Devolution (Constitution Committee Reports)

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Monday 9th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, there are four Welsh men and women in this Chamber this evening. We are a band quite unique, bearing in mind that within the hour Wales and Ireland will be playing each other at soccer. That is another story but what it tells us is how important this debate is to those of us who are from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland or indeed, as my noble friend Lord Desai said, England.

It has been an interesting debate. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Lang and Lord Jay, on their speeches and on their committees’ reports. They are excellent; they outline the issues in front of us vividly and cogently. There is no doubt that the implications of Brexit for the devolved nations of our country are considerable, economically, politically and constitutionally. In Wales, for example, it is hugely significant economically: 70% of Wales’s manufacturing exports goes to the EU. On the question of agriculture, sheep farmers and hill farmers in Wales depend heavily upon the EU. Wales, as opposed to other parts of the UK, is a net beneficiary of EU funding. So to Wales this is an important issue.

A few weeks ago in this Chamber we discussed how important Brexit is to Northern Ireland. It was a very good debate. The problem, of course, is that there is no Executive, Parliament, Assembly or Government in Northern Ireland to deal with Brexit but, as that debate indicated, it is uniquely affected. The uniqueness of the land border is still an unresolved issue, as are the implications of leaving Europe for the Good Friday agreement and the peace process, which were helped by our common membership, with the Republic of Ireland, of the EU. I congratulate the Minister on making his maiden speech later today and welcome him to this Chamber, and I ask him to take back to his colleagues the plea—certainly from these Benches but I am sure from all Benches in the House—that those negotiations be speeded up. So long as there is no Executive or Assembly in Northern Ireland, the voice of Northern Ireland is not directly heard in the negotiations in Brussels.

Another issue touched on by many noble Lords is that the devolution settlement, not just with Northern Ireland but with Wales and Scotland, could itself be undermined unless we handle these negotiations properly, understanding that they can in fact directly affect the relationship between the UK Government on the one hand and the devolved Administrations on the other. The repatriation of powers is crucial to that.

Perhaps the Minister can enlighten us, but an issue that has been largely ignored is that we are still unaware whether the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and, hopefully—if it is there—the Northern Ireland Assembly can refuse to pass legislative consent Motions. Even if eventually that does not matter, in the initial stages it would seriously hold up the negotiations.

I want to concentrate my remarks on the relationships, which all the reports touch on, between the UK Government and the devolved Administrations, first with regard to the issue of Brexit. We have said that there is no Northern Ireland Executive to deal with the issue, but a Joint Ministerial Committee (EU Negotiations) has been set up. It is a good idea but does not seem to be doing an awful lot at the moment. The Constitution Committee’s recommendations—for example, on ensuring that there are pre-meetings between the various devolved Administrations and the Government on the work programme, on ensuring there is a link with the proper negotiations in Brussels, and on the timeliness of the JMC (EN)—would make it much more effective. At the moment I fear that it is nothing more than a talking shop, but it needs to be a committee with real powers and real teeth. That would be very important to the EU negotiations.

Happily, the Constitution Committee also talked about the importance of looking at the wider field of relationships between the devolved Administrations and the UK Government. Much has been said about the phrase “devolve and forget”. It is an absolutely apt phrase. I spent 10 years of my ministerial life dealing with territorial departments and their relationships with the UK Government. There is no doubt in my mind that Whitehall and Westminster generally did not take the devolved Administrations all that seriously after devolution; as my noble friend Lord Wigley said, if we think about what is happening in Spain and Catalonia at the moment, we know we do that at our peril. I am convinced that the Catalonia/Spain crisis could have been assuaged if there had been negotiation, debate and discussions between the central Government and the devolved Government to avoid what is happening there now and what is likely to happen in the days ahead.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, about the Government’s response to the Constitution Committee on the work of the JMC. It was pretty hopeless, to be honest—a load of bureaucratic waffle. All the committee’s suggestions on how to improve the workings of the JMC were ignored, but the Government did not give any reason for doing so. For example, the Government do not agree that the JMC should be put on a statutory footing. Why not? What is the problem with that? It would make it more effective and give it more teeth, which would be very useful. Not a word—they just did not agree with it, end of story. That is because they do not think enough about it or take it seriously enough.

What about the question of a Cabinet Minister responsible for devolution? “There’s no point in having one. We’ll have a junior Minister in the Cabinet Office dealing with that”. When I was Secretary of State for Wales on the second occasion, I was charged by Gordon Brown with the responsibility generally for devolution and the working of the JMC. So I suppose you can blame part of the problem on me in those years, but at least we tried. It meant that I went to Edinburgh and Belfast; even though my responsibilities were technically Welsh ones, I had the general responsibility of ensuring that these institutions at least met and had some meaning. So I think there should be a Cabinet Minister. It could be one of the three territorial Ministers, as it was in my case, or it could conceivably be the Lord Chancellor, as it sometimes was, but there should be a serious attempt by the Government to ensure that proper Cabinet ministerial responsibility is held on these issues, together with a Cabinet committee.

There should be an annual report to Parliament—in the House of Commons it should be delivered by the Prime Minister; here, by the Leader of the House of Lords—on the relationship between the devolved Administrations and the UK Government. We simply do not take this seriously enough and, I repeat, we do so at our peril.

It is not just about the current situation; it is about the exchange of best practice. If Scotland are looking after the health service in a certain way which is good, why cannot the health services in Northern Ireland, Wales and England benefit from that experience? Why cannot there be sub-committees of the joint ministerial committees which meet bilaterally on different issues? This really has not been thought about enough. I hope that one result of this deliberation and debate is that the Government will at least consider improving the way we structure our relationships governmentally in this country.

There is another organisation, of course. The British-Irish Council was set up by the Good Friday agreement to deal with the so-called strand 3 of the agreement: east-west relations. It is the only one that allows the British and Irish Governments to get together. Its counterpart, the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, which meets this weekend in Liverpool, is the only body that brings together parliamentarians from across these islands. Why cannot that be used to consider best practice and improve relations?

More than 10 million people live under the devolved Administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Frankly, they deserve better, and perhaps the Minister can give us some hope that, in the weeks and months ahead, we can improve the situation—not least because of what is happening with Brexit.