Constitutional Convention Bill [HL]

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Friday 17th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Purvis for introducing the Bill and enabling us to have a very important discussion. He is leading where the Government seem afraid to follow. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, that this should be a public Bill and it should be a government Bill—but unfortunately that is not being produced.

My party, the Liberal Democrats, supports the concept of the convention. We welcome the provision in the Bill for the wide inclusion of members who are not drawn from political parties. This is essential because of the increased desire of the public to be directly involved in democracy. Conjoined with that is the increased distrust of politicians. Of course politicians will have input into this, but that must be balanced by the views of the general public.

Several noble Lords have raised the issue of timescale. I say to them: yes, it is an ambitious timescale but I think that they would agree that it is very important that there is a timescale and that this is not something that can be drawn out so that it is endless and therefore meaningless.

We spend a lot of time in this House discussing the implications of things for Scotland. As ever, I want to redress the balance by referring to the implications for Wales. Wales has a complex devolution settlement which is intertwined with the settlement as it applies in practice to England—and it is legally complex. The annexe to the Command Paper issued following the St David’s Day agreement this year illustrates that legal complexity. The annexe is based on current powers and annexe B lists 98 different fields for reservation—so if you rewrote the Welsh settlement on a reserved powers model there would be 98 reserved fields. Annexe C also gives the example of road transport. We all think that road transport is devolved to the Welsh Government. In practice, the example as worked through sets out no fewer than 19 areas of reservation within that power. The effect of this is that entirely English laws are very rare.

Yesterday the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, pointed out in our debate on EVEL that this House could amend England-only legislation to make it UK-wide, which I anticipate would happen frequently. As long as the Barnett formula remains, anything that affects spending decisions in England also affects Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In preparation for this debate, I have been trying to think for several days of legislation that would not have spending implications across the board. Even something such as hunting would have enforcement costs that would have an impact further down the line. So the concept of the Barnett formula—that funding for the individual nations is predicated on political decisions made for England—inevitably has a consequence across the board.

The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, yesterday gave the example of education. A policy change in England on education which meant a reduction in spending, or even an increase, would inevitably have the same implication for the other countries of the union. That would mean that their Governments would have to change their policies—and this happens constantly—to take account of policy decisions, and hence spending decisions, made in England.

For Wales in particular, there are other ways in which services in the two countries are intertwined because there is a long and porous border. I will take this week’s example of seven-day NHS working in regard to cross-border health services. If a decision is made about such seven-day NHS working in Shrewsbury Hospital, it is of legitimate and direct concern to patients living in Wales whose local hospital is in Shrewsbury. The truth of the matter in that it is easy to talk about these issues as points of principle but very complex to bring them into practice.

The Government’s rushed and amended proposals do not begin to address these issues. Their amended plans are so procedurally complex that they are totally opaque and for democracy to work properly, it has to be transparent. I believe that a convention would bring that transparency. There is wide support from almost all parties, except the Conservatives, for a convention—and even on Conservative Benches there is support for the idea, as we have heard today. Many proudly boast that one of the strengths of the UK constitution is its flexibility because it is unwritten, but the Government should heed the signs. That flexibility or elasticity is being stretched so far that it could snap—a point made by my noble friend Lord Maclennan. The Government must come to terms with the reality of the situation in both Houses in this Parliament and should think seriously about supporting the concept of a convention.

The SNP is in control of a wrecking ball. Northern Ireland is not settling down to democracy as fast as we had once hoped, and Wales has a constant feeling of being disgruntled, because it had a half-baked devolution settlement—which is progressing but is still half-baked—and still has a half-baked funding formula. The Government’s EVEL proposals could entrench those problems even deeper. People in all four nations need to feel that there has been a long, hard look at the situation by an independent and fair-minded convention, and I urge the Government not to be afraid to follow the lead of my noble friend.