Wales: Silk Report

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

My Lords, I join the tributes so genuinely and deservedly paid to our late friend Wyn Roberts. I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth. How sweet the name of Aberystwyth sounds when it is not in the context of disaster from the sea. I am very grateful to him for having raised this matter.

The Silk commission was asked to report on two matters, as we remember. The first was the fiscal elements and how they could be reviewed and improved upon. The second was on non-fiscal matters and how greater powers could be deployed to the Welsh Assembly. It puzzled me, and still puzzles me, why they were in that order. Surely the first thing to do is to decide what functions a Government have and the second is how they pay for those functions. Be that as it may.

Perhaps I may digress for a few moments and speak not of Silk 1 but of Silk 2. In so doing, I project my remarks to the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, who, I know, will assiduously and religiously report on these matters to his colleagues in Silk. First, what is in a name? The answer is: a great deal when you are dealing with constitutional status. It may very well be that the term “Assembly” was in no way inappropriate when that body was set up in 1998, but nowadays I think that it is a misnomer. Following the referendum of 2011, we are three-quarters of the way to being a full home-rule Parliament. I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, that the residium may very well keep us back from that full status in the field of fiscal responsibility, but that is another matter. Certainly, by now it would be right and proper for Wales, as a legislating body, to have a parliament in exactly the same way as Scotland has.

Secondly, the challenges facing that body are immense. I believe and am confident that in Cardiff Bay there are people of spirit, ability, vision and determination, but it will be a very difficult task for that body within a few short years—that is all that it has—to build up the expertise that this House has had in the review and survey of legislation over many centuries. It will not be done overnight. It also means building up a cadre of civil servants with the expertise and, indeed, the distinguished qualifications for such a massive task.

However, above all there is the question of Members. We have 60 Members. The Richard report, which after all did not envisage a body as authoritative as this, talked of something much more modest and recommended 80. It seems that the minimum that we can do with is something of the order of 100. Let us call it 120 as that makes it very simple—it exactly doubles the representation in each constituency. One can argue as to which should be first past the post and how others should be elected, but that is not the issue for the moment. Without that, there is no possibility at all of development for the Welsh body in Cardiff Bay. If you want it to fail, all you have to do is nothing.

The third matter is one that I and many of us here have raised at various times—that is, the bulk transfer of authority to Wales, subject to specific exceptions, in the same way as is the case with Northern Ireland and Scotland. A Welsh lawyer, be he a solicitor or a barrister, has to chase through a labyrinth of hundreds of small matters to find out exactly what has or has not been transferred. In order to save Welsh lawyers from constitutional neurosis, there is an overwhelming case for such a transfer.

Lastly is the question of income tax variation. I respectfully disagree, not for the first time and no doubt in life, with the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. If the Welsh people opt for these powers, with Barnett in its unreconstructed form we will be doing our nation a very great disservice. Why is that? At the moment, we lose something of the order of £350 million to £400 million each year on the Barnett formula. That is accepted. Nobody will stand up and say that it must be justified and kept. Mrs Gillan, our Secretary of State, said its time was up and everybody agrees, yet Her Majesty’s Government, twin-headed as they are, said, “We know that you are being cheated out of these monies year in and year out, but we are perfectly content to maintain that system”. That is entirely wrong. Therefore, Barnett has to be put right before we can contemplate a referendum.