Draft Wales Bill (Morning sitting)

Debate between Antoinette Sandbach and David T C Davies

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 General Committees

[David T. C. Davies]

I begin by offering a word of support for the point of order that was raised earlier. The Conservative party, as a party that has always prided itself on providing support for the Welsh language, would be quite happy about and would look positively at the possibility of allowing Welsh to be used during Welsh Grand Committees. Why would we not be? After all, I gather that in the last few minutes alone there has been an announcement of extra funding for S4C, the Welsh language television channel, which, of course, was set up by a previous Conservative Government. The Conservative party will always be a huge supporter of the Welsh language.

I find myself in a slightly difficult position in talking about this Bill, because even as we speak, of course, members of the Welsh Affairs Committee are considering their own positions on the draft report, which I hope will be a unanimous report full of recommendations about this Bill. Obviously, as has become clear already, different Members from different parties, and even different Members from the same party, have taken somewhat different positions on this Bill, so talking about it is challenging. In fact, when it comes to trying to get a unanimous Bill through, I think I know how the Prime Minister feels in Europe.

Consequently, I will skirt around some of the issues. I understand the wish of the Government and the Minister to bring some clarity to the devolution settlement— I certainly support that principle. However, I have to put on record my disappointment over the issue of taxation. I have been around long enough to know which way the wind is blowing and I can see what is going to happen. I have to say, with all due respect to the Minister, I personally think it would have been better to have a referendum.

One thing I want to talk about is scrutiny, because regardless of what people have been saying, it is clear to me that this Bill will lead to the Welsh Assembly having significant further powers when it finally goes through, and one issue that has been raised all the way through our Select Committee evidence has been the Welsh Assembly’s ability to conduct good scrutiny. It has become even more important that it can do so because of the extra powers that it can have.

There are two areas where the scrutiny process could be improved. The first, of course, is the Assembly Committees. They are the equivalent of our Select Committees. The Select Committee process, ever since the late 1970s, has been one of the great success stories of Parliament, but the reform that happened in 2010, when Select Committee Chairs started to be elected by all Members of the House, was very important. I cannot understand how those of us who were here before that could have tolerated a situation in which party leaders were simply sticking in people who they thought would be compliant and handing out those positions almost as a kind of prize.

That system was totally unacceptable, and nobody would ever go back to it, yet we still have it in the Welsh Assembly, and there have been controversies where leaders of various political parties have allegedly removed people or put people in place as Select Committee Chairs because they held a view that was more likely to be supportive of the political party that they represented. Even the suggestion that that could have happened undermines confidence in the process, so I think that the situation is unacceptable and that somehow we ought to persuade the Welsh Assembly Members of the success of the reforms that have been made in Parliament.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

That was proposed by Assembly Members, including Lord Elis-Thomas, myself and Nick Ramsay in the current Assembly. Very regrettably, those proposals were not taken up, largely because the party leaders want to hand out the baubles of chairmanships of Committees, and it allows them to control the casting votes in those Committees. It is—