20 Years of Devolution

Debate between Hywel Williams and Pete Wishart

Thursday 11th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered 20 years of devolution.

It is with great pleasure that I open this debate on 20 years of devolution on behalf of the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs and the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs. Twenty years of devolution—it is hard to believe. It has been 20 years since our Parliaments opened their doors, transforming our nations and redefining the political culture of our countries. Our nations are better because of devolution. Our national life has been transformed, and we now have a distinctive voice because we have Parliaments within our nations.

Devolution has come of age and there will be no going back to before our Parliaments opened their doors to the world. I remember that day 20 years ago: I was going to be a candidate for the Scottish Parliament, and it was only the finishing of a Runrig album that got in the way and delayed my parliamentary career by two years. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if had I managed to secure a place in the Scottish Parliament—[Interruption.] I am hearing that there is still time yet, but as someone approaching the autumn of their career I will maybe just think about that one.

I remember the expectation in the air that day—the sense of anticipation and excitement that at last we could get down to the business of designing our own future because we had our Parliaments. I will never forget the look on Donald Dewar’s face when he said, “There will be a Scottish Parliament,” and he just had to add, “I like that.” And I will never forget Winnie Ewing taking the chair for the first time—Winnie Ewing, whose 90th birthday was yesterday, a celebrated figure in Scotland to whom we owe a great debt—and saying:

“the Scottish Parliament, which adjourned on 25 March 1707, is hereby reconvened.” —[Scottish Parliament Official Report, 12 May 1999; c. 5.]

We have had our disagreements like any other normal Parliament or Assembly, and we have scrutinised Governments just as they do everywhere else, but we have worked with a great deal of consensus. There have been fantastic examples of cross-party work, pioneering and innovation in the Scottish Parliament, and it is worth looking at some of the things that we have achieved in the course of those 20 years.

There has, for example, been pioneering health work. We were the first country in the United Kingdom to introduce a ban on smoking in public places, and we know about the health dividend that has resulted from that piece of legislation. We recently introduced minimum unit pricing for alcohol, and there is already reasonable evidence that that is starting to have an impact on health outcomes. We have also made democratic reforms: 16 and 17-year-olds in Scotland now have votes, and we have proportional representation in local government elections, just as we do in the election of the Parliament itself. Then there is the social agenda: free personal care for our elderly in Scotland, free higher education, and free prescription charges. All those initiatives, and many more, are helping to make ours a better and fairer country.

This is often credited to Donald Dewar, but it was in fact a Welshman, Ron Davies, who said:

“Devolution is a process…not an event”.

What a process it has been, and what a journey we have been on! As a legislative body, the Scottish Parliament is an entirely different creature from the one that opened its doors back in June 1999. Two further Scotland Acts—the 2012 and 2016 Acts—followed the 1998 Act, which established the Scottish Parliament, and have significantly increased its powers. It now controls large swathes of welfare legislation, and its taxation powers mean that we can set our own income tax rates in Scotland. The Welsh Assembly is about to become the Senedd, and Scotland now has a Government. We in Scotland have had coalition government, majority government—although the rules are supposed to forbid such a thing—and two episodes of minority government, and still we move forward.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Welsh Assembly has advanced even further, given that we were somewhat behind our Scottish friends at the start of the process? It has travelled from being essentially a glorified county council to being a law-making body, which will hopefully proceed very quickly to take on many more law-making and tax-raising powers, leading eventually to independence.

[Pete Wishart]

I am more than happy to agree with my hon. Friend. As we observe what has happened in Wales, we see that the pace of the change has been quite dramatic. My hon. Friend is right to point out that Wales now has a law-making Assembly. There was some discussion yesterday about its being renamed the Senedd, which I think will prove very worthwhile and valuable. We are on a journey, and it is not finished yet.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Lady is an assiduous member of the Scottish Affairs Committee, and as I look around the Chamber I see other assiduous members. I agree with what she has said, but I think it is incumbent on us to have the mechanism, the infrastructure and the machinery to ensure that when Governments disagree—as they will when they have particularly different policy objectives —we can accommodate that disagreement, shape it up, and resolve some of the tensions and difficulties that are encountered.

Let me now go back to the beginning, because, as the hon. Lady knows, the Committee looked into this in great detail and heard a great deal of evidence. In the early days of devolution, everything was straightforward and easy. The Labour party was in government in Cardiff, Edinburgh and London, and intergovernmental relations were conducted among comrades, friends and colleagues who would just pick up the phone and get in touch with each other to resolve any difficulties. They were generally resolved very easily; I am sure that you remember those days, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Only one issue was not resolved, and it remains in the name of the bar in the Scottish Parliament. In a dramatic rebuke to Scottish colleagues who dared to suggest that they should become a Government, Big Brother down here—in the form of Labour Members—said, “They can call themselves the White Heather Club, but they will never be a Government.” To this day, the bar in Holyrood is called the White Heather Club as testimony to that fantastic rebuke from our Big Brother Westminster Labour colleagues.

It took the UK Government three years to keep up with developments and acknowledge the change when Alex Salmond rebranded the then—it has to be said—pathetically named Scottish Executive the Scottish Government.

I think it is fair to say that the cosy relationship that existed in the early days of devolution was pretty much shattered with the arrival of the SNP minority Government in 2007. This was an SNP Government who were prepared to push the boundaries of the devolution settlement and who tried to define a new means and method for us to assert ourselves as a nation, and they were not content being restricted to what was available in the then devolution settlement.

Then of course came the independence referendum, and who will ever forget that? Curiously, inter-Government relationships survived the referendum relatively intact, and that was because there was a need for engagement between the two Governments and we had the Edinburgh agreement and rules were set up for that. That taught us the lesson that things can be done if there is structure, rules and a means to come together for agreed objectives, and the agreed objective during the independence referendum was that it would be done properly and constitutionally.

Brexit has broken that, however. What we have with Brexit is two Governments, one in Scotland and one in London, with totally different objectives on the issue of leaving the European Union. Scotland wants nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit; it returned one MP with a mandate for an EU referendum, and we have consistently said we find this counter to our national interests. But of course we have a UK Government determined to deliver Brexit. We should have in place, however, a means to be able to accommodate that—to be able to ensure that these types of differences can be dealt with and negotiated smoothly.

That brings us to the machinery of all this. At the very top is the Joint Ministerial Committee. We looked at a number of options for transforming or even replacing it, but came to the conclusion that replacing it would not serve any great purpose. So we suggested a number of things that we could do to improve the functioning of the JMC, because it is not working properly; it does not have the confidence of the Scottish Government and it does not particularly have the confidence of the Welsh Government. The UK Government set the agenda, and they are responsible for all the dispute resolutions, and they seem to be the arbiter of what happens and how things are conducted.

We said that things have to change dramatically, and there is one phrase that runs through almost every chapter of our report: “parity of esteem”. We therefore propose that the JMC be a body where all four of the Governments are treated as equals, and as such we recommended that JMC meetings should be hosted and chaired by each of the UK Administrations on a rotating basis, and that meetings should be held frequently and have a set schedule with agendas agreed in advance between all parties.

We also asked the Government to explore third-party mediation, because again we received a number of pieces of evidence that suggested that this was not working. We also said that the JMC should look at dispute resolution and made a number of recommendations about Whitehall Departments becoming devolution-proof.

[Hywel Williams]

Further to that point, the JMC has been described as not fit for purpose in its current form. Its fitness for purpose would be greatly aided if it had its own secretariat, and if it had a statutory basis as well.

[Pete Wishart]

We have recommended that the Government look at the JMC having its own secretariat, and the UK Government have now said they are prepared to explore that. However, I want to come back to the Government’s response to our report, and I think that what the Government are prepared to do will delight the hon. Gentleman.

Human Rights (Joint Committee)

Debate between Hywel Williams and Pete Wishart

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. We are starting to make progress—we are starting to get there now. What we are seeing from the hon. Gentleman is agreement that an injustice has been done. Would that be a fair characterisation? I am looking at hon. Members on the Treasury Bench, and they are thinking about that, and I think most of them are tentatively agreeing with that premise. What we have here is something that is unsuitable, unfair and inappropriate and which now needs to be resolved. We have already had a couple of suggestions for tackling this—and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for his suggestion and ask him to just tell his Front Benchers to start supporting this, too.

I have no idea what Labour Front Benchers think about this, and I am certain one of them will make a contribution, but surely Labour would want us as colleagues on that Committee? Why do they want the Liberals on it, for goodness’ sake? Surely they are better with the third party in this House having a place on it.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

When I served on a Joint Committee considering a mental health Bill covering Wales, the representation from this House was 24—not 12—including me, and it was considered appropriate for someone from Wales to be on the Committee. That same principle should apply as far as Scotland is concerned in this case.

[Pete Wishart]

That is another helpful suggestion. I sense I am getting a bit of support. Would that be fair? I am looking at my Labour colleagues. No, we are not; well, what do we expect from Labour? At least the Conservatives are beginning to see there is something profoundly wrong with what is being proposed. I think the Labour Front Bench would rather have unelected Liberals on this Joint Committee than the third party of the United Kingdom.

Iraq War (10th Anniversary)

Debate between Hywel Williams and Pete Wishart

Thursday 13th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

Members were almost hissing us for sitting still, but I am glad and proud that I never rose to my feet to clap that warmonger.

The Iraq war is, of course, associated with Tony Blair, and always will be. It is his legacy. He might as well have had it tattooed on his head, such is his association with that illegal war. Conflicts tend to become associated with prominent figures and leaders: we have had Thatcher and the Falklands war, Churchill and world war two—and Iraq and Blair.

What was it all for? What was achieved? More than 100,000 dead, a region destabilised, a country divided along sectarian lines, and international diplomacy discredited as never before. We may never retrieve our credibility in the international community following Iraq, and that is a sad, sad indictment of what happened here. I will not even bother to go into the details of the millions of people who have been displaced. But another dreadful thing happened, and it is the thing that we will most regret: we have alienated a generation of people living in the Muslim world. Furthermore, we have dangerously radicalised a proportion of them, and that is what we are having to deal with now. That is another legacy of the Iraq war with which we have continued to contend, and we will live to regret it.

By any standard, Iraq has been an absolute and utter disaster. That illegal war was one of the most regrettable and damaging foreign policy adventures ever undertaken in our name. Some Members have gone on about Suez, but the mighty Suez is nothing but a little stream compared with the foreign policy damage that has been created by Iraq. Those responsible must be held to account. History will eventually judge them, but I should like to think that it will be done now, while I am still a Member of Parliament. I should like to think that some justice will be delivered. So far, the only people who have lost their jobs because of Iraq are people who worked for the BBC. One person lost his job because he said that the dossier was “sexed up”. That dossier was more sexed up than some teenage starlet in her latest pop video.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

What is even more regrettable is that after the war, those on what was then the Government Front Bench continued to assert that there were weapons of mass destruction, and that, as a matter of faith, they would be found. Eventually, of course, they had to concede, but it was a matter of belief and not of fact.

[Pete Wishart]

The Minister has been asked today whether there were weapons of mass destruction, but even now—10 years on, and with a different Government —they cannot concede that there were no such weapons. If the Minister were to rise in order to say, “Yes, we concede that now,” I would give way to him, but so far no UK Government have conceded that there were no weapons of mass destruction, and I think that until a Government do that, we will not have political closure.

We have had five useless reports on Iraq. That is the only thing we can call them: useless. They might as well have been made out of whitewash, given their validity when it comes to trying to discover and understand what actually went on. Now worrying issues are starting to emerge in relation to our best hope of ensuring that those responsible are held to account through the Chilcot report. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd referred to some of the current difficulties with Chilcot.

I mentioned to the Minister David Owen’s view that there is collusion between Tony Blair and No. 10 to ensure that the private correspondence between George Bush and Tony Blair is not revealed. We must see that correspondence, because it will probably tell us more than anything else about the reasons for going to war. We will be able to see how the plan was shaped and designed between the two of them, and to see the commitment that was made by Tony Blair to George Bush.

The Chilcot inquiry started four years ago, and with every year that passes, the Iraq war recedes and the Chilcot conclusions lose their potency. I say this, however, to the current Government and those who were in the last Labour Government: we will not forget. We will not forget this, and we will continue to hold this Government to account for what they do.

History will judge these people. At some point, what actually happened will have to come out. If Chilcot does not do that, it will come out later. I am not confident that we will get the truth about Iraq before the end of this decade, however. I think it will take another generation before the true story of Iraq is told, because there are too many big reputations at stake, and too many pillars would come down if it were actually revealed. The Foreign Office and the foreign policy of the United Kingdom would probably be totally discredited if the truth about Iraq came out.

That is why I am not confident that we will find out the true story about Iraq before the end of this decade, and I will be out of here by then. I do not want to be part of a country that does this. It is appalling to be part of a nation that indulges in illegal wars. I am from Scotland. Scotland is the nation that defines me, and I want my country to make a peaceful contribution to the world and not get involved in these illegal wars, so I am glad we will have an opportunity next year to ensure that we are no longer part of a nation that is prepared to indulge in such things.

It was not a Tory Government who took us into this illegal war; it was a Labour Government, for goodness’ sake—the last type of Government we would expect to take us into an illegal war. It is not all about the evil Tories, therefore. It was a Labour Government who did that, and I am glad that next year my nation will get the opportunity to vote for independence and ensure we will never be part of illegal wars again.

I think the case for independence is overwhelming, but this issue really helps it. The issue has politicised so many people. We have heard about the Stop the War coalition, which did so much great work on it, and Stop the War lost one of its greatest advocates in the last few days: the iconic author Iain Banks. I remember when he came down here and participated in the activities of Stop the War. He was an author without peer, an iconic Scot and a great, great guy. He was heavily politicised by the Iraq war. In fact, he tore up his passport and sent it to Tony Blair, such was his disgust at the war.

I want to pay tribute to Iain Banks in my final remarks by quoting some words not from his great works, “The Crow Road” or “The Wasp Factory”, but from him to Tony Blair. He said that

“it was Blair who bowed to Bush in the first place, and Blair who convinced the Labour party and parliament of the need to go to war with a dossier that was so close to lying that it makes no difference.”

Indeed!

Public Sector Pensions

Debate between Hywel Williams and Pete Wishart

Thursday 8th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams]

I am surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman arguing for that. I thought he took the contrary view, but perhaps my sense of irony is underdeveloped.

The Office for Budget Responsibility estimated in March 2011 that 400,000 people in the public sector would lose their jobs. In its response to the autumn statement, that rose by nearly 80% to a disastrous 710,000. One further, crucial reason as to why we in Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National party have called this debate is that public sector jobs are disproportionately important to countries and regions outside London and the south-east. Paying an extra 3% out of their wages is bad for individuals wherever they live, and I have particular sympathy for those in inner-city areas with high costs such as public service workers in central London. Looking across the UK, the 3% imposition and the job losses will have a particularly strong impact on Scotland, Wales and the north of England, especially as the private sector is generally weaker in those areas.

That will be even more the case if the Government follow Labour’s lead in 2008 and introduce regional rates of pay, as my hon. Friends have said. The figures on the size of the public sector are clear, sad and revealing. Briefly, in Scotland the public sector accounts for 28.6% of jobs; in the east the figure is 23.7%; in the north-east it is 29.4%; in the south- east it is 22.8%; in Wales, unfortunately the figure is highest at 31.2%; and in London it is 22%. There is a clear north-south divide. The people we represent will be hit particularly hard, as will our local economies because of the grotesquely distorted, south-east-weighted economic development of the UK and the obsession with the City of London.

This morning I received an e-mail from Mr Mark Rowe, a PCS member from the Devon area. I do not know Mr Rowe; I have never met him, and I do not know what his politics are, but he said this in his e-mail:

“Dear Mr Williams, Thank you for supporting hard working public servants in their struggle over pensions. It is good to know that someone is. We had a huge rally through Torquay on the 30th, hardly a ‘damp squib’”—

as it was described by the Government. He added that there had been “much public support” and asked why Labour are not “fighting our corner”. Public sector pensions have not been the subject of a single full Opposition day debate in the House for the past 18 months, despite the fact that Labour has had 36 Opposition day debates since the public sector pension changes were first introduced in 2010.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Is the situation not worse than that? Not only has Labour never bothered debating this subject in the House of Commons despite having had so many opportunities to do so, but the Leader of the Opposition described these strikes as wrong.

[Hywel Williams]

rose—