Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Welsh Forms) Order 2021

Lord Wigley Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC) [V]]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, on his maiden speech. I am sorry not to have been in the Chamber to enjoy it. I particularly welcome his warm words towards the Welsh language.

My contribution will be short, not least because some of the points have already been covered by the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Thomas of Gresford. As Plaid Cymru currently has two of Wales’s four police commissioners, I have a great interest in these matters.

I have two questions. The first is about the formulation of the Welsh language version. Can the Minister confirm that the wording which appears in the order has been run past precisely the same team as advised the Welsh Parliament on linguistic matters? From his introductory comments, I assume that this is the case, but I should be grateful for confirmation. I ask with a view to ensuring consistency in the usage of language—in particular, the treatment of gender. As colleagues may know—and some noble Lords participating today certainly do know—the Welsh language has gender-related nouns. Mutation is affected by the gender. In these days when we try to avoid unnecessary gender implications in texts which may relate to both males and females, we need to be particularly careful about this in the Welsh language formulation. My nose twitched in a couple of places in the text, but I shall be happy if those more academically knowledgeable than me on linguistic matters have given their blessing to the wording before us today.

Secondly, the Minister will be aware that elections to the Welsh Parliament will probably take place on the same day as the election of the police commissioners. Those parliamentary elections—and their regulations—are devolved to the Welsh Government and Parliament. The provisions made by the order to help certain groups cast their vote for police commissioners by means other than attending the voting booth may be different to the provisions made by the Welsh Parliament for its electoral purposes. With the two elections taking place on the same day, this could—at the very least—be confusing. How much co-ordination has there been between Westminster and Cardiff Bay to ensure that the two approaches are at least consistent, mutually compatible and not contradictory? I should appreciate the Minister’s response to both these points.