(13 years, 9 months ago)
Westminster HallWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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On a point of order, Mr Caton, I believe that this morning we are seeing a further example of the Government’s contempt for Welsh Members and the procedures of the House. When I first sought the debate, with the support of a large number of Welsh Members, I was advised by both the Speaker’s Office and the Table Office that the subject should be dealt with by the Leader of the House. Indeed, the debate was delayed by a week specifically so that it would fall in a week when he would be responding to debates in Westminster Hall. I have not been notified that he has declined to respond to the debate and has instead put up the junior Minister at the Wales Office to reply. The Leader of the House is clearly unwilling to appear here today to defend the Secretary of State’s behaviour, even though it falls within his responsibility to do so. On a more important constitutional point, the opportunity that the Welsh Grand Committee provides for Welsh Members to debate properly major issues affecting Wales is a matter for the whole House, not just for Ministers in the Wales Office. May we please know who decided that the proper procedure should not be followed when making arrangements for the debate, and why?
It is entirely a matter for the Government to decide which Minister will reply to debates. You have put on the record your grave disappointment that the Leader of the House is not present, Mr Michael.
Further to that point of order, Mr Caton, may I therefore ask you to establish when and why it was decided that the Leader of the House would not reply to the debate, and to draw that sorry state of affairs to the attention of Mr Speaker?
I am afraid that that is not a matter for me, Mr Michael. If you would like to take it up with the Leader of the House, you can of course do so. We must now move on to the debate.
I am grateful for the opportunity to open the debate, and to the large number of Welsh Members, particularly Labour Members, for attending. They include colleagues from across the geography of Wales and from every level, from the oldest Members to the newest. Perhaps in one sense we should be grateful to the Secretary of State for her steadfast refusal to agree to hold a meeting of the Welsh Grand Committee to discuss the implications of the most serious constitutional change to threaten Wales for generations, because it has made us all the more conscious of the mechanisms that allow us to defend the interests of Wales and of the Welsh people in the House of Commons.
The subject of the debate is the Welsh Grand Committee and the scrutiny of Government policy as it applies to Wales. There is clearly a deficiency in how current legislation is debated. The failure to meet to discuss the current legislation goes beyond that individual topic and touches on how Welsh issues are dealt with generally in the House. Welsh Members have fought for proper representation over many years, and as the shadow Minister said in an excellent article in The Western Mail, the balancing of the interests of minorities with a national constitution is regarded as not just important, but essential in a number of other countries, such as Germany. There ought to be a balance that is not just about simple, crude arithmetic.
Representation of constituencies in Wales will be damaged by the provisions of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. It is about not only the reduction in numbers, but the fact that the reduction can be achieved only by tearing up the principle of representing communities of interest in each part of Wales and the principle of respecting the links with local authority boundaries and, above all, by tearing apart the constituencies that are currently represented by both a Member of Parliament and a Member of the National Assembly for Wales. That cannot be right.
Even worse is the lack of proper debate as the Conservatives steamroller over the interests of the people of Wales and principles of democracy. The matter should have been debated in the Welsh Grand Committee before the Bill was debated on the Floor of the House, and I remind Members on both sides of the Chamber of the battles that took place to establish the Welsh Grand Committee in the first place as a venue for debates.
Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that that was supposed to be an intervention.
Methinks the hon. Gentleman doth protest too much. We will see the outcome, and if that outcome is jobs in south Wales we will welcome—