Wales Bill

Lord Elis-Thomas Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elis-Thomas (PC)]

My Lords, I did not realise that this would be merely a double act, so I hope I shall say a few things that will excite other people to take part in the debate.

Amendment 3 in this group, which stands in my name as well as that of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, gives the Government another simple option, which is within the existing structure of the Government of Wales Act 2006, in the relevant clause, Clause 108, and the relevant schedule, Schedule 7. This is not the place for me to discourse at any length on the convoluted—or “crablike”, as it was called by the Electoral Reform Society Wales—forward movement of devolution in Wales. The noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, was part of all this and knows it as well as I do. However, it may be an opportunity to remind the House how far we have come in so short a time.

We moved from an executive Assembly, which was in essence a corporate body and therefore a type of local government structure, established at a time when local government was already moving to a cabinet and a scrutiny system. In effect it was the 1978 Act, taken off the shelf of the library of the old Wales Office, dusted down and put forward as a new Bill. I will not say who told me that; it would not be fair to him, because he is now a distinguished retired public lawyer in Wales—I have just given away his identity.

The effect of that was that we were set on a development that was unworkable. The first important and essential act of the Members of the Assembly, when they arrived there in 1999, was to take over the function of debate for themselves. The key outcome, early on in 2000, was a resolution passed by the Members of the Assembly to seek the maximum possible powers within the Act: the maximum possible opportunity to act as a parliamentary-type body.

The first First Minister was called the First Secretary, but when the right honourable Rhodri Morgan came to power, by a change of leadership within the Labour Party and a vote of the Assembly—it is still a matter of dispute; I recollect very clearly what happened, but I will not bore noble Lords with my version—he decided to call himself First Minister. He also decided to call his colleagues in the Cabinet not Cabinet Secretaries but Ministers and to call the Government—previously, we did not really have a Government, although there was a Cabinet—the Welsh Assembly Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Morgan of Ely]

The noble Lord makes valid points about clarity about where the powers are and the fact that information to the public is crucial so that they understand who is responsible for what. There is still a degree of confusion about this and we need to think it through in a very clear way if we are looking at a much more structured response to the devolution settlement within the United Kingdom as a whole.

I now turn to Plaid Cymru’s amendment to link the reserved powers to an immediate transfer of the recommendations of Silk 2. It is worth emphasising that the whole Labour Party feels quite positive about the vast majority of the recommendations contained in Silk 2. The case for further devolution of power has been well made by the commission. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, for his work on that commission and welcome him to the Front Bench. We are delighted to see him there. It is important that people understand that the Welsh Government have also responded positively to the recommendations.

With this amendment, Plaid has gone further than Silk in recommending, for example, the wholesale transfer of power over broadcasting, as was suggested, and energy, where the recommendations by Silk are far more nuanced. We are anxious to support many of the recommendations in Silk 2, but we feel that it would be more appropriate for us to include those recommendations within an election manifesto so that we can have the endorsement of the general public for this additional significant transfer of powers.

On Plaid Cymru’s Amendment 3, I do not blame them for attempting this power grab—that is what you would expect of nationalists—but to remove all current exceptions to current permitted areas of the Assembly would entail a huge extra amount of responsibility and the duplication of roles that are better shared at UK level. It would seem rather unnecessary that in the field of agriculture, where Wales already has legislative competence, we should establish our own legislation on, for example, scientific or other experimental procedures in relation to animals. Do we really want to establish our own agricultural import and export rules? Imagine the bureaucracy that that would entail. For every job that we would have to create to make that work, we would have to cut one from our health or education services or from another area that currently receives funding. We understand what the amendment is trying to do but think that it is going a bit too far.

[Lord Elis-Thomas]

This is about competence. It is the ability to do things, were one wanting to do them in that way. In the United Kingdom, we already have institutions, such as the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, which are virtually federal and in which powers and responsibilities are shared between Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This is not about, of necessity, compelling the Welsh Government or the National Assembly to accept the competence; it is the indication, especially after the Supreme Court ruling of July, that the competence of the National Assembly in the current model is based on those definitions, made by subject in Schedule 7 of the 2006 Act, with exceptions. By deleting exceptions, I sought to highlight the nature of the competence and the possibility of using the reduction of exceptions as a way of translating further powers.

[Baroness Morgan of Ely]

I understand what the noble Lord is saying. The problem is probably that we need a much more detailed discussion about what those exemptions should be and to what extent they should or should not be duplicated. If this is a probing amendment, that is fine—we understand that that is the case. But taking this big step at the moment would be wrong.

Finally, I ask the Minister why an amendment on reserve powers has not been submitted if the Government have changed their position. Why cannot we now get on with the job? We know that there is cross-party consensus on this; let us not waste any more time.