Devolved Administrations: 20th Anniversary

Debate between Lord Wigley and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond. I am in a unique position in this Chamber tonight—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

As always.

[Lord Wigley]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for his constructive comments.

I am unique in that I am the only Member who has been a Member of both Chambers here and of the National Assembly for Wales. I immediately acknowledge that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, can boast the same in relation to Scotland. There are three Members in their places who were elected to the National Assembly for Wales on that day in May 1999: the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, who has already spoken, and who played a distinguished part as a Minister in Cardiff Bay and in this place, and the noble Lord, Lord Bourne. I, too, want to put on record our thanks for the way he steered and led the Conservative Party in Wales to take a positive attitude towards devolution, which was still in some doubt 20 years ago, but now is fairly clear-cut. I also thank him for his kind words today. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Hain, not only for his words today but for the decisive role he played in 2006 in steering the Government of Wales Bill to the statute book and for persuading the Cabinet to find time for it. That is not perhaps totally appreciated.

I served as leader of the Opposition during that first year of devolution. At one point during the election count, I thought, with some trepidation, that I was heading to be First Minister, but when the final count was complete, although Plaid Cymru had 30% of the vote and 17 seats—a commendable achievement—it was not quite enough to form a Government. In fact, all five Administrations in the National Assembly have been Labour-led, and that is one of the problems of which Welsh voters have become aware. For any democratic system of government to work, it is essential for voters to feel that they can change the political complexion of the Administration. After 20 years, with some of the same Ministers in post in Cardiff Bay today as served in 1999, this is becoming a problem not just for Wales, which needs to feel that we have meaningful democracy, but, I suggest, equally for Labour. It might need a period in opposition to renew itself, to hone fresh policies and to bring in fresh blood.

However, some things have changed. The Assembly elected under the provisions of the Government of Wales Act 1998 was in many ways little more than a glorified county council. It had no primary law-making powers or tax-varying powers, or even control over all aspects of its own Administration. That most inane term—the Welsh Assembly Government—was devised, but it has now, rightly, long since been jettisoned into the dustbin of history.

Much has now changed. The National Assembly now has primary law-making powers over devolved matters. It also has the recently transferred tax-varying powers, and we wait to see the creative way in which these might be used. It is worth noting that, unlike the 1997 referendum, when the vote was very narrow, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, mentioned a moment ago, in the 2011 referendum there was a landslide in favour of enhanced powers for the National Assembly, reflecting the extent to which the devolved system of government has been accepted by Welsh voters.

Successive opinion polls show that fewer than 20% of the voters would now opt to abolish the Assembly, and when they are asked whether they really want to revert to being governed by a Secretary of State like Mr Redwood, that figure rapidly shrinks. Of course, the Assembly has made mistakes over the years, one such being the disbanding of the Welsh Development Agency, which undertook excellent work. The noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, who was in his place a moment ago, played a vital part in the development of the WDA’s work.

Of course people are critical, but nothing like as critical as they currently are of Westminster. That, no doubt, is the background to the independence rally, which attracted thousands of people to Cardiff earlier this month. The demand for independence is not as great in Wales as it clearly is in Scotland, but it is increasing, and the Brexit debacle is undoubtedly a driving force for many people to look afresh at the independence question. If a hard Brexit comes about, the present trickle could well become a surge, and if Scotland becomes independent and Ireland is quite possibly reunited, leaving Wales as a very junior partner in a rump UK, the demand for independence in Wales will also rapidly grow. The prospect of a hard Brexit and an isolationist UK is a major driving force in that direction.

As the powers of the National Assembly have increased, the pressure on the 60-Member Chamber has become ever more acute. The need to scrutinise primary legislation, the need to hold the Executive more rigorously to account, and the need to engage with the implications of the new post-Brexit order, about which we heard a few moments ago, mean that a 60-Member Assembly is just too small. It compares with, I think, 108 Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly and 129 Members of the Scottish Parliament. The National Assembly is smaller than some county councils. Its needs to be increased for the next election to between 80 and 90 Members, who, to my mind, should be elected by the STV system of proportional representation. The additional list system currently used is seriously defective. It provides two classes of Member—one with intense constituency work and the other without the necessary focus that serving a constituency rightly imposes on AMs, as it does on MPs.

Fortunately, the design of the Senedd Chamber provides for such an increase at little cost. Incidentally, it is worth reminding the House that the cost of the Wales Senedd building—at around £60 million—compares rather favourably with that of the new Scottish Parliament building, but I will not follow that any further. In considering such electoral reform, I suggest that the Assembly would do well to enable young people aged 16 and 17 to become participant members of Welsh democracy.

Whatever criticism we might have of the Welsh Government in policy terms, they have overall been generally prudent in their use of resources, and, incredibly, were punished by the Westminster Government for being so. A decade ago, the Labour-Plaid coalition Government rightly decided to aggregate moneys which at the year end, for whatever reason, were not spent and to pool them into a fund for capital projects. The first such fund of some £400 million was used to invest in hospital and school buildings; the second fund, when it had reached some £300 million, was appropriated by the Treasury under the Conservative Government. That, frankly, was an absolute disgrace. What a way to reward financial probity.

While in theory the new constitutional settlement under which the National Assembly works, with a reserved power model replacing the conferred power model of the 1998 Act, is much more acceptable, as has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords, in practice the extent of exceptions and split authority renders it open to the same criticisms of opaqueness and uncertainty as was previously the case. You go around the square but in the opposite direction and sometimes arrive at the same point.

We get the impression in Wales that civil servants in Whitehall are still reluctant to recognise that in most devolved matters there should be a clean break to facilitate clear lines of responsibility and answerability. Within the framework of a British state, which may or may not survive, there is a clear logic in having a federal model, with the clear-cut delineation of responsibility that that implies. This will become even more pressing if we leave the European Union, and powers—for example, over the UK single market or state aid—currently exercised in Brussels will in practice thereafter be centralised in London. That, frankly, is just not acceptable. It is as though EU responsibilities for the single market were put exclusively into the hands of Germany. Unless Westminster wakes up to this danger, it will become another driving force towards the break-up of Britain as we know it.

We need such a level playing field for a purpose: to trigger self-regenerative and sustainable economic growth in Wales that can at long last raise average incomes in Wales to an acceptable level. This has been one of the greatest disappointments of the economic failure of successive Governments both in Cardiff and in London. The ONS figures published today for gross disposable household income per head show that Wales is at the bottom of the UK table, both of nations and of regions. Our figure of under £16,000 per head compares with London standing at over £27,000 per head—an astounding 77% higher.

That is the pattern that we suffered before devolution and it persists. We desperately need a change of Government in Cardiff Bay to deliver economic regeneration for our country. In securing this, we need to see not just worthy plans, blueprints and initiatives, which the Assembly would be very good at; we need to ensure that these are turned into reality, which is sometimes more of a challenge.

Then there is the issue of which government functions are devolved and which, within the framework of the current devolution settlement, are best undertaken on a UK basis. This matter was addressed a few years ago by the Silk commission, of which the noble Lord, Lord Bourne, was a distinguished member. The commission recommended the devolution of police responsibilities to the National Assembly, and it did so after considering compelling reasons, including the fact that many responsibilities which impact on police work, such as highways, social work, community cohesion, mental health and local government, are all already devolved. Police and home affairs are devolved to Scotland and Northern Ireland, and I ask the Minister, in responding, to give some commitment that the Government might look again at this matter.

Finally, perhaps I may address an issue that is a challenge to the National Assembly: the erosion over the past 20 years of the media in Wales, as indeed elsewhere. The financial pressure on newspapers has led to a staggering reduction in the coverage of political and civic matters, and now we have the centralisation of commercial radio, with implicit uniformity of news coverage and the elimination of proper reporting of the National Assembly’s work. The result is that the voting public are just not given in-depth analysis of the decisions and debates undertaken in the Assembly. Consequently, it is hardly surprising that turnout in elections has steadily reduced. This has to be addressed for the sake of effective democratic government.

The real test of the devolved system of government in Wales will come at the next election, when, for the first time since those heady days of 1999, there is a real possibility of the National Assembly not being governed by a Labour-led regime. Plaid Cymru and its new leader, Adam Price, in forming such a Government, will play a responsible part in improving the government of Wales within the present settlement, while of course seeking greater powers for the Assembly and seeking to retain Wales’s essential links with Europe, which are so vital for our manufacturing and farming sectors, as well as for our cultural identity. This will inevitably lead to greater independence, but that should not frighten the citizens of our fellow nations in the UK. It is a matter of taking responsibility, and of mutual respect. It is a journey that we have already started, and it will go just as far and as fast as the people of Wales wish. It will be completed when we reach a stable, ongoing, harmonious relationship with our British neighbours and with the nations of the European mainland to which we belong.

Wales could do so much more to help itself, given a stable union of European nations within which to grow and flourish; given the powers to do everything we can to help ourselves; and given an appropriate voice within wider contexts, where decisions are taken further afield that influence our well-being and prospects. The step taken 20 years ago was in the right direction, but we have so much more to do. My party looks to an opportunity at the next election to lead Wales towards the self-fulfilment that is within our reach and thereby to contribute to our continent and to a wider world.

Constitutional Convention

Debate between Lord Wigley and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Thursday 13th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

For once, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, for intervening because he has reminded me of that, and we should keep reminding the people of Scotland that it was the SNP that helped to bring down Jim Callaghan’s Government and gave us Margaret Thatcher and a Tory Government for nearly 18 years.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

Not in Wales.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Where was I? As a result, nothing was done by that Government and some of us felt that the opportunity had been lost. However, after some reflection, the campaign was revived and, although unfortunately we were not able to persuade the Thatcher Government to act, we came up with a very novel idea, which will be the central part of my argument today. It was that the Labour Opposition should take the initiative in setting up a convention.

Therefore, Labour, with the support of the Liberal Democrats, I am glad to say, along with the Greens and the Communist Party, set up the unique Scottish Constitutional Convention, consisting of all Scottish MPs, Peers and party and union representatives, as well as the Churches—one of the Church representatives, Canon Kenyon Wright, chaired the executive of the constitutional convention—and representatives from all civil society. The purpose was to devise a plan for a Scottish Parliament. In spite of subsequent claims to the contrary, neither the SNP nor the Tory party supported the convention officially, although, to their credit, individual Tories and nationalists did.

The report of that convention became the blueprint for the Scottish Parliament—almost every detail in the report was incorporated into the Bill for setting it up—and it enabled the Labour Government elected in 1997 speedily to introduce legislation to do so. It showed what can be done if all sections of society come together early on. Rather than legislation starting from a blank sheet of paper once a Government were elected, we had that blueprint.

That Scottish Parliament, as we know, has now been operating for nearly 20 years. Together with the subsequent Welsh Assembly and the revival of the Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont, despite its recent suspension, it has given substantial, though variable, administrative and legislation devolution—perhaps best described as asymmetric devolution—to those three parts of the United Kingdom. But, as the House of Lords Constitution Committee rightly and wisely reported in 2016, that leaves England,

“the largest, most powerful nation in the UK … without separate recognition and … representation”.


It has also produced some anomalies. The late Tam Dalyell—although an opponent of devolution, he was my friend—used to argue that, as a Westminster MP, he was able to vote on education in Blackburn, Lancashire, but not in Blackburn, West Lothian, which he represented. It was useful for two towns to have the same name for him to make that comparison. That anomaly became known as the West Lothian question.

As we know, David Cameron tried to deal with the legislative democratic deficit faced by England with the unfortunately titled English votes for English laws, or EVEL—that is E-V-E-L, or maybe not—which has restricted non-English MPs from voting on purely English Bills at certain stages. However, a recent report from Queen Mary University concludes that it has not answered the West Lothian question decisively. It has instead opened up a series of new and equally intractable questions. It has been a damp squib at best, but is perhaps better described as a spectacular failure.

Only the kind of coherent and comprehensive devolution I am arguing for can resolve it. That brings me to administrative devolution, where—as my noble friend Lady Quin reminded me just yesterday—the English regions feel as alienated from Whitehall as Scotland did and does. Here there has been what might be called an à la carte menu—more like a dog’s breakfast—of different schemes with catchy titles such as northern powerhouse, metro mayors, city deals and Midlands engine. All this has resulted in a piecemeal pattern, with most of the powers still residing in Whitehall. For example, the northern powerhouse—as we heard earlier at Question Time, the mayor of Liverpool has resigned from it in protest—was described by the Institute for Public Policy Research last week as,

“a top-down agenda dominated by central government”.

Of course, much of rural England is outside this network and feels increasingly left behind. The disparity in fiscal devolution is reflected by the control of revenue. The Scottish Parliament now controls 43% of tax revenues, Wales 21% and Northern Ireland 14%, while English local authorities trail behind, collecting only 9% of their revenue.

The challenge is how to produce a more coherent and comprehensive, but not necessarily uniform—that is an important qualification—system of devolution for the whole of the United Kingdom, which addresses the English democratic deficit. Some argue in favour of an English parliament, which may be attractive for legislation but does not deal with the demand for administrative decentralisation to the regions. Various attempts to start regional devolution in England—including my noble friend Lord Prescott’s plan, which died with the failed referendum in the north-east of England—have perished because Whitehall departments clung on to the real powers. They kept the real powers and would not allow them to go to the proposed regions. Nor, of course, does that deal with legislation.

The clue to solving this conundrum lies in looking at the example of the Scottish Constitutional Convention I described earlier, which is why I strongly support setting up a UK constitutional convention to come forward with a coherent and comprehensive plan. It could advise on how decision-making can best be devolved administratively and legislatively, where appropriate, throughout England as well as the rest of the United Kingdom.

The Labour Party is committed to setting up such a convention, but only when elected, and the Liberal Democrats support such a convention to move towards a federal or quasi-federal UK. Robert Hazell of the Constitution Unit supports a similar convention to build cross-party consensus, and advocates a high level of public engagement, which I hope we can all agree is essential. Others involved in this issue, including the Constitution Society, argue for and support the idea of a constitutional convention.

Such a structure could enable those of us—I know it is not all of us—who seek reform of the second Chamber to replace the House of Lords with an indirectly elected senate of the nations and regions. It would have some democratic legitimacy, but would not challenge the primacy of the directly elected House of Commons.

I am glad that we have one of the more flexible and powerful Ministers answering the debate today—flattery will get me everywhere, I hope, but it is true. I hope he will agree to look at setting up such a convention. I know he cannot give us an immediate answer but I hope he will take it to his colleagues. However, if the present Government refuse to set up a convention, I do not see why it cannot be done now by Labour and the other opposition parties, working together with Churches and civil society, as we did in Scotland. I have suggested this to my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition on two or three occasions now. That way, we would have a blueprint ready to implement when we return to power—as inevitably we will. It was done by an enlightened Scottish Labour Party in the 1990s. Where Scotland led, surely the UK can follow.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Wigley and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Committee: 9th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Hear, hear.

[Lord Wigley]

Indeed—the very point that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was making earlier; I agree. Given the current role of EU law regulating action in all parts of the UK in such subjects, partly to facilitate a single market with a level playing field—the point that the noble Lord was making—and partly to ensure that in matters which by their nature cannot be constrained by political borders, there is a coherent common approach. I accept this. Indeed, last week I proposed an amendment to provide a framework agreement for environmental policy—which, quite amazingly, the Government rejected. However, if there are to be such frameworks, the devolved Administrations and the devolved legislatures, whose legislative competence is being constrained by such frameworks, must surely agree the proposed steps jointly with the UK Government. I have tabled an amendment to an amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, providing a mechanism to this end. That will be debated later so I will not anticipate that debate now.

Let us be clear: unless there is agreement between Westminster and the devolved Governments on these matters, the continuity Bill will be enacted by the Assembly and will take precedence in Wales. Surely it is time for the UK Government to reconsider what is seen as an obdurate stance and agree a sensible, balanced and respectful way forward.