Wales Bill

Lord Crickhowell Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 31st October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I support both the noble Lord and my noble friend in their remarks. My noble friend Lady Morgan has outlined very well what “devolved matters” means in the Bill, and the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, quite rightly spoke about the sloppiness of the term “normally”. I think that it opens up huge possibilities for rift between Cardiff and Westminster unless there is a proper definition, if the Government want this, as to when the Assembly is not allowed to pass its comments upon legislation going through this Parliament which affects so-called devolved matters. Is it for the Secretary of State for Wales or a Cabinet committee to decide what is “normal”? No, this is an absolute recipe for conflict between the Assembly and Parliament, and between the two Governments. I hope that the Minister will take this back and either strike it completely from the legislation or, if they insist that there should be qualifications as to when the Assembly cannot utilise its powers, these should be defined very precisely indeed.

[Lord Crickhowell (Con)]

My Lords, I spoke at Second Reading and earlier today about the need for clarity in the Bill, and I must say that I share the concerns about the word “normally”. Those concerns were reinforced earlier today by the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, who produced what seemed to me a pretty devastating analysis and related it to a subsequent clause—I think it was Clause 53. It seems to me that the Government would do very well to ponder what has been said today very carefully. I also have some sympathy with the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench about the use of the word “devolved” when we are dealing with reserved powers. It seems to me that that, too, is likely to be a cause of some confusion. I am not sure that I followed all her arguments, but I am not speaking about those; I am simply seeking clarity. I hope that my noble friend will not dig his heels in tonight, but will take these comments away and give them much careful thought before coming back at a later stage.

[Lord Elis-Thomas (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, and I am confident that the Minister, whom I have known in another place—if I can call the Welsh Assembly that—at the other end of the line, is not someone who digs his heels in. He successfully danced a fine tune to move his party, the Welsh Conservatives, into a stance on devolution which brings us to where we are today.

I come to the amendments in my name, which I am pleased to share with my noble friend, Lord Wigley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, my sister in the Assembly. Amendment 9 attempts to define “devolved matters”. This is another issue that was addressed by the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee in the National Assembly. The Minister will no doubt say that “normally” occurs in the Scotland Act and that the Welsh devolution settlement does not require any definition of “devolved matters”. I am not very enamoured of the argument that empowering the National Assembly to be able to legislate for devolved matters is somehow an overruling of parliamentary sovereignty, as if the traditional constitution of the United Kingdom, of Parliament assembled in these two Houses, could somehow be undermined or be in any sense overruled by legislative activity in Cardiff.

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[Lord Crickhowell]

My Lords, I preface my remarks with a story I was told long ago by Sir John Rodgers, who lived in Kent and was elected for a Kent constituency just a little way from his home. He decided to consult a neighbour, Winston Churchill. Winston replied: “Never live in your constituency”. That is not my position, but I have real practical objections to what is proposed, particularly for candidates.

I have two objections. Let us consider candidates first. Someone may have been born and brought up in Wales and his family live in Wales, but he is at present working in, say, London, perhaps as a civil servant or in business. He decides that he wishes to fight an election. If the amendment were passed, he would be forced to move back to Wales and give up his employment before standing.

I know of at least one very distinguished individual who in the war was in a reserved occupation in the Foreign Office and was determined to serve in the Armed Forces. He promptly got himself chosen as a candidate and immediately had to leave the Foreign Office. He became a founding member of the SAS, served with immense distinction in the Baltic states and later became a very distinguished Member of Parliament. One can also think of someone serving in the Armed Forces—perhaps in the royal regiment of Wales—encamped outside the Principality. He is about to leave the Army or decides that standing as a candidate forces his removal from the Army list. He is perfectly happy, after the election, to move to his constituency and live in it but, as this amendment is drafted, that would not be possible.

I have a second objection. In recent years, I have moved to Monmouth. Take an individual who has been born and brought up in Monmouth. He lives and works there; he worships there; his children go to school there; he goes to a doctor there. However, it chances that he lives just across the Wye bridge and is therefore living in England. He is disqualified from standing. My present Welsh home is on a road that leads up out of Monmouth and virtually every house in it is in the town, but if you go three-quarters of a mile up the road from me to my next-door neighbour, that house is in England. Its occupant may live, work and do everything he has to do in Monmouth but he would be disqualified. This situation is not unique to Monmouth. It happens that a considerable number of Welsh towns straddle the border, starting in the north with Bangor-on-Dee. On Saturday afternoon I passed through Knighton on my way to a memorial service in Presteigne. Someone might live and spend their whole life in Presteigne but it just happens that the house they live in, which is still part of the town, is 100 yards across the border and in England. They are therefore disqualified from standing for election in the county of Powys. Going south, there is Hay-on-Wye, and I could name a whole string of other little towns and hamlets up the border which would be disqualified for entirely the same reason.

Broadly, I have slightly more sympathy with the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, which at least allows them to stand as candidates but says that they then have to be living in Wales before they take their seats. However, that worries me too. Going back to my example of Presteigne, can it really be right that the person who lives, works and carries out all their business in that Welsh town is forced to sell their house 200 yards, say, across the border, in order to qualify for membership of the Assembly? It does not seem to me that this is a reasonable proposition.

I wonder too whether there may not be difficulties when boundary changes take place that force people suddenly to move their homes. However, I will not dwell on that. I have voiced my objections. I do not think this is a reasonable set of amendments and hope that it will not be passed.

[Lord Wigley]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, has certainly given us cause to consider this issue further. As I speak to my amendment, I will deal with some of the points that he raised. Amendment 22 standing in my name is grouped with Amendment 20 moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. As he said, my amendment has a similar purpose to his—namely, to ensure that those who legislate for the future of Wales and those who decide the priorities of public expenditure in our country should do so on the basis that they actually live in Wales, know the needs of our communities and genuinely represent the people among whom they reside. I would have thought that was a fairly fundamental principle. I go further and say that ideally each representative, both constituency Members and regional list AMs, should live within the area they represent. In that way, they know the feelings and priorities of their constituents, friends and neighbours and appreciate the tensions which sometimes arise. During the 27 years I represented Caernarfon, a fundamental element in the way in which I undertook the job was that I could feel I was part of the community. I realise that cannot always be achieved and that some people living a couple of miles outside the constituency may be fully integrated into the community they represent. I also realise that there will be times when boundary changes may work in a way that takes the home of a sitting AM or MP marginally outside the constituency in which they were previously living. These amendments do not address those circumstances. They arise from the incredible fact that there is an AM, as has been mentioned, elected to the Assembly by way of the regional lists, who not only did not live in the region when he stood for election, but did not even live in Wales. What is more, he has indicated that he has no intention of moving his main home to Wales. Frankly, that is appalling and should not be tolerated. If our country is good enough to give him a job and pay his salary and expenses, it is good enough for him to accept that he should live there in order to undertake the work. Nobody is forcing him to come to the Assembly. If he chooses to do so, conditions go with the job, and I believe this is one of them.

I have tabled a slightly different amendment from that of the noble Lord, Lord Hain, as I can see circumstances where his wording could cause difficulties. There has to be a date at which a residency requirement applies. It could be the date a candidate is selected to fight a constituency, the date of the election or the date on which the AM in question takes up his or her responsibilities. I personally believe that the date should be that on which the Member takes up the seat, and should be geared to the point at which he or she takes the oath of office, although the qualification date will need to be geared to some existing verifiable location and date—my amendment suggests the electoral register in force at that time—but I realise that that, too, has shortcomings. If the date is that on which the election is declared, in the circumstances of a by-election, candidates from outside the area would effectively be debarred. Applying the rolling electoral register could possibly overcome that. I am not sure how this might have worked in the Neath by-election in 1991, for example, in which the noble Lord, Lord Hain, was first elected.

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[Lord Murphy of Torfaen]

My Lords, I agreed to put my name to the amendment of my noble friend Lord Hain because it is both timely and relevant as the Wales Bill passes through this House. It is not all about Neil Hamilton but it is a bit about him in the sense that he is, as far as I am aware, the very first Member of the National Assembly for Wales who has not lived in Wales. Not only has he not lived in Wales but he lives a long way from Wales, and it highlights why we, as a Parliament, should address this issue—it is different from the franchise that we have known in our country for generations. We are talking about a country; we are not talking about a constituency. I think it is important that you live in your constituency but that is another issue; sometimes it is not practicable or reasonable to do so. However, we are talking about a country that now has a legislative Assembly which passes primary and secondary legislation for that country and which runs the country in many different ways.

The noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, asked, very relevantly, what happens if you live in a town or village bang on the border. Of course, the border between England and Wales is very different from, for example, the Northern Ireland and Ireland border and it is different from the Scottish/English border, which has lots of built-up areas on it. However, there is a big difference between being a few hundred yards away in Monmouth and being in Wiltshire, and that in a way—

[Lord Crickhowell]

I say straight away that I entirely agree with that. I am not arguing for someone who lives in Wiltshire; I am merely pleading the case for those who have worked all their life in a Welsh town but, because of the geography, perhaps live a couple of hundred yards outside the town.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen]

I think that can be addressed if, in dealing with this amendment, the Government look at what happens in local government. You can be a member of a local authority and live within, I think, three or four miles of the boundary of the local council, and I suppose that could happen with the Welsh situation. Thus, if you lived within a mile or two of the border but felt very much part of a town or village in Wales and you felt Welsh, the accident of the border could be overcome by applying local government laws to the Welsh Assembly.

I turn to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Norton, about the ability of electors to elect an individual to represent them in the Welsh Assembly. There is an awful lot of merit in that. People should be given that choice but, again, there is a difference. The only example of someone living in England and not in Wales is the UKIP leader in Wales. He was elected as a top-up Member. He does not represent an individual first past the post constituency; he is part of a top-up regional list.

The difference is that on that regional list, one generally elects the party and not the individual. When people voted as they did in that region in Wales, they voted for Mr Hamilton not as Mr Hamilton but for UKIP. Therefore, they did not really have a choice of saying, “I don’t want this person because he doesn’t live in Wales”. They did not get a choice in that. In one form or another, I represented people in Wales for 43 years. People then had the option of saying, “I don’t want him on the local authority or in Parliament”, because, perhaps, the candidate did not live in the constituency, ward or whatever. They had that chance, but they do not have that chance with regard to the top-up seats.