with our normal radical policies and progressive traditions.

The advantages do not stop there. My proposal would also abolish the list system. The list system has not been a success. I am reminded that “hiraeth” in Welsh is not a longing for one’s own region within Wales but a longing for one’s own valley, constituency, city or village. It is difficult to work up loyalty or attachment to a region in Wales. “My region, right or wrong”: I cannot see anyone in Wales going to the barricades to fight for their region. It is more consistent with our Welsh tradition not to have regional lists.

Thirdly and finally, I come to the increase in numbers. It goes logically with what I am saying that as the powers of the Assembly increase—and one does not know how far that will go, and here perhaps the consensus ends, because some will want a great leap forward while others will want a more incremental approach—there should at the same time be an increase in numbers. It is also clear, as the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, said with great clarity and power, that the number in the Assembly, the 60, may have been an appropriate starting point—the 40 and the 20. Indeed, there would have been difficulties had the number of 40 constituencies been reduced to 30—it would have been perhaps 30 and 30 at that point.

However, the numbers are clearly insufficient for the job of scrutiny. At the moment, particularly when there is a coalition, as often happens in the Assembly, everyone appears to have a job. It is rather like the jibes at the old Mexican army—everyone was a general, everyone had a job. We want to get away from that. We want people in the Assembly who are able to do a job of scrutiny and we should agree to have 80 of them.

There are three good reasons for the amendment. We should not be afraid of change. In terms of gender equality, the smaller units in Wales and the increase in the powers of the Assembly, which would be matched with a commensurate increase in numbers, this amendment is proper and consistent with our radical, trailblazing tradition in Wales.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, that was an extraordinary speech, if I may say so. We Gogs certainly have an identity, and we have an identity when we know that the south-east of Wales is spending the borrowing powers that it is acquiring on two tunnels on the M4 and putting a great deal of development into south Wales that we do not see in the north, where we have our own communication problems. To talk in terms of everyone being concerned about their little valley may do very well in south Wales, but I can tell you that in north Wales we feel very differently about it and we welcome the fact that we have regional AMs in the Welsh Assembly who can express a wider view than that of the little valley that they come from.

Although I am not overly enthusiastic about the list system, I will not see it dismissed in the way that the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has done. Nor am I convinced by his idea that we should have proportionality of gender but not of political viewpoint. That would mean that the possibility of a dominant party would swiftly arise. My noble friend said that it would be the Labour Party. I would not go that far, because there are forces at work in some of the Welsh valleys today that are not essentially socialist in their approach. I am against the idea of having first past the post in Wales when it does not exist in Scotland or in Northern Ireland and when we have been fighting hard for it not to exist in England as well.

The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, made the important point that the increasing amount of legislation coming to the Welsh Assembly means that we must have more Members to deal with it. I think that the consensus in Wales at the moment is that there are not enough people to scrutinise the legislation that is going through.

The noble Lord talked about scrutiny. The fact is that this is about not just primary legislation going through but primary legislation without the advantage of a second Chamber. Your Lordships will recall that I suggested earlier that we should surely be working towards a federal, single-tier Parliament for the whole of the United Kingdom, with committees for Wales, Scotland, England and Northern Ireland that could scrutinise the legislation that comes through. As I said, if we have English votes for English laws that have to go through the scrutiny of this House, that will be a considerable advantage compared to single parties putting through legislation without adequate scrutiny. On primary legislation in Wales, there is a lot to be done, but what is not to be done is what the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, suggests in his amendment. I wholly support everything that my noble friend Lady Humphreys so ably said.

Wales Bill

Debate between Lord Thomas of Gresford and Lord Anderson of Swansea

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

The noble Lord knows perfectly well that the Liberal Democrats are for the reform of the Barnett formula and always have been. I can give that assurance. I am just puzzled to hear what is said by the Scottish Labour Party, which obviously prefers the current arrangements.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

What about the Scottish Liberal Party?

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

The Scottish Liberal Party has been merged with the Scottish Liberal Democrats. I am not going to go any further into that.

The problem with devolution in Wales is that a Labour Government continuously in power—either on their own or as the lead party—escape accountability for their failures for a number of reasons. First and fundamentally, the essential link that all democratic Governments should have between raising resources through taxation and spending those resources on policies is missing. This Bill goes some way to dealing with that particular problem.

Labour’s demand for more money from the central government from a reform of the Barnett formula before they dare put these taxing powers to a referendum, is like Oliver Twist’s, “Please sir, can I have some more?”. It is Labour’s excuse for condemning Wales to fall behind in education and health, as it does, not merely judged by UK comparisons but also against international comparisons. Any very proper criticism of those failures is said to be “a war on Wales”—an empty piece of rhetoric first used by Carwyn Jones himself at the Welsh Labour Party conference in Llandudno in March.

Just as Labour seeks to delay the introduction of a Welsh income tax, so in the House of Commons debates on the Bill Labour sought to delay the introduction of the borrowing powers by waiting for a report on the legislative steps necessary to move to a model of reserved powers for the Welsh Assembly. I heard with interest the noble Baroness say that an amendment will be proposed to bring in reserved powers as the model in the Bill, and look forward to seeing how that is expressed.

The second matter that concerns me is that the recommendation of the Richard commission 10 years ago that the number of AMs should be increased to 80 to improve scrutiny within the Assembly was not pursued. The recommendations of the Silk 2 report, as the noble Lord will no doubt have noted, are that:

“A range of options should be considered in the short term for increasing the capacity within the existing National Assembly, including greater flexibility on the number and size of committees, increased numbers of research staff and better use of Assembly Members’ time. … The size of the National Assembly should be increased so that it can perform its scrutiny role better. The practical implications, and those for the electoral system, will need further consideration”.

The third matter that concerns me is that the press and media in Wales allow a dominant Labour Government to get away with it. Take the desire and the ability of the press in Westminster to tear Ministers limb from limb on a daily basis—for example the spat between Theresa May and Michael Gove over extremism in schools—and compare it with the deferential approach of the Welsh media over the very recent abject dismissal of Alun Davies, the former Welsh Government Natural Resources and Food Minister, for gross misconduct. One wonders whether the politicians and the Welsh media are too closely aligned and too ready to exchange roles.

I return to the Bill. I welcome the proposal to remove the current restrictions on individuals standing as a candidate for both a constituency seat and a regional seat. Studies by the Electoral Commission have shown that the current prohibition has a disproportionate impact on smaller parties, because they have a smaller pool of potential candidates from which to draw. The proposal to prohibit MPs from sitting as Assembly Members, and vice versa, is also welcome. It has an interesting history. Back in 1998, as the then Welsh spokesman for the Liberal Democrats I was lobbied from the very steps of the Throne by Mr Ron Davies Member of Parliament, the then Secretary of State for Wales, to give our party’s support to an amendment to the Government of Wales Bill which would permit him and others to have a dual mandate. At the time, it seemed reasonable to have some experienced politicians in the new body we were setting up, and so we agreed. However, I think that with the experience of the years that have passed it is time to end that practice.

I will raise another issue during the passage of the Bill. Much was made of the fact that two of the Lib Dem candidates in the last Assembly election were disqualified from being Members because they belonged to various public bodies, one of which was the Care Council for Wales. On the complaint of a Labour Party Member, they were interviewed by the police on an allegation that they had knowingly made a false statement in a document in which they gave their consent to being a regional party list candidate at those elections. That was translated into being disqualified from nomination.

The confusion arises because, under the Local Government Act 1972, a person is disqualified from being elected as a member of a local authority, whereas Sections 16 to 18 of the Government of Wales Act specifically say that:

“A person is disqualified from being an Assembly member”.

Of course, elections to local government are on the first past the post system; elections to the Welsh Assembly are done on both a constituency and regional basis. The regional election is in accordance with a party list. It is ludicrous to require a person on a list, who might not be first with a chance of election but second, third or fourth, to give up public service on a public body, very often unpaid, just to be a candidate. Although Liberal Democrat candidates were highlighted last time, I am aware that members of other parties stood as candidates, but were not elected, who might have been subjected to the same treatment. A successful candidate in an election ought to have a period in which to resign from any body that would disqualify him from being an Assembly Member—maybe eight days. I shall accordingly seek to amend Section 16 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 to make that position absolutely clear.

The aftermath of the Scottish referendum will, in all likelihood, see changes in Scotland. I was delighted to hear from the Minister that the situation in Wales will be revised; in particular, the lock-step will be looked at again. The structure of Welsh devolution is not yet satisfactorily settled. Once the Bill is passed as a further step, the focus in Wales will turn to the recommendations of Silk 2. The Liberal Democrats, who accept all its recommendations, will be here to return to the fray in the next Parliament. For the moment, I look forward to the fray in the Committee stage of the Bill.