Wales Bill

Simon Hart Excerpts

Monday 31st March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hain]

Yes, indeed. That is my exact point. I am not making a politically partisan point; I am making a democratic point. The practice clouded political accountability and denied voters their right to reject a particular candidate at the ballot box. A change made by the Government of Wales Act 2006 requiring candidates to choose whether to stand for a constituency or on the regional list put the voters back in charge. It cannot be right for losers to become winners through the back door, despite having been rejected by voters. That is an abuse of democracy.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Surely the rejection is of the party in question. The system is there to get a little bit of equality across the parties. It is not about the individuals.

[Mr Hain]

That intervention interests me. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that whoever stands for whichever party, even if they are deeply opposed by the particular constituents whom they seek to represent, cannot be challenged because they are standing on a party label?

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

I welcome the Bill, which contains much that will benefit the residents of west Wales in particular. The more I listened to the speeches today, especially from the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain), the more I came to the conclusion that we must be doing the right thing, given the level of opposition that he expressed.

I probably have more in common with my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), the Chairman of the Select Committee, than I should perhaps readily and publicly admit. That is because I am not an anti-devolutionist but I am a reluctant devolutionist. I am pragmatic about it and I accept that we are where we are. I am reluctant because, in the time that I have lived in and represented my area, I have never had a business—small, medium or anything in between—come and tell me about the need for further devolution or for further powers to be devolved to Cardiff. In many cases, I have been on the end of contrary suggestions. Very few people say that the one thing standing between them and sustainability and profitability is more politicians, more devolution and more of the confusion that can sometimes result.

Nor have I heard from many members of the public about the need for further devolution. I suppose that that is a contradictory comment, because when put to the test in a referendum the result is somewhat different, but not many people talk to me about the need to devolve the criminal justice system, the police or other such matters. I therefore come at the issue from a very schizophrenic position, knowing that we are where we are—as the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) has just said.

My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth and I come into step on the danger of mission creep. I do not always admit to sharing the views of the former Prime Minister Mr Blair, but I will on this occasion, because he said:

“I was never a passionate devolutionist. It is a dangerous game to play. You can never be sure when Nationalist sentiment ends and separatist sentiment begins.”

That was not entirely different from what Donald Dewar had said at the time that the Scottish Parliament was set up. He very explicitly said that he saw it as the end of the debate about independence—but a few short years later we are on the eve of a referendum on Scottish independence. That troubles me because—as other hon. Members have said—we appear to be travelling in one direction only, towards independence in all but name. The Bill is a chance to put all that to bed. It strikes the correct balance between practical considerations and ideological objectives. Above all, it is a Bill that has the voter, the ratepayer and the business man and woman in mind, rather than the ambitions of politicians, either here or in Cardiff.

I want to touch on one and a half issues—both constitutional—and I shall be as brief as I can, because the afternoon seems to be dragging on into the night. The first issue is fixed-term Parliaments. When I was on the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, we looked at this in some detail, and there was very little objection to the notion of fixed-term Parliaments. They were felt to have the potential to reduce uncertainty and instability, to give a clear timetable for the next election, and to provide more effective forecasting and the ability to prioritise more effectively. All of that is a given. There was not quite so much consensus on whether the term should be four years or five. The general view is that we are one of a relative minority of countries across the globe that have opted for five years. Nobody considers it to be much of a problem except when a collision of dates occurs, perhaps between elections to this Parliament and to the Welsh Assembly. Even then, the Electoral Reform Society was not particularly alarmed by the fact that the public may have to make a choice between candidates in Cardiff and candidates in Westminster. I agree: plenty of evidence suggests that people are capable of making an informed and intelligent decision in two simultaneous elections.

I am concerned that if boundaries were to change as a result of future legislation, asking people to vote for candidates on different boundaries might cause confusion, and we would need to guard against that. People ask how likely that is to happen, and it is probably some way off, but there is a more immediate problem. If there were to be—God forbid—a yes vote for Scottish independence in September, the whole basis of our future government could be affected by people who will spend only a few months in this House. The question is—and I suspect that Plaid Cymru Members will sympathise, and perhaps even Members from other parties—whether we could legitimately have an election in May 2015, the outcome of which was decided by people who would not be in this House for very many weeks thereafter. That is an argument—I put it no more strongly than that—for deferring the general election until after those matters have been resolved, which would then bring us into collision with the Welsh Assembly elections, now set for May 2016. Although I do not have too much of a problem with a dual election, we need to consider that that might be an inevitable outcome of a result in favour of independence—albeit unlikely—in Scotland later this year.

I do not intend to say much about double-jobbing, although it is an area of the Bill that I was concerned about until I heard the speech by the right hon. Member for Neath, who compelled us to accept his arguments even though they were at odds with the independent evidence available. As I result, I came to the view that I must be wrong and the Bill must be right. It is a bit rich—and I would say this if the right hon. Gentleman were in his place—for a former Secretary of State, who was partially responsible for the legislation and the problems that he highlighted, to go against the only authoritative independent evidence that is available to us from the Electoral Reform Society and the Electoral Commission. To suggest that they are wrong and he is right is taking the House for fools, so I am completely confident that the inclusion of double-jobbing in the Bill is the right approach.

I shall conclude, as I know that other hon. Members wish to round off the evening with a flourish. The tax position is more an area of expertise for my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) than it is for me, but the situation is confused, and it would be further confused if we were to expand—perhaps post boundary reviews and all the elections we have mentioned, and taking into account the evidence provided to the Select Committee on our various visits around the country—the number of Members of the Welsh Assembly. It is an extraordinary suggestion that the Assembly in its current form does not contain sufficient expertise to deal with tax-varying powers, if that is what the Welsh nation wishes. Yet academic after academic, witness after witness, has come to us over the last few months suggesting that that is an inevitable consequence of the passage of the proposal. I think that would cause considerable concern in the minds of the business and voting community in Wales. It would be poor timing to suggest that what Wales needed was more politicians rather than fewer. There are cost and electoral implications and all sorts of economic and social considerations. I very much hope that the Secretary of State or the Minister can reassure us that such an outlandish and inappropriate proposal will not come into effect during our lifetime.

[Mr David Jones]

rose—

[Simon Hart]

I was going to finish on that point, but I will take an intervention.

[Mr Jones]

Before my hon. Friend resumes his perch, he will recall that the First Minister indicated that he felt that the Assembly as currently constituted, with 60 Members, could cope comfortably with new powers.

[Simon Hart]

I thank the Secretary of State for his intervention. The First Minister did, and a number of other canny politicians in the Welsh Assembly also came to that conclusion, but the academic and independent evidence tended to point in a different direction. We used the expression “direction of travel” earlier and there seemed to be a slightly surprising thirst for a larger institution in Cardiff than I was comfortable with. I think the First Minister was just guarding against an unhelpful headline in the Western Mail and was being über-cautious, whereas his academic colleagues who gave evidence to the Committee were a little more forthright.