Wales Bill

Baroness Gale Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

Both the amendments before us on this subject probably do not quite do the trick, but I hope that the Minister, who understands the Welsh Assembly as well as anyone in your Lordships’ House, will agree to take this issue away and return at a future point, having thought further about it. I hope that he will also recognise that there needs to be a solution to the problem which is particularly caused by the top-up system.

[Baroness Gale (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friends Lord Hain and Lord Murphy and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, for bringing these amendments before us tonight. I am sure that we all agree that we have had a very good debate on them. I think that this is the first time we have ever debated the qualifications of candidates for the Welsh Assembly. It is something that we should all be looking at. The current qualifications for candidates are wide. A candidate has to be at least 18 years of age, be a British citizen, an eligible British Commonwealth citizen or a citizen of any member state of the European Union—but I suppose that that could change in the near future. There is also no requirement in law for a candidate to be registered as an elector in Wales. I believe that the qualifications for those who stand for the House of Commons are very similar.

That is very different from the qualifications required to be a local government candidate in Wales and England. Some of them are similar to those for standing for the Commons and the Welsh Assembly, but with one big difference. Candidates have to meet at least one of four criteria. They must be registered as a local government elector for the local authority area in which they wish to stand from the day of nomination onwards, or occupying as the owner or tenant of any land or premises in the area during the whole of the 12 months prior to the day of nomination and on the day of the election. The local government area must be the main or only place of their work during the 12 months prior to the day of nomination and on the day of the election, or they must have lived in the area during the whole of the 12 months before the day of nomination and on the day of the election.

It is clear that local government candidates must have some links with the area which they represent. That makes sense and is in line with the amendments before us. What is good enough for local government candidates must surely be good enough for Welsh Assembly candidates. However, it is important that there should be more than one qualification. It should not be just a case of whether you are an elector and live in Wales; you should have wider qualifications. Of the four or five qualifications, or however many there are, a person should meet at least one of them.

This has been a very good debate and it is important that we should have had it. As other noble Lords have said, it has been brought about because of this year’s elections to the Welsh Assembly, which made us all think about the issue—I do not think that any of us had thought about it previously, because nobody believed that someone elected to the Welsh Assembly would not be Welsh or not be living in Wales. It has never happened before.

The matter requires further discussion, but I ask the Minister whether it could be included in the devolution of election matters to the Welsh Assembly as laid out in the Bill or whether it is a matter for the UK Government to determine. We believe that it should be for the Welsh Assembly to decide on qualifications of candidates. Let it decide what it believes are the right qualifications for candidates. It would probably agree that there should be more than one qualification to stand for election to it.

We need clarity, which I am sure the Minister will give us. If the matter is to be devolved, it is right that we should have had this debate. I am sure that Welsh Assembly Members and the Welsh Government will look what at what we have said. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have participated in the debate on these amendments. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hain, for bringing the matter forward and, indeed, for admitting to a degree of “mea culpa” on earlier provisions.

The amendments would prevent individuals not resident in Wales, and not recorded as such on the electoral register, being Members of the National Assembly for Wales. As the Government committed to in the St David’s Day agreement, the Bill devolves powers over its own elections to the National Assembly for Wales. This includes the eligibility to stand as a candidate at such an election and the criteria under which a candidate may be disqualified from being an Assembly Member. These would be matters for Wales and the National Assembly for Wales. There is a slight irony in the fact that earlier we debated what “not normally” covers, yet here are seeking to legislate in areas that will now be presented to the National Assembly for discussion and decision. It is absolutely right that this area relating to electoral practice should be a matter for the National Assembly for Wales. I indicated to the noble Lord, Lord Hain—and I have had lawyers look at this—that these matters will be transferred to the National Assembly for Wales and it is right that it considers them.

Very good points have been made by noble Lords in relation to the arguments. The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, spoke about the residency requirement for those who may live just over the border at Knighton—close to the station perhaps, which is in England—rather than in the town of Knighton, and so on. They are issues that the Assembly will want to look at, just as it will no doubt want to look at the point made by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth on the choice for electors. I speak as somebody who as an Assembly Member was determined to live in the area I represented; certainly, it was true then that everybody who was in the National Assembly for Wales lived in Wales. These are valid points for the Assembly to look at; they are not matters that we should pontificate on. With respect, I therefore ask noble Lords not to press their amendments.