Queen’s Speech

Baroness Humphreys Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

My Lords, in my short contribution to this debate on the gracious Speech, I intend to make a few comments on the Wales Bill and some matters relating to Wales. The Wales Bill, which has completed its passage through the other place, will give the National Assembly some powers over taxation, establish a five-year term for Welsh Assembly Governments, allow for dual candidacy in future elections and put an end to double jobbing where successful parliamentary candidates continue to hold on to their Assembly seats. I look forward to the debates on those issues.

It is now 15 years since the National Assembly for Wales came into being and the end of May marked the 15th anniversary of the Queen opening our Assembly. The Minister—my noble friend Lady Randerson—and I share a birthday with the official opening of the Assembly, and I remember very well the birthday celebrations over breakfast that day. We were not, of course, celebrating only the opening of the Assembly; we were celebrating the fact that the National Assembly had actually come into existence and we were among its first members. For those of us who in the 1980s and 1990s were committed to devolution, it was the dream becoming a reality. Liberals and Liberal Democrats have long believed in home rule, and it is ironic that this long-standing Liberal policy was enacted by a Labour Government but, I would argue, it was delivered by a coalition of parties for the yes campaign in Wales. The abiding, iconic image of the devolution quest for most Welsh people is not the image of Her Majesty opening the National Assembly, although that is valued and admired; it is, rather, an image from two years earlier of the Welsh party leaders, including the late Lord Livsey and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, who were part of the yes campaign, with arms aloft in celebration after Ron Davies’s simple, historic words, “Good morning—and it is a very good morning in Wales”. Those of us who stayed awake the previous night through the tension of the referendum count, who bemoaned the losses and cheered the gains, will never forget the sheer joy of the last result from Carmarthenshire: the referendum had been won.

Now, 15 years later, this week has seen the BBC in Wales mark the 15th anniversary of the opening of the Assembly with a series of programmes looking at a different aspect of devolution each day. The inevitable question put to all Welsh politicians is, “Have your dreams for the Assembly been realised?”. To answer that question one has to begin by being charitable. The National Assembly for Wales is only 15 years old; in terms of the age of other democratic institutions all over the world, it is a mere child. The reserved powers model granted to Scotland was not granted to Wales. The Assembly was given an arbitrary number of members—60 members is fewer members than in a great many unitary authorities in Wales and presents problems in terms of scrutiny of measures emanating from its current powers. Estimates suggest that the application of the Barnett formula has deprived Wales of £300 million every year.

Devolution has certainly given the Welsh Assembly Government the freedom to make their own decisions and to do things differently, but herein lies the challenge. The challenge is to follow a different path but to be as successful as, or even better than, one’s neighbours. Doing things differently means that the Welsh Government’s record in key areas is disappointing. On the economy, Wales continues to lag behind, with the lowest GDP per head in the UK, at 74% of the UK average, down from 84% in 2007. In education, where we compete not only against our neighbours but against the world, Wales has slipped down the PISA rankings. Wales’s NHS continues to miss its own targets on waiting times.

My response to the BBC’s question has been that the dream has been tempered significantly by reality, but that new reality fires a new ambition to ensure more effective government for the people of Wales.