Welsh Assembly Legislation (Attorney-General)

Debate between Oliver Heald and Huw Irranca-Davies

Tuesday 15th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) not only on introducing the debate and on his excellent peroration on the stymieing of legislation and policy in Wales by the current Westminster Government, but on expounding on the narrative history of the Chartists and why it is relevant. I can only share his disappointment that we have so little time to debate this—we could go overnight, but, in compliance with the wishes of right hon. and hon. Members, we will try to avoid that situation.

The legislative competence order process was a previous mechanism for producing legislation in Wales. It was slightly cumbersome and convoluted, and required a great deal of detailed scrutiny in Parliament. However, it passed some cognisance of the growing authority of the Welsh Government. LCOs were much criticised at the time—rightly, in some ways, because they caused delay and were complex, even for the very good officials in the Wales Office in London and in Cardiff, and for Welsh Government officials, who worked through the minutiae. The intention—to afford proper scrutiny in Parliament and ensure that the Welsh Government could introduce their own measures under the process within their clearly devolved responsibilities and so on—was good. Yes, it caused delays, but there was a good spirit. We managed to pass LCOs into legislation, even after good scrutiny in Parliament by the Welsh Affairs Committee and others. There was never any intention to hold things up unduly.

The purpose was the growing relationship under the LCO system between the right scrutiny of this place at that time and the right role of the Welsh people, through their elected officials in the Welsh Assembly and the Welsh Government, to introduce appropriate measures from Wales. As my hon. Friend pointed out, that was not without its difficulties. It could sometimes be tortuous—even the now legendary red meat LCO took a little time to get on to the books, and that was one of the more straightforward orders—but we got there eventually. On all occasions, the intention of my right hon. Friends the Members for Neath (Mr Hain) and for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) was for their officials to work with officials in the Welsh Government and the Welsh Assembly to try to progress the measures through the LCO mechanism, which was imperfect but was what we had at the time.

What has followed, with the will of the Welsh people, is ostensibly an attempt to streamline the process to give clarity on where devolved responsibilities lie, and to allow the Welsh Government, the Welsh people and Welsh civic society to get on with passing their own laws—whether we, on both sides of the House, might agree or disagree with them ideologically—to define their own democratic path. As we have heard, it has not quite gone that way. For those on the Opposition Benches it feels like there has been by the current Secretary of State for Wales—I do not blame the Solicitor-General for looking quizzical—a maybe inadvertent but deliberate attempt to hold up, to challenge, to rebuke the Welsh people for being so impertinent as to actually bring forward their own legislation.

[The Solicitor-General]

I am surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman suggest that LCOs are better than the current system, whereby the National Assembly for Wales has primary powers in 20 areas. What is more, most of the Bills are going through without any difficulty. There have been difficulties with two, but the idea that we should go back to LCOs is wrong.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I could not agree with the hon. and learned Gentleman more. Perhaps I should clarify what I was saying: LCOs were clearly imperfect, but the new system is meant to be better. Even with the LCO paraphernalia—it was difficult and cumbersome—attempts were made within the constitutional arrangement, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen has made clear, to work through those difficulties. If necessary, and as a last resort, they would be escalated up the constitutional food chain for resolution at a higher level, but there was certainly not the seemingly macho political posturing of taking it outside of this place without recourse to internal mechanisms and straight to the Supreme Court. I can see only one possible justification for that: to prove some sort of point and say to the people of Wales and the democratically elected representatives in Wales, “Know your place.”