Wales Bill

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Monday 24th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak in support of Amendments 1 and 2, which I and my colleagues have signed. I want to pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister and her officials for the patience, persistence and professional care with which they have managed to perfect these proposals after so much discussion and improvement in meetings since I first raised the issue at an early stage of our consideration of the Bill. I am confident that we are now well on our way towards this timely reform. I cannot believe that anyone in the other place, or indeed anywhere else, will stand in its way. It would surely be a brave reactionary—even a foolhardy one—who would now claim that Welsh young people are less mature, well informed and well intentioned than their Scottish counterparts.

I have heard mutters that this is the thin end of the wedge. That is not so. The wedge was firmly implanted by the record number of 16 and 17 year-olds who not only registered to vote in their thousands, but then on 18 September ignored the blandishments of the separatists and voted to stay in the United Kingdom. We should recall that all UK parties endorsed the Edinburgh agreement which introduced this simple reform. I observed during the Report stage of this Bill:

“It would surely be constitutionally improper, in what has now been reinforced as a United Kingdom, to differentiate between the basic civic rights and duties of citizens here, simply on their area of residence. If, as I believe, the franchise is the foundation stone of our representative democracy, discrimination on that basis must surely be totally unacceptable”.—[Official Report, 11/11/14; col. 158.]

As my noble friend said, it will now be for the Welsh Assembly to complete the process. I am sure that this will prove uncontroversial since a substantial majority of Assembly Members have already declared their support. In the debate of 24 September, to which my noble friend referred, the Conservative spokesperson, Andrew Davies AM, said that:

“My group has a free vote on this particular issue, because there is no party line on whether there should be votes for 16 and 17-year-olds”.

Julie Morgan AM from the Labour Party said that it was encouraging and quite inspiring to see 16 and 17 year-olds involved in the Scottish referendum. The debate was led by my Liberal Democrat colleagues in the Assembly, who committed themselves there and subsequently, but perhaps even more significant was that the Minister, Jane Hutt AM, said that,

“we support the lowering of the voting age to 16”.

The outcome of that debate, held just two months ago and just after the Scottish vote, was 41 to 11 in favour of this reform. It is now surely unthinkable that any future referendum with equally long-term implications for the country and its citizens could be permitted to lapse back into the pre-2014 limited franchise. Whether that is on UK membership of the EU or any similar major decision, these young people have now earned the right to have their say.

This is a triumph for those who have worked so hard for so long to achieve this reform. The recent Youth Select Committee deserves special mention for its authoritative report, published just a few days ago, which carefully weighs the arguments. But the final and conclusive credit must go to the 110,000 young people in Scotland who showed by their actions that they were ready to take on this responsibility as fully adult citizens of the United Kingdom. I am delighted to support my noble friend.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I am delighted to support the amendment as far as it goes. Of course we had amendments on Report that went a little further and would have dealt with voting for young people aged 16 and 17 in other referenda and in elections within Wales itself. I realise that as far as the Bill is concerned, the peg for this change is the fact that income tax is included in it. My colleague and noble friend Lord Elis-Thomas and I would like to have seen a more general approach by giving powers to the Assembly in the generality in order to address issues such as this. The fact that it does not go as far as we would have liked does not mean that we do not support it in going this far.

I was very conscious of the tone set by the Secretary of State, Stephen Crabb, as background to today’s debate. Only last Monday, addressing the Institute of Welsh Affairs, he said:

“We now have a unique opportunity to reshape the future of our Union. The appetite for change is there. People want a stronger voice over their own affairs. It is unmistakable in Scotland … And palpable in Wales. And it is a sentiment that cannot, and will not, be ignored. And I am determined that Wales should not play second fiddle in the current debate on devolution”.

That is very interesting, in the context of the amendments before us today, but it begs the question of how much further—and when—the rest of that commitment is going to be borne out.

We are very much aware that we expect to have the report of the Smith commission on Scotland tomorrow and, no doubt, this will have a relevance to these things. In relation to this amendment, however, can I take it that the Government would be minded to enable the Assembly to use similar powers in any further referendum which was only in a Welsh context? Does the fact that the provision goes only as far as income tax indicate—or not—that the Government do not foresee any further referendum in Wales in the context of further devolution and that that will be undertaken as quickly as possible, without being held up by the need for a referendum?

[Lord Crickhowell (Con)]

My Lords, I think I avoided being placed among the die-hards by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, when I spoke on the subject on Report, because I said that I was still open-minded and prepared to be persuaded about the desirability of moving the voting age to 16. However, I did express anxiety about the idea that we should do this step by step, nation by nation, area by area. I would have preferred to see us having all-party discussions and taking a decision on the issue so that it applied to all votes, whether national ones or partial votes of this kind. I regret that we are moving in this ad hoc way because it is not the best way of undertaking constitutional reform. However, my noble friend has put forward these amendments and I am not going to oppose them. My successor as Member of Parliament for Pembrokeshire, or Pembroke South—my former constituency has been split in two and I always forget what it is called now—is Secretary of State. He has made firm commitments and I am delighted that he has taken such a strong position on these matters.

I will raise only two questions today. I am not going to challenge the decisions that have been taken, even if I would have preferred that we had got there by a somewhat different route. Many noble Lords will have received a note from the Electoral Commission which raises two issues. It points out that there are time constraints for introducing any change:

“In order to give Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) sufficient time to identify and encourage eligible 16- and 17-year olds to register to vote ahead of any future referendum in Wales, any primary legislation would need to be in place and amended regulations would need to be clear early in the calendar year before the referendum is expected to take place (e.g. by early 2015 if a referendum were planned to take place in 2016)”.

Later, it draws attention to the resource implications by stating:

“EROs would require additional resources to identify and encourage eligible 16- and 17-year olds in Wales to register to vote, including raising awareness of how to register to vote for this new group of eligible electors. The Commission may also seek further resources as part of our public awareness activity before any referendum”.

All I am asking is that, in the context of these amendments, we should be given the Government’s thinking about these issues and their reaction to the recommendations and report of the Electoral Commission. It seems to me that before we approve the way forward, we should know exactly what the position is going to be on the matter of resources and timing.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I shall respond briefly to the salient points that have been made in this, our last debate. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, referred to the words of the Prime Minister. Perhaps I may point out to him the solid steps that have been taken since 19 September. The Cabinet Committee has been established under the chairmanship of William Hague. The Secretary of State is of course a member of that committee and, indeed, I attend as well when Wales is being discussed. I would also point to the establishment of cross-party discussions here in Westminster. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State will also be in discussions with the leaders of the Assembly groups. We have made the announcement which has been referred to on numerous occasions in our debates of the date of 1 March, St David’s Day, by when we expect to have resolved the issues to a sufficient extent to be able to produce a reserved powers framework for future legislation in respect of Wales. That will deal with the proposals for additional powers in Silk 2, in so far as there is cross-party agreement relating to the size of the Assembly. Silk 2 was accepted by the Deputy Prime Minister in his role of leader of his party. The long-standing devolution credentials of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, are well known and respected by this House. The recent Supreme Court judgment has made it imperative that the issue of the reserved powers model is dealt with.

[Lord Wigley]

The noble Baroness touched on Silk 2 and the fact that, in Wales, we had a remarkable cross-party agreement in the Silk commission to deliver it. A lot of parties compromised to reach that agreement. Can we be assured that there will not now be further compromise? The compromise has already taken place, the Government have a unanimous report and Wales expects it to be enacted.

[Baroness Randerson]

It does not, of course, lie in my hands whether there is compromise. It is an issue for the four parties within Wales. I strongly agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, who has made clear that the devolution debate has changed. It has gathered force and moved on since Silk 2 was published. I join the noble Lord, Lord Elis-Thomas, in being delighted at the end of the concept of WAG. I always regarded this as an unfortunate acronym of the Welsh Assembly Government. My noble friend Lord Thomas made the very important point that the Bill is just a step. I say to noble Lords who make me feel like a newcomer that I have only been campaigning for devolution in Wales since 1979.