Government of Wales (Devolved Powers) Bill [HL]

Lord Empey Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 28th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

My Lords, I think that I am the only non-Welsh Peer speaking in this debate, although I have Welsh antecedents on both sides of my family and am very proud of them.

It is important that Peers from throughout the United Kingdom participate in these debates, because my anxiety is that we have a patchwork quilt constitution. Devolution is not consistent throughout the United Kingdom. We need a look at our entire constitutional arrangements, including this House and other relationships. I hope that will be how things happen.

“Devolution” of course means what it says; powers are transferred to what is termed a lower level. But what is given can be taken away, and I understand that principle very clearly. As to the point about the Sewel convention and people legislating over the head of the Welsh Senedd, we have spent many hours in this House in the last two years legislating for matters that are devolved in Northern Ireland, even when it was clear that a majority of elected Members there opposed the legislation that was being dealt with in this House and by this Parliament. So there is no consistency in the way that we look on devolution. The Sewel convention is meaningless as far as we are concerned, and that requires a large look at by a proper constitutional review.

We have an attitude of “devolve and forget”. We give powers to these institutions, then Whitehall forgets about it. That has been a consistent problem since 1921, when we first had devolution. It was pushed to a desk at the back of the Home Office and forgotten about. Had this Parliament and Whitehall been watching things and participating properly, we could have avoided a lot of the trouble that we ended up in during the 1970s and 1980s and so forth.

I understand where the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, is coming from, but, rather than have bits and pieces of legislation bolted on, there must be an attitude, a change of mind, in Whitehall, as has been referred to. People need to take devolution seriously. If you do not like it, get rid of it; but if you do devolve, you must respect what you devolve, and that is a missing link. There is a lot of work to do in Whitehall to get the mindset right. I have seen it with my own eyes over the years. There is no institutional memory left about how these devolution settlements first arose. There is just a churn over of officials and Ministers, and nobody seems to have a thread of where we are going and where we have come from.

I cannot avoid the opportunity to make some comments on what has happened in the last few days back home, because it has a lesson for all of us. We are now confronted with an election that nobody wants and that will not achieve anything. Sadly, over the last few months, His Majesty’s Government have not convened any all-party talks and, from February until a fortnight ago, made no attempt at any negotiations with the European Union. Even then, our politicians, who have a role in administering this, were excluded. That is another example. You cannot have such negotiations over people’s heads and exclude them.

I appeal to the Minister to pass on to her colleagues that, instead of wasting millions of pounds coming up to Christmas, in the short term, the Secretary of State, the Government and the Prime Minister should convene talks with the parties and bring those parties into the negotiations with the European Union. We know roughly where the settlement is. We have ideas out there and, instead of punishing the people of Northern Ireland in the middle of the worst crisis that we have ever had, time and money would be better spent holding those discussions. Only negotiations will settle this. Everybody in this Chamber knows that and we should get on with it now. I appeal to the Minister to pass that on to her colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office. That is how we can avoid the crisis—because coming back afterwards, we will have one awful mess, and former Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland in this Chamber know that only two well.