Wales Bill

Lord Howarth of Newport Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 15th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I have listened to so many speeches and suggestions on this Bill. Mine is a tiny contribution to that debate. I make even my tiny contribution with some perplexity; I find it difficult to consider, or to hear being considered, proposals that will have considerable costing elements to them while we are being told that a fiscal framework is being debated somewhere else. That makes the nature of the contributions that we make a little recondite. Nevertheless, we carry on.

I have read a few Bills since I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House and this one seems so extraordinary—a bit of a dog’s breakfast—with all these reserved powers, enumerated one after the other, 10 after 10 and almost 100 after 100, which makes us wonder whether there is any coherence at all at the heart of this Bill. Others will debate significant and large issues before we exhaust the consideration of these reserved powers. Mine is a very small issue, as I say, yet it will test the good will of the Government and allow us to test whether the Government are prepared to consider these issues at all. If they cannot for the issue that I shall present in a moment, I cannot see how they will begin to deal with some of the bigger things under discussion.

We recognise that gambling is a prevalent aspect of contemporary culture and takes many forms. There is no suggestion in this humble amendment of ours that we should take powers to the devolved Government stretching across all the complex picture that represents the gambling industry in this land of ours. But when I look at the Gambling Act 2005 to identify the major thrust that it seeks to put out by way of policy, I see that there are three points—and they are quickly enumerated. First, it mentions,

“preventing gambling from being a source of crime or disorder”.

There is no problem there. Secondly, it talks about,

“ensuring that gambling is conducted in a fair and open way”.

Again, surely that is not problematical for any of us. But it is the third,

“protecting children … from being harmed or exploited by gambling”,

that concerns me here.

The amendment relates to gaming machines. Of all the gambling opportunities available to people, threatening them and tempting them, gaming machines are the most obviously accessible forms of gambling and might be the most obvious temptation for children. That is where children might be most vulnerable; when they go into a premises either licensed or licensed for a different activity, but having machines within it, there might be a danger that we should seek to mitigate as far as possible.

The amendment does not seek even to control gaming machines of all descriptions. Some noble Lords will remember, from the debate in 2005, that there are four categories of gaming machine, ranging in financial levels at which gambling can take place from A to D. Here, we are referring to those where the maximum charge for use is more than £10, which is perhaps more than most children have as pocket money. However, we are not only concerned about children; we just cite them as being likely to be in the presence of these alluring machines as much as adults are. Why should this aspect of gambling not be controlled by the devolved Government of Wales, since it is so easy to identify where they are, recognising that the application for licensing premises to include and use them is a fairly mechanistic affair? There is nothing complicated here. Nor would this complicate any issues that would imperil a coherent policy across the United Kingdom. Scotland has such powers already; why not Wales?

For this humble part of the gambling industry, some sort of oversight might be devolved to the Welsh Government. In 2012, the Gambling Commission gave a lot of statistics about gambling, including some that one can extract as applying to Wales. It seems that billions of pounds are spent on gambling in Wales every year. I say “it seems” because there is no real, empirical evidence that we can tie down convincingly in a debate such as this. The Welsh Government have felt that there were other priorities than conducting statistical research in this area. However, anecdotally—and in my experience of visiting a number of communities across Wales where I hear people talk—this is a real social problem. Consequently, it seems logical to invoke the principal of subsidiarity so that control of this aspect of gambling should be as near to where the gambling takes place as one can conceive of. It is not rocket science: this is a fairly easy conclusion to reach. The problem is whether Her Majesty’s Government will be prepared to single this aspect out from the welter of other gambling activities that take place in order to allow it to be controlled elsewhere than here at Westminster.

I hope that the gentle way in which I have moved this amendment will be heard. Gentle though it is, it may be a test of the Government’s readiness to take into consideration activities which are part of the prevailing culture in Wales, where ordinary people involved in ordinary activity are sometimes easily taken out of their depth and run into danger. I beg to move.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

I support the amendment and, indeed, only wish that my noble friends had gone further and tabled an amendment that would have devolved legislative powers and policy-making on gambling in its entirety to Wales. Gambling is a social and moral issue and of its essence should be determined by the local community which is affected. Will the Minister say why it is the Government’s view that they must hug gaming machines to their bosom? Why are they not willing to allow the people of Wales their will, as expressed by their own Assembly in Cardiff, to go to perdition or to grace in the way of their own choosing?

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[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, in this group there are government amendments and non-government amendments. To try to ensure the proposers of the non-government amendments have an adequate opportunity to present their cases, I will try to extrapolate the two, although I appreciate that for Amendment 65 and government Amendment 65A it might be a little difficult as they are very much in the same territory. That apart, if I stray into non-government amendments, I would be grateful if noble Lords could gently tell me.

Government Amendment 53D modifies Section C14 of new Schedule 7A to set a more accurate devolution boundary relating to the Export Credits Guarantee Department, the ECGD. The department, acting as UK Export Finance, is the United Kingdom’s official export credit agency supporting United Kingdom exporters. Amendment 53D makes the ECGD a particular authority, thereby prohibiting the Assembly from legislating about it in any way. It replaces the existing wording, “subject-matter of” reservation, removing any uncertainty about how that reservation relates to the devolved matter of economic development, including providing advice and assistance to Welsh businesses. Its effect, therefore, is to allow the ECGD to continue to offer support, which we would all welcome.

On government Amendment 65A, the Government recognise that the Assembly has legislative competence over council tax reduction schemes. We accept that council tax reduction schemes are an integral part of the local government finance system, which is devolved. To that end, the Government have tabled Amendment 65A to remove the words,

“or liabilities for local taxes”,

from sub-paragraph (c) of the “social security schemes” definition under Section F1 of new Schedule 7A. This would remove any reference to local council tax and have the same effect as the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan.

We are content to devolve legislative competence to the Assembly as it is now an integral part of local government finance. I trust the amendment will satisfy the noble Baroness, but I look forward to hearing from her on that point.

[Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)]

It is a good thing that the Government have decided to devolve powers relating to council tax benefit, but are they also proposing to devolve the financial resources necessary to enable the National Assembly and, if the National Assembly chooses to do so, local authorities in Wales to exercise these powers usefully and constructively?

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[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 66A, 67A and 67C in my name. Amendment 66A refers to job searches and careers. Paragraph 141 of the new schedule relates to “job search and support” and,

“arrangements for assisting persons to select, train for, obtain and retain employment, and to obtain suitable employees”.

Careers services are an exception to this reservation, which are devolved to the Welsh Assembly.

The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of this House queried what this means and how it would work in practice. It asked:

“Does this mean that the Assembly will have power to legislate as regards the provision of a service to assist persons in choosing a career, but that service could not include helping persons find a job in their chosen career?”.

This is clearly nonsensical. The Minister is undoubtedly well aware of this criticism in the committee’s report, so I look forward to his clarification, but I point out to everyone that there has been a long-standing issue of lack of connectivity and co-operation between the Welsh Government’s services and the UK Government’s services on job search and benefits, and a confused situation is not in the interests of people searching for careers or jobs.

Amendment 67A leaves out reservation 161 on the safety of sports grounds. It seems that the safety of sports grounds is currently within the Assembly’s competence, so this is the Government reducing the competence of the Assembly in the Bill. Why are the Government doing this? What is the key strategic reason that the Government feel ensures that they have to keep the safety of sports grounds in Wales within their control? After all, sports issues are devolved and have been since 1999. Through the Sports Council, through local authorities and through lottery funding, over which the Welsh Government have considerable influence via the Sports Council for Wales, the Assembly and the Welsh Government can fund sports facilities, right up to the level of the Principality Stadium. However, they are apparently not now considered capable of dealing with safety at those grounds. Once again, there is a lack of thinking through here—after all, who are you co-operating with in dealing with safety issues? Obviously, with the police, but also with the local authority on issues such as road closures and other facilities for crowds at sports grounds.

Finally, Amendment 67C relates to adoption. Reservation 175 relates to parenthood, parental responsibility, child arrangements and adoption. There is a lack of clarity about what this means generally, but I am specifically concerned about adoption. This is clearly a reduction in the Assembly’s current legislative competence. Other than intercountry adoption, adoption services are currently entirely devolved. This includes the recruitment of adopters, their training, matching and post-adoption support. As written, the only function that the Assembly would retain on adoption would be in relation to adoption agencies. Why have the Government decided to reduce the Assembly’s powers in this field? It is a field where it is essential that the various agencies work really closely together and that there is a seamless service for adopted children and those who are adopting. It is important that those services—social services, local authorities, education and the health service—are overwhelmingly part of the devolved picture. Adoption goes along with that very clearly.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, this group of amendments gives the Minister the opportunity, if he chooses to take it, to explain to the Committee what consistent principles have animated the choice of reservations that the Government have made in drawing up this legislation. We have a ragbag of reservations—as has been noted in previous debates, some 200 different reservations across an extraordinarily diverse range of policy areas—and in this group of amendments we have dealt with a miscellany of topics, including council tax benefit, careers services, sports grounds, libraries and adoption. It may be difficult to achieve consistency of principle in considering such a range of topics.

As I mentioned in an earlier debate, the Welsh Affairs Select Committee recommended that as the Government came to draw up this legislation providing for further devolution to Wales and introduced the reserved powers model, guidance should be issued to Whitehall departments as to the principles they should adopt in deciding what powers they wished to reserve to the centre—to the Government of the United Kingdom —and what questions they should ask themselves as they were judging these matters. I know that the Minister always seeks to achieve the best devolution settlement that he can for Wales. He cares about good government in Wales. He is a good representative and champion of the people of Wales and he wishes to achieve a devolution settlement that is coherent, commands wide acceptance and will endure. But it is difficult to achieve that if there is, apparently, no basis of principle for the reservation of powers.

It would be helpful if the Minister could tell us something about the process that has been adopted by the Government, partly in consultation with the Government of Wales—but I am thinking particularly of the process of consultation within Whitehall—as they came to decide that these 200 or so different powers should be reserved. Why have they chosen them? Is there any consistent principle lying behind that choice? If not, why not? Of course, the pressures of pragmatism are always very strong and one respects and understands that, but it may also be that there has been, as has also been said before in our debates, something of a dog in the manger attitude at work—that departments have not thought through with any thoroughness or care what is appropriate to devolve and what is appropriate to reserve but rather have said, “I think we’ll hang on to this”; essentially, “What we have we hold”. It would be a shame if we were driven to conclude that that was the basis on which the reservations have been chosen by the Government.

I hope the Minister can tell us about the process and encourage us to think that this has been done on a considered and principled basis and, for that reason, that these are decisions that should be respected and will stand the test of time for good, practical reasons.

[Lord Hain (Lab)]

My Lords, in supporting the persuasive case made by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, I want to press the Minister on the question of job searches, which are automatically part of the careers service—careers being devolved, as has been mentioned. Has the Bill been drafted with a view to DWP questions, which of course are reserved? Jobcentres, in managing benefits, are also concerned with getting people into work and therefore job searching and providing skills and so on. Are the Government looking at this matter from a DWP and therefore a reserved perspective, but not taking account of the fact that careers are devolved and job searches are by definition part of a supportive, active, flexible careers service?

Perhaps the Minister could clarify this when he responds. If the DWP dimension is the reason that this is not being devolved in the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, has argued should be the case, will he look at it again to see whether it is possible to reconfigure this part of the Bill?

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[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness in those comments; the amendment is in my name as well. I should declare an interest as someone who has solar panels on their roof and has therefore benefited from policy on renewable heat incentive schemes. That illustrates how locally we are talking now; we are at the other end of the scale from the previous debate, when we were wondering whether 350 megawatts was the right level for strategic national developments. We are now looking at schemes that are very local indeed.

I am particularly concerned that the reservation on heating and cooling has suddenly popped up. It was not in the draft Bill, so perhaps the Minister will explain why the Government have suddenly become concerned about such developments. My experience of combined heat and cooling networks as defined in the interpretation in Section D5 of the new schedule relates to the Llanedeyrn district heating system in Cardiff, which existed back in the 1960s. It was not terribly effective, being a pioneering system. People were either boiling hot or freezing cold because it was not sensitive to flexibility. It was therefore abandoned and the boiler house in which it was based was turned into a very useful community centre. That system was installed on what was then the council estate of Llanedeyrn at the initiative of the local council, which is where such a power should lie. It is very much a local thing.

On incentive schemes for renewable heat and for energy conservation, the policy has diverged within the UK between Scotland, Wales and England, and will continue to do so even more than now. Renewable heat incentive schemes and the encouragement of energy conservation are appropriate for local action and local schemes, because when they work best they engage the local community. It is difficult for large-scale, national schemes to appeal to and work effectively within local communities. In the USA, such incentives are provided at local council level. However, because in the UK we do not normally do these things at local council level, the Scottish Government have had a different policy. My reading of the outcome of that is that they have made significant progress, particularly in engaging communities to work effectively together on such schemes. I urge the Minister in his usual understanding manner to agree to look again at this aspect of the Bill.

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, the Government’s contention that energy policy-making powers, even on such intrinsically local issues as heating and cooling and energy conservation, should be reserved to the Government of the United Kingdom, because they are essential to our country having a national energy strategy, would be the more impressive if our country had a national energy strategy, but the truth of the matter is, notwithstanding the no doubt valiant efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, when he was a Minister at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, we do not have a national energy policy.

Since 2010, energy policy has consisted of prolonged dithering in the face of major decisions that it was necessary to take, particularly on nuclear power, and on the creation of incentives for renewables, which were then removed as the Government did a complete volte-face in their attitude to green issues and green values. The consequence is that we now have unaffordable energy prices, a dangerous dependence on energy imports from politically unreliable parts of the world and energy insecurity. If the Government of the United Kingdom have proved themselves incapable of developing and maintaining an energy policy for England and Wales together, why will they not at least allow the Government of Wales to develop and maintain an energy policy for Wales?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who participated in the debates on heat and cooling and on energy conservation. Amendment 56 seeks to remove the reservation that deals with the supply of heat and cooling. It is important to be clear that the reservation is concerned with policy on heat supply, which is analogous to the supply of every other type of energy. Heat is strategically significant and represents almost half of our energy use and around one-third of carbon emissions. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, that the Government have a very definitive energy policy—not just when I was Minister, I hasten to add—very much signing up to the climate change targets internationally, along with many other countries, as he will know; a commitment to nuclear, which I do not think is shared, certainly, by his party leader; and a commitment to diverse sources of energy. Let us put that canard to rest: there is a very definitive energy policy.

The policy in relation to heat is significant. Heat represents, as I say, almost half our energy use and around one-third of carbon emissions. The reason that we are seeking to reserve this is because it is a relatively new technology; it is about supplying heat, through policies such as the renewable heat incentive, the heat networks investment project, the combined heat and power quality assurance scheme and innovation support, and through initiatives such as the smart systems and heat programme, all of which are part of the United Kingdom’s energy policy. I accept that rollout and delivery will always be at a local authority level, but it is question of how the framework is set. These policies already exist and benefit the people of both Wales and England. It seems clear that devolving this area would increase costs, due to a loss of economies of scale, and would add complexity and confusion for businesses and householders and add to bills. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, touched on affordability, which is certainly a prime concern of the Government, along with security of supply and ensuring that energy is green.

Heat is not simply a local issue. There are strategic decisions to be taken over the coming years, including options that would require action at a national level, such as decarbonisation, possibly even decommissioning, of the existing gas grid. These emerging national-level heat issues mean that it would be far more effective to maintain consistency between England and Wales, and it is why grid and infrastructure issues relating to oil, gas and electricity are also reserved in Scotland as well as in Wales. I hope I have explained the Government’s reasons for this reservation and why I am not able to accept the amendment.

Amendment 57 seeks to remove the reservation that deals with energy-efficiency requirements. The reservation uses the term “energy conservation” to reflect the language in the existing devolution settlement. It is our contention that energy efficiency is a subset of energy conservation. I will write to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely, with some of the technical detail on that, if it would be helpful. The settlement provides for the Assembly and Welsh Government to have powers on energy efficiency, except via the use of regulation or prohibition. It is not as if there is no power in relation to energy-efficiency; it is just in relation to regulation or prohibition. For example, it would allow schemes to advertise energy-efficiency measures—I think that is probably something the Welsh Government already do, although I stand to be corrected on this.

The reservation in this amendment, however, covers home and business energy-efficiency measures that are imposed by regulation, and so have been implemented by, or under, legislation or equivalents, such as licence conditions imposed on gas and electricity suppliers. Having separate energy-efficiency obligations for England and Wales would be likely to increase the complexity and costs for organisations involved in delivering the obligations, with an impact on consumer bills. That is something the Government cannot sanction and, on that basis, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.