Draft Wales Bill (Morning sitting)

David T C Davies Excerpts

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—

[The Chair]

Order. Before the democratically elected Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee continues, I point out that we are talking about this draft Bill in this House, not procedures in the National Assembly.

[David T. C. Davies]

Thank you, Mr Owen. If I may, I will continue not so much on Select Committees, because that was a side issue, but on the overall issue of scrutiny. A lot of evidence came to us from people who were basically calling for there to be more Welsh Assembly Members, and they included the Speaker of the Assembly. I want to pick up on that, because one thing that I said when I campaigned against the Assembly in the late 1990s was that it would be a case of 60 people doing a job that was previously done by three—then, of course, we had two junior Ministers. In one sense, I got that one wrong, as we all did, because of course in Parliament there are 1,400 people who can scrutinise legislation: Members of the House of Lords and Members of the House of Commons. I think that in the Welsh Assembly there are 13 Ministers and junior Ministers, which leaves 47 people, or thereabouts, who can actually scrutinise legislation. That clearly puts them at a disadvantage, and various people have suggested various solutions to the problem over the years.

One suggested solution was that scrutiny could be conducted by the Welsh Grand Committee or even by the Welsh Affairs Committee. I would not mind putting myself forward for such a role, but in reality it would be completely politically unacceptable for Members of Parliament to scrutinise Welsh Assembly legislation.

Another solution that has been offered is some kind of Ty’r Arglwyddi—a Welsh House of Lords—but again that would be politically very difficult to get through and would involve huge cost, so people have started talking about more Assembly Members. That was the solution put to us in the evidence we took. I believe that Rosemary Butler mentioned a figure of 80 to 100 Assembly Members—I do not want to put words in her mouth. David Melding said something similar. We were definitely being told by one witness after another that we needed between 80 and 120 Assembly Members to do the job, rather than 60, but I think all of them recognised that that would be a very difficult sell to the public, so respectfully I want to put forward an alternative solution, based on the thought that, assuming this Bill goes through in some form, the Assembly will have the extra powers and there will be a need for a much higher level of scrutiny than there is currently.

I think there is an obvious solution. We have 22 local authorities. I believe that those local authorities could easily send four members, based on some sort of party balance, to sit in the chamber of the Welsh Assembly—perhaps on one day a month. They could carry out good scrutiny of the legislation that is being passed. They would have a democratic mandate to do that because they would all be elected. They would have the expertise to do it because local authority members often carry out the functions of legislation passed by the Welsh Assembly, particularly in education and social services, and they will clearly be in a position to know what will work and what will not work. I am not suggesting for one moment that local councillors should be able to block or overturn legislation, but they could have a role in forcing the Assembly to think again and add amendments.

[Geraint Davies]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that in such a model there would be a tendency for more money to go towards local authorities and for less money to go towards health?

[David T. C. Davies]

There would clearly be pressure from local authority members to reconsider the local government funding formula, and I assume that members from areas such as Brecon and Monmouth would want to do that because, despite the Minister giving extra money to the Welsh Assembly, areas such as Monmouthshire are seeing a huge cut in funding, and there is absolutely no reason for that. Brecon is even worse, because I believe that about 4%—

[The Chair]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is drifting slightly from the Bill. I would expect him, as Chairman of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, to be succinct in both time and subject matter.

[David T. C. Davies]

I can take a hint. There is a good argument from local government members for allowing such a committee to take place.

I hear some of the criticisms of the Bill, and I hear criticisms of the English votes for English laws mechanism. I say to the hon. Member for Wrexham, who raised the criticism, that we were making those arguments in the 1990s. We—that is to say I—lost that argument. There is a recognition that Wales will be able to do things in health and education and that England will have no part in that. It is not unfair or inconsistent to say that the English should be able to take the same decisions. Of course people will be affected by that. There always have been and always will be people who have their health treatment, or who go to school or university, on one side of the border but who live on the other side. That was the case in the 1990s, when the Welsh Assembly was set up. All the Government have done is to bring a slightly consistent view to it. If it discourages Members of the Welsh Assembly from asking for yet more powers because they are afraid that their party colleagues might lose control over other things, such as policing, then as a Unionist I am pleased about it. It is a good thing and a step forward.

[Kevin Brennan]

Disgrace.

[David T. C. Davies]

It is not a disgrace. It is no more of a disgrace than the Welsh Assembly in the first place, which I argued strongly against.

[Kevin Brennan]

The Welsh Assembly was established—the hon. Gentleman knows this well, because he and I were on opposite sides of the argument back in the late 1990s—after a long debate, after a referendum and after considerable parliamentary time and scrutiny was devoted to it. His party made Members, including himself, second-class MPs by using the mechanism of the Standing Orders of this House. It is a constitutional aberration and a disgrace.

[David T. C. Davies]

It was a manifesto commitment, and people voted for a Conservative Government because of that express manifesto commitment. If the hon. Gentleman went down to the streets of England and said, “Do you think that Welsh MPs, who are not allowed to have any say over what happens to the health service in Wales, should be able to tell the English what to do?”, I know what the answer would be. The Government are carrying out a manifesto commitment that was democratically voted for, and it is completely consistent with what Opposition Members have done. [Interruption.]

[The Chair]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that there was a Conservative commitment. We have also had long debates on it in the past. It is not the purpose of this Grand Committee to continue those debates. I ask him to bring his remarks to a close.

[David T. C. Davies]

Thank you, Mr Owen. I would simply say one last thing: as somebody who was opposed to the Welsh Assembly, I completely accept that it is there forever. I hope that we will not constantly see more powers handed over to it. I see powers as being not a one-way street but possibly a two-way street, but there will be people voting at the next Assembly elections in May who were barely born when it was set up, so the idea that we can somehow scrap it has now long gone. Opposition Members have said that matters affecting Wales should be decided in Wales, which is an interesting principle. I would like to see matters affecting Britain being decided in Great Britain, which is why I will be joining the Vote Leave campaign at some point this afternoon. I look forward to the support of Plaid Cymru Members.