Wales Bill

Lord Elystan-Morgan Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2014 Lords Chamber

To deny fair votes to the people of Wales while allowing a proportional system to continue in both Scotland and Northern Ireland is illogical and perverse and would result in a Labour Government in Wales in perpetuity. To ensure the continuation of proportional results, Wales needs an Assembly election in 2016 in which 40 Members are elected in constituencies and a further 40 are elected on regional lists. Further, as the legislation to cut the number of Welsh MPs is enacted and takes effect from 2018, Wales needs a 100-Member Assembly elected by STV, so ensuring an even fairer proportional result in the Assembly elections of 2021.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)]

My Lords, I wish to speak to Amendment 6 only, which I believe to be a model of draftsmanship, put together in such a way as to bring about as wide and substantial a coalition in favour of a principle as one can imagine.

I believe with retrospect that there are two essential questions facing the House. First, do noble Lords in their heart of hearts believe for a moment that the Welsh Assembly can conduct its important duties, including scrutiny of legislation in particular, on a basis of 60 Members? Secondly, if noble Lords do not—and I suspect that practically every Member of the House can see the force of that point—what are we prepared to do about it? Those are two very simple but, I believe, crushingly relevant questions.

The facts have already been set out very clearly. Scotland has 129 Members; Northern Ireland has 108; Wales has 60. Of course, even more important than that is the fact that only 42 Members in Wales are available to scrutinise legislation. In the case of Scotland there are 113; in the case of Northern Ireland, I am not entirely sure whether it is 90 or 92—I think it may be 92. In the case of the House of Commons, it is 522. However, the issue is not really how many Members you have in relation to the population. There may well be a proper argument in that respect that is deployed later; that is not the issue at the moment. The issue is the minimum critical mass. If you fall below that and fail to constitute a critical mass, you are not a legislature; you are a mock parliament and no legislature at all.

That has to be remembered against this background. It is a single cameral House. I am not for a moment arguing that we should have a second House, which might be very interesting to dissertate on some day. Be that as it may, we have plenty to worry about at the moment in this regard. It is a single cameral House. The scrutiny of legislation in Wales occurs in the Assembly or does not occur at all. That is the point.

This House does its work magnificently as a scrutinising body. Sometimes, we are given more to scrutinise than we should be. I feel that the House of Commons sends huge pieces of undigested legislation through which almost makes a mockery of the constitutional situation, but that is another story altogether.

Again, one has to remember the point already made by one or two Members. When we think of a critical mass, we should think not just of a number but of whether that critical mass is there, in the main, in the Opposition. If it is not—even if you increase the membership to, say, 80 or 100—if you have a strong coalition between party A and party B that is responsible for, let us say, 70% of the membership, you still fail to have a critical mass where it counts.

We are not talking about mathematical representation; nor, with the greatest respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys—with whose address I wholeheartedly agree in the main—do I honestly believe that it is a matter of trade-off with local government or the House of Commons. If I remember rightly, the noble Baroness was not a Member of the House when this matter was discussed three or four years ago, when the proposal was carried to reduce the number of Welsh Members of Parliament from 40 to 30. I do not want to spoil the splendid feeling of unanimity that we have had up to now, at any rate on this issue, but the Liberal Democrats could have done better than they did on that occasion. We had a vote to give the Isle of Wight two seats. Not one member of the Liberal Democrats spoke on the issue of Wales. The real condemnation came not from the Opposition but from the noble Viscount, Lord Tenby, the grandson of David Lloyd George, who said, “My grandfather would not be turning over in his grave; he would have been in the Dwyfor by now”. That says everything.

The only other thing I have to say about that, which is on the face of it an attractive argument but possibly a dangerous course to take, is that in 1993 a proposal was before the House of Commons to reduce the number of seats in Wales—indeed, I think, over the whole country. The Home Secretary at the time was Mr Kenneth Clarke. He said, “No, as far as Wales is concerned, I am not having it. Wales is a land and nation with characteristics of its own and circumstances which are so special and so unique that I will make it an exception”. I do not believe that Wales is any less of an exception than it was in 1993.

The question then is: what should the number be? The Electoral Reform Society, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, has properly referred, has examined 42 countries which are comparable with Wales in various ways. It has come to the conclusion, taking all things into account, that the average number for such sub-parliaments as those countries have—perhaps I do them less than justice in calling them sub-parliaments, but that is the term used by the Electoral Reform Society—is about 100. It also concludes in relation to Wales that the ideal figure would be of the order of 100.

The noble Lord, Lord Richard, who has placed Wales eternally in his debt by his report of 2004, mentioned the fact that the committee animadverted on the question of whether the number should be 80 and said that it should, although it was not asked specifically to deal with the matter, nor did it deal with it scientifically or specifically. Nevertheless, it was a measured judgment. Now then: if it was 80 in 2004, bearing in mind the huge changes that have occurred since then, what would it be worth today? I hope that I do not take unfair advantage of the noble Lord, Lord Richard—I certainly would not wish to nor could I do that; he is well able to make his points for himself. If 80 was the genuine estimate that was appropriate in 2004, surely by today one should be speaking of 100.

I would speak myself of 120. Why? If you regard the curve of the development as a constitutional entity of the Welsh Assembly in the 15 or 16 years of its existence, one does not have to exercise a great deal of imagination to see where it might be in a few years’ time. The idea of aiming for 120 is not chimerical, irresponsible or populist—certainly not populist—in any way. It projects what one hopes and expects for in relation to Wales. I would be very surprised if the powers that have been given to Wales do not over the next few years amply justify that.

If we were holding this debate a month or two ago, I would still be making that point, but where do the promises and undertakings that have been showered on the people of Scotland, and the people of Wales and Northern Ireland, about devolution—those promises were falling like autumn leaves in Vallombrosa, as the quotation goes—bring us? If a quarter of what was promised solemnly will in fact be done, 120 could well be justified as the membership. However, it is not a question of numbers. It is more a question of prejudice: the vast storm of prejudice that anybody who argues for an increased number will have to face. That has to be done with courage and integrity. Edmund Burke famously said that for evil to triumph, it is necessary only for men of good will to do nothing. If you wish the Welsh Assembly to fail in its main purpose of being a legislature, all you have to do about the membership is nothing.

[Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, made his proposal for 120. I thought that one was reaching the point of, “Any advance on 80? Any advance on 100? Any advance on 120?”. Where does one stop?

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

I am deeply grateful to my friend for giving way. Perhaps I may make a point that I forgot to make. The real case for 120 is that it is very simple. It is exactly double the number now, and you can double both constituencies—the individual constituencies and the regional ones.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Randerson]

The noble Lord makes an excellent point and anticipates part of my speech. There is an issue of ensuring that if the Assembly is to have more Members, and that is to have broad public support, it needs to be done either when there is a reduction in the number of Welsh MPs, as was referred to earlier, or there is a reorganisation of local government in Wales, when I anticipate that there would be a reduction in the number of councillors.

In the mean time, there is an important public debate to be had and an argument to be made by civil society. I am aware that a large number of organisations within civil society in Wales share the views that noble Lords have expressed today. There is an engagement with politics that these things should be done by civil society in order to ensure that any arguments on them are put forward with force and relevance for the people of Wales.

I am grateful to the noble Lords whose amendments have enabled this debate. Amendments 6, 9 and 11, and Amendment 14 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, have formed a useful group and theme. Amendments 6 and 9 require the Secretary of State to introduce a Bill to increase the size of the Assembly to at least 80 Members—in the case of Amendment 6, from 2016. Amendment 9 provides that responsibility for deciding the number of Assembly Members should be devolved to the Assembly. Any subsequent change to the number of Members must be approved by a two-thirds majority.

We recognise in government the legitimate concerns about whether the Assembly has sufficient numbers to provide Ministers and the scrutiny that government through the committee system in the Assembly requires. This has been discussed since at least the time of the Richard commission and I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Richard, on this issue. More recently, the Silk commission recommended in its second report increasing the number of Assembly Members, although it did not go into the detail of suggesting a number.

[Lord Elystan-Morgan]

The Silk commission was not allowed to consider the matter. With rather restrained mischief it made the point that there should be an increase. It produced this memorable line, which introduces a point that has not been considered in this debate. It said: good scrutiny leads to good legislation and good legislation pays for itself.

[Baroness Randerson]

I think that it was not a case of the Silk commission not being allowed to consider the matter; the issue was that this was not within the specific remit of the commission. It was certainly something that it considered and discussed, and on which it made a recommendation.

While all of us here today seem to have an agreement that there is an issue to be considered, the First Minister confirmed in his evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee in the pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill that the Assembly could undoubtedly cope with all its new powers with the 60 Members. Reference has been made to the Presiding Officer’s views. I think that it would be useful if the Assembly itself considered this issue.