Wales Bill
Debate between John Penrose and Alan Meale(7 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Temporary Chair (Sir Alan Meale)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 28, in clause 6, page 7, line 2, leave out paragraph (b) and insert—
“(b) for ‘The Secretary of State may by order provide for the poll at an ordinary general election to be” substitute “The Presiding Officer may propose that the poll at an ordinary general election is.’”
The Bill as drafted transfers the power to vary the date of an ordinary general election from the Secretary of State to Welsh Ministers. The amendment transfers the power to the Presiding Officer of the National Assembly for Wales.
Amendment 29, page 7, line 2, at end insert—
“(7A) Leave out subsection (2) and insert—
(2) If the Presiding Officer makes a proposal under subsection (1), Her Majesty may by proclamation under the Welsh Seal—
(a) dissolve the Assembly,
(b) require the poll at the election to be held on the day proposed, and
(c) require the Assembly to meet within the period of fourteen days beginning immediately after the day of the poll.”
The amendment inserts provision for the arrangements for varying the date of an ordinary general election. The amendment also extends from seven to fourteen days the period within which the Assembly is required to meet following the day of a poll.
Amendment 30, page 7, line 2, at end insert—
“(7B) In subsection (4) for ‘An order under this section may’ substitute ‘If the Presiding Officer makes a proposal under subsection (1), the Welsh Ministers may by order’”.
The amendment replicates existing provisions in the Government of Wales Act 2006 with a modification resulting from the transfer of the power to vary the date of an ordinary general election to the Presiding Officer.
Amendment 31, page 7, line 6, at end insert—
“(10A) Section 5 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 (Extraordinary general elections) is amended as set out in paragraphs (a) to (d)—
(a) In subsection (1) for “Secretary of State” substitute ‘Presiding Officer’.
(b) In subsection (4) for “Secretary of State” substitute ‘Presiding Officer’.
(c) In subsection (4) for ‘Order in Council’ substitute ‘proclamation under the Welsh Seal’.
(d) In subsection (4) for ‘seven’ substitute ‘fourteen’”.
The amendment inserts a new provision transferring the power to propose the day of an extraordinary general election from the Secretary of State to the Presiding Officer. The amendment also extends from seven to fourteen days the period within which the Assembly is required to meet following the day of a poll.
Clauses 6 and 7 stand part.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (John Penrose)
Clauses 5 to 7 deal with elections to the Assembly and local government elections in Wales. Clause 5 concerns the power to make provision about Welsh Assembly elections. It flows from the St David’s day agreement, which states that powers relating to elections to the National Assembly for Wales should be devolved. Essentially, the clause gives Welsh Ministers an order-making power to make provision about the conduct of Welsh Assembly elections. It also gives the Secretary of State, subject to the agreement of Welsh Ministers, the power to make regulations to combine the polls at Welsh Assembly elections with UK parliamentary elections and in theory—this will not matter much in future—with European parliamentary elections, too.
Clause 5 substitutes section 13 of the Government of Wales Act with a proposed new section 13. It broadly transfers to Welsh Ministers the power exercised by the Secretary of State to make provision by order about the conduct of Welsh Assembly elections. The new section provides that the powers of Welsh Ministers are aligned with the legislative competence of the Welsh Assembly. It also sets out the scope of the order-making power and makes it clear that it enables provision to be made on a number of matters, including the registration of electors and the limits of election expenses for individual candidates. It also allows Ministers to combine polls: when more than one poll is held on the same day, they will decide how the polls will be administered.
The clause also devolves matters relating to the allocation of regional members at an election, the process for challenging an election and what should happen if there is a vacancy in the Assembly. It also inserts a new section 13A into the 2006 Act that gives the Secretary of State the equivalent power to combine polls at Welsh Assembly elections with UK parliamentary elections and European parliamentary elections. For example, an extraordinary general election for the Assembly could be held on the same day as a general election for the UK Parliament. The exercise of this power by the Secretary of State will be subject to the agreement of Welsh Ministers and subject to the affirmative resolution procedure here in the UK Parliament.
Clause 6 concerns the timing of elections in Wales and implements the St David’s day agreement, which states that while conduct of Assembly elections and local government elections in Wales should be devolved, the Assembly should not be able to decide to hold its elections on the same day as general elections to the UK Parliament, the European Parliament or local government elections in Wales. This aspect of the administration and conduct of Assembly and local elections will therefore remain reserved to the UK Parliament.
By way of background, to date, each general election that has been held to the Assembly—there have been five in total—has been held in a different year from ordinary local elections in Wales. Further, the Wales Act 2014 amended section 3 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 so that ordinary general elections to the Assembly are now held every five years rather than every four. This, and the provision in the Fixed-terms Parliaments Act 2011, which it superseded, avoided the Assembly general election and the UK parliamentary general election clashing in 2015 and will avoid such a clash in 2020, as the next ordinary general election to the Assembly is now scheduled to be in 2021.
The next scheduled local elections in Wales are due to be held in 2017. The Local Authority Elections (Wales) Order 2014, made by Welsh Ministers, provided for the local government election date to be moved by one year in order to avoid a clash with this year’s Assembly election. The clause says that in the event of a clash, Welsh Ministers can make an order specifying the alternative day on which the poll of the ordinary Welsh Assembly general election shall be held. It also transfers the existing power of the Secretary of State to move the date of an Assembly ordinary general election by up to one month to Welsh Ministers, and that where this power is exercised, that new date cannot fall on the same date as a UK parliamentary general election or European parliamentary election.
The clause also includes provisions that prevent local government elections in Wales from being held on the same day as an Assembly general election. If there is a clash, Welsh Ministers can make an order specifying the alternative day for the local government election to held.
Clause 7 ensures co-operation between Welsh Ministers and UK Ministers over the online individual electoral registration digital service for Assembly elections and local government elections in Wales. The Assembly is free to decide on a franchise and a registration process for these elections, but as a practical matter, where the Welsh Government wants changes to the GB-wide Digital Service, they will need the approval of UK Government Ministers to do so.
The Tote
Debate between John Penrose and Alan Meale
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport (John Penrose)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) on securing this important debate. A number of Members have made the point that this is a timely discussion and I am delighted to have the opportunity to respond to the excellent points and questions that my hon. Friend raised. I thank him for describing me as genial. I do not think I have been described as genial before. I shall tuck that away and tell my mum when this is all over. I also compliment him because, as he said, by a quirk of the boundaries his constituency includes the wonderful race course of Cheltenham. It is my hard lot in life to have to go to the Cheltenham festival for two days this year. That is a terribly tough part of my job, but I am rather looking forward to it.
I should point out that we are in the middle of an open market process in which a number of people are bidding for the Tote. I hope that my hon. Friend and the hon. Members who have intervened will understand that I am therefore limited in what I can say at this point. Some people who are bidding to take over the Tote have signed non-disclosure agreements with the Government and the Government have signed them in return. It would not be fair to individual bidders if I started disclosing details of one bid and not another. That would clearly not lead to a fair, safe and equitable disposal process, so I will have to watch my p’s and q’s. I am not trying to be deliberately obstructive or obscure, but I need to be careful
My hon. Friend began by asking a series of questions about the details of the 50% commitment. As he rightly pointed out, the Government have committed to ensuring that we honour the Labour Government’s original commitment that 50% of the proceeds of any disposal go to racing. I will come on to his points about whether that is a high enough proportion.
John Penrose
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because it leads me on to answering some of the points that he and his co-chairman of the all-party group on the racing and bloodstock industries, my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury, asked. He is right: clearly, these will have to be net proceeds.
There is a series of questions to be answered about precisely how the transfer of the 50% of the proceeds will take place, and to whom it will be transferred. The answer to most of these questions is tightly bound by European law, because we have to ensure that we do not inadvertently trip over concerns about state aid, which have already derailed one or two earlier attempts to deal with the Tote under previous Administrations. There are things that we can and cannot do, and we are examining them and ensuring that everybody understands what they are. However, I would make the point that they apply equally to any of the potential bidders who are interested in taking over the Tote in due course, who will be bound by charity law and so on. It is most likely that the money will end up in some kind of trust that is governed by the requirements of European law, to ensure that it does not fall on the wrong side of the state aid rules. More details are being developed and worked out through the lawyers as we speak, and when the time comes we will obviously need to publish rather more detail.
John Penrose
I am happy to come on to the issue of Tote staff, but I actually meant to describe a slightly different type of trust, in that the money that is paid to racing will need to go into a carefully bounded trust that is constrained by EU state aid rules. That may or may not be helpful to the future of the staff, but it is a parallel and separate issue.
The principal point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury to which I wish to respond was that the value of the 50% share would almost certainly be less than the value of the ongoing income stream that there has been from the Tote to racing year on year. I completely understand the basic point that he was trying to make, which was that if someone is given a large lump of capital in year one and they fritter it away, or even spend it on terribly valuable and useful things, they will be left with nothing else unless they have a yearly income as well.
However, it is not necessarily true that the ongoing annual income is worth more than the value of the up-front capital. It rather depends on how much that ongoing annual income will be under the various potential future owners of the Tote. Without revealing details of all the different bidders—as I said earlier, I cannot do that—I can tell everybody that the various people who are bidding for the Tote are coming up with an interesting and rich variety of proposals for how to treat the level, structure and so on of that ongoing income stream. They are not all the same, and some are better for racing on an ongoing basis than others. However, we need to value the best and worst differentials alongside the value of the capital. It is not true that the value of the differential will always be bigger and more valuable than the up-front capital. In some cases, it could be that 50% of the proceeds properly invested could yield a very significant return. It is not a straightforward calculation, so I caution the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr Meale) on how he makes that comparison.