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6.45 pm
Mr. Ron Davies (Caerphilly): You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will have gathered from the flavour of this brief debate the strength of feeling on the Opposition Benches.
I welcome the speech of the Leader of the House, which I thought was conciliatory. As I am sure my hon. Friends will have noted, his approach contrasts sharply with that of the Secretary of State for Wales.
It is clear that all the parties are unhappy with the way in which the business motion has been brought before the House. Even at this late stage, I ask either the Secretary of State or the Leader of the House to say whether the Government are prepared to allow the Welsh Grand Committee to consider the Standing Orders that will govern its own proceedings. That is hardly a revolutionary request. All we are asking is that the Committee be allowed to consider the Standing Orders that will apply to its own proceedings. Will either of the right hon. Gentlemen respond to that point now?
Mr. Newton:
I had intended to respond when the hon. Gentleman had concluded his remarks. Indeed, I have one or two other things to say. In view of what I believe to be the desirability of the changes and the fairly lengthy period during which there was a good deal of consultation, I think that it is right to expect the House to proceed with this business tonight and put the changes in place. While I accept that hon. Members want to go further, the changes are an improvement in the Welsh Grand Committee and will offer opportunities and advantages to the people of Wales and those who represent them.
Mr. Davies:
In effect, the right hon. Gentleman is saying that he will not allow the Welsh Grand Committee to consider its own Standing Orders. I hope that he will reflect on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), that there are 38 Welsh Members of Parliament, 32 of whom want the opportunity to discuss the Standing Orders in the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman is refusing to allow us to do that.
Mr. Newton:
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his courtesy in allowing me to intervene again briefly.One important point that is relevant to this line of argument is that these are not the Standing Orders of the Welsh Grand Committee; they are the Standing Orders of the House governing the arrangements for the Welsh Grand Committee. That is why the matter must necessarily be decided by the House and why it is appropriate that it should be debated by the House.
Mr. Davies:
The right hon. Gentleman has repeated the error made by the Secretary of State when I wrote to him on the matter some time ago. I fully understand, as do all my hon. Friends, that the Government are not prepared to allow the Welsh Grand Committee to resolve these matters. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, these are Standing Orders of the House. What we want is the opportunity to debate them in the Welsh Grand Committee. Obviously, at the end of the day they have to be approved by the House, but why on earth are the Government so set in their determination to prevent us from even discussing those matters in the Welsh Grand Committee? That is the question that I put to the Secretary of State and to the Leader of the House, but I have not yet had a satisfactory answer.
The business motion restricts our opportunity to have a proper examination of the proposed amendments to the Standing Orders. Will the Leader of the House tell us why he is so anxious to restrict debate and to prevent us from even discussing the Standing Orders in the Welsh Grand Committee? Will he answer that specific question? Why cannot we even discuss the proposed changes in the Welsh Grand Committee?
Mr. Newton:
Rather than allowing the debate to become a question-and-answer session, it would be more appropriate for me to make further remarks in my winding-up speech in a moment or two.
Mr. Davies:
This is a question-and-question session, not a question-and-answer session. We are putting questions to the Leader of the House and we are not getting answers. If he is not prepared to give us an answer or to say, even at this late stage, that the Government will relent and will allow the Welsh Grand Committee to consider those matters, why on earth does he not at least give us a reason? What is so wrong about us being able to debate those matters? We have not had a satisfactory answer on that point.
We are angry about the business motion for this reason. Although the debate on the Standing Orders would have been allowed to run its full course in the Welsh Grand Committee, on the Floor of the House, it will be restricted by the business motion.
Mr. Jon Owen Jones:
Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that the Leader of the House gave one answer to explain why he did not wish the debate to take place in the Welsh Grand Committee? He said that he thought that it would delay proceedings and that he wanted to move on. Is not the truth that if the Secretary of State had acceded to the wishes of the parliamentary group, so that we could have debated the matter in the Welsh Grand Committee, it would have been dealt with by now and the changes in the Standing Orders would already have been delivered? It is not we but the Government who are delaying the procedures.
Mr. Davies:
My hon. Friend understands the usual channels in a way to which I could not possibly aspire. However, I recall a meeting of the Welsh Grand Committee in Cardiff in 1993, when we urged the Government to accept the changes.
I contrast the procedures that we are being invited to follow, by means of the business motion, with the procedures that were followed when the Welsh Grand Committee was established. My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands), who spoke earlier, is an historian of great note. He drew my attention to the proceedings of the Select Committee on Procedure, which met in July 1958, when the Welsh Grand Committee was established. Our debate later will concern amendments to those Standing Orders. I refer to three brief points of note.
First, the Committee received evidence from Mr. Ness Edwards, who recommended the establishment of aWelsh Grand Committee--[Hon. Members: "Who?"] Hon. Members ask who he was. He was a former Member of Parliament for Caerphilly; he was my predecessor but two. He was a man of great distinction and I think that it
is necessary that I, as one of his successors, should try to take forward the advantages that he brought to us as Welsh citizens. It was his submission to the Procedure Committee that established the Welsh Grand Committee as we know it now.
Secondly, it is interesting to look at the Committee's proceedings. The Welsh Grand Committee was established by means of a detailed cross-party examination of the submissions. The business motion tonight will prevent Welsh Members and the Procedure Committee from undertaking that detailed, cross-party examination of the procedures of the Welsh Grand Committee, although that is just the sort of examination that is necessary to create a consensus. If the Leader of the House has a moment or two to spare from his onerous tasks, he will do well to read the proceedings of the Procedure Committee in 1958.
Thirdly, the Welsh Grand Committee was established before the office of Secretary of State for Wales. Since 1964, under Conservative and Labour Governments, there has been enormous administrative devolution and the Welsh Office has grown beyond all recognition. Surely, if there was a case in 1958 for a properly structured Welsh Grand Committee, there is an even stronger case in 1996 for a proper Welsh Grand Committee to examine matters relating to Wales and to monitor the procedures of the Welsh Office.
We oppose the business motion because, despite the assertion made by the Leader of the House, the change to the Standing Orders has not been the subject of proper consultation. I do not know what the Leader of the House means by consultation, but I know what I mean. I believe that consultation means that people, in good faith, make proposals for change, that those proposals are discussed and that when it is possible, on the basis of that discussion, agreement is reached. We have not had such consultation.
I do not know what the Leader of the House has been told by the Secretary of State for Wales. I can assure him that 32 Welsh Members have had no meaningful consultation on the proposed changes. I hope that the Leader of the House now fully understands that there is no agreement on the matter between Welsh Members and the Secretary of State. The wishes of the majority of Welsh Members have been ignored so far. If the business motion is accepted, they will be prevented from expressing their views later this evening.
Some of my hon. Friends have already referred to the Welsh parliamentary party. We met on 20 February, and I hope that the Leader of the House can offer an explanation for what occurred. By all accounts, it was a very cordial meeting, apart from the fact that the Government Whip was excluded from the proceedings because he had not sought an invitation. It was a matter of great embarrassment to him, but it gave great merriment to the rest of us. The meeting then proceeded in a cordial and good-natured way. At the end, as the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) pointed out, the Secretary of State left the room saying, "Yes, I shall consider the matter. I hope that if any of you have further submissions to make, you will make them and I shall give the matter further consideration."
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