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Mr. Nick Ainger (Pembroke): The right hon. Gentleman has just told us that the amendments contain the seeds of destruction for the Labour party in Wales.In that case, why on earth does he not support them?
Sir Wyn Roberts: It may well happen after my time.It is a fair warning to the Labour party. Yes, the Labour party has a strong, monopolistic position in Wales, but it must be very careful about how it uses its position. It is already refusing to share any power with the minority parties. The hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) talked about the meeting of the all-Wales party, but he and I know that that was preceded by a meeting of the Labour party caucus and that everything was decided in advance. The Labour party must not abuse its strength in Wales.
Mr. Ron Davies: We should get the whole story on the record. The right hon. Gentleman was present at that meeting, and he voted with the majority, so he was certainly party to that decision.
Sir Wyn Roberts: I did not vote with the majority;I was one of two who objected. May I also make the point that I made proposals to my right hon. Friend the
Secretary of State at that meeting--for example, that the Welsh Grand Committee might discuss some of the consultative documents that the Welsh Office issues. I did not expect him to change the Standing Orders in any way, but I am sure that he cherished the thought that I gave him because I saw him make a note of it, and I am sure that it will be valued for the future.
Mr. Ted Rowlands (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney): In his curious and convoluted way, the right hon. Member for Conwy (Sir W. Roberts) made a bit of an admission. The Leader of the House has also been surprisingly coy about the situation. The fact is that these proposals are meant to be the Government's defence, when the time comes, against a Welsh Assembly. I do not understand why they are so coy and so unwilling to admit it.
Quite a bit of the speech made by the right hon. Member for Conwy represented the beginning of the argument that we shall hear in coming months that the proposals are the alternative, in the Government's eyes, to the Welsh Assembly. Because of that, perhaps I have cast a much more critical eye over the proposals than have some of the hon. Members who have spoken in this debate. I am critical of the context in which they have been presented, because they are meant to act as a substitute or an alternative for the devolution proposals that the Labour party will put before the electorate.
Any student of the creation of institutions in Wales in the past 60 years will recognise the operation of the same ploy. A common characteristic of almost every debate on Welsh institutional change that has occurred in the past 60 years is that the establishment--usually a mixture of Whitehall officials and Ministers--offers substitutes for the demands made by the Welsh people and by Welsh representatives.
I shall give the right hon. Gentleman two very brief historic examples of that. In 1944--believe it or not--towards the end of the war, the Welsh parliamentary party, which was chaired by a Conservative Member, submitted to Ministers and to Prime Minister Churchill a proposal that there should be a Secretary of State for Wales and a Welsh Office to promote the reconstruction and regeneration of Welsh political, social and economic life after the war. The reaction of the Government and the establishment to the proposal was interesting and a classic of its kind. They felt that they had to give something towards meeting the demand, which was unanimously made by all hon. Members in the Welsh parliamentary party, and that they had to assuage public opinion by finding an alternative.
Until the past week or two, after reading the War Cabinet minutes on its discussion of it, I did not realise that one of the most fascinating and intriguing proposed alternatives was that, on her 18th birthday, the then heir to the throne, Princess Elizabeth, should have conferred on her the title of Princess of Wales. That was the sop to Welsh opinion.
I did not want to raise that point too strenuously because of my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. Davies)--[Laughter.] It is obvious that, in 1996, as
opposed to 1944, the Secretary of State or the Government could not propose that option because it would be much more contentious than it was in 1944.I cite that case only to demonstrate that a repeated characteristic of debates on Welsh institution making is that the establishment of the day reacts by offering an alternative or substitutes for the demands of the overwhelming majority.
In 1944, there was a demand for a Secretary of State for Wales and for the establishment of a Welsh Office. That demand was made through an all-party group, so I am not trying to make any points in a partisan spirit. Although the Labour party committed itself to the appointment of a Secretary of State for Wales and the creation of a Welsh Office in the 1945 election, the Government of the day did not implement the proposal but again came up with an alternative that was less than what was demanded. That was when the idea of a council of Wales was born.
The characteristic offering of other options was repeated at various times in the 1950s during the debate on the appointment of a Secretary of State for Wales. Prime Minister Macmillan suggested that Henry Brooke, the Minister for Housing and Local Government, should be given the title Secretary of State for Wales, but backed off when Butler and others in the Cabinet opposed it.
These proposals are a classic illustration of the phenomenon that has occurred over the past 50 or 60 years of debates on Welsh institution making, in that a substitute has to be provided to meet the demand made on the day. In this case, the substitute for a Welsh Assembly is a revamped Welsh Grand Committee. I do not like these proposals because I see them in that context--as a paler version of a Welsh Assembly, to be contained within the context of Westminster parliamentary life.
Let us examine the proposals. They try to recreate in the Committee what we currently do on the Floor of the House. Other hon. Members may support that, but I am not in favour of replacing Question Time on the Floor of the House with a paler version of it in the Welsh Grand Committee. I do not see the point of duplicating a procedure that is available to us in the House. I can appreciate the case for minor statements occasionally to be made in Committee, but I should like all significant and major statements on expenditure to be made in our presence on the Floor of the House. We should not accept these proposals on a Welsh Grand Committee because they offer us a pale version of a Welsh Assembly, set in the context of the Westminster parliamentary model.
For those reasons, I take a more cynical view of the proposals. I suspect the motive behind the proposals, the context in which they have been presented and the fact that they may have been offered as an alternative to the idea of a Welsh Assembly. Why have we not dealt with the problems and defects of this place? Anyone who was in the Chamber during the debate on Welsh local government finance could surely see the case for devolution. There were announcements about a billion pounds and more, and every Welsh local authority was facing council tax increases of 25 per cent., yet only a handful--three or four--hon. Members had the opportunity to make speeches to explain the impact that those proposals would have on their constituents and local communities.
If anyone needed a demonstration of why we should have a Welsh Assembly or why the Welsh Grand Committee should re-examine the way in which it scrutinises the issues of major Welsh public finance and public expenditure, it was provided by that debate and those arrangements. In a couple of hours, we debated something that will have a profound effect on every authority, community and individual in our constituencies. It was an illustration of the House's inadequacies and deficiencies in dealing with matters of great importance to our constituents. If we are looking for additional ways to revamp the Welsh Grand Committee, the first would be to consider the detailed way in which that Committee could scrutinise major elements of expenditure and estimates.
I am an old-fashioned parliamentarian. This place was born to debate estimates and Supply. Wars fought in the 18th century were successful because people were prepared to raise taxation. They accepted that there was a legitimate way to account for it through parliamentary procedure. In the 30 years that I have been a Member of Parliament--30 years at the end of this month--I have seen that principle eroded in various ways, partly because of Europe and partly because of a lack of interest or lack of will to do the job here, within the procedures of the House. There was, therefore, a case for revamping the Welsh Grand Committee to scrutinise in more detail the development of public expenditure plans for Wales.
I do not criticise the present Select Committee, which does a fantastic job. It takes longer-term views than I am suggesting and looks into matters in the broad and the round. It has not scrutinised Welsh public expenditure and finance to the extent that one might have expected but, in fairness to it, it sought a different platform, as did so many Select Committees.
The Welsh Grand Committee should fill a gap in our scrutiny of Welsh public expenditure rather than duplicate much of what we do on the Floor of the House at Question Time. That is the reason for my having a shot at making at least one suggestion as to how we might ensure that that happens. In a non-partisan spirit, I submitted a proposal to the Secretary of State immediately after his statement.I received an appalling one-sentence reply, saying that he would not take my suggestion into account, that he was not really interested and that he was going ahead with his proposal. There was no consultation, and my sensible suggestion was not given serious consideration.
That is all the more astonishing because my proposal would have brought to the Welsh Grand Committee a procedure that we already operate. I was not inventing anything; my proposal is, word for word, the basis on which European Standing Committees A and B operate.
The hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) is a member of a European Standing Committee and I am an occasional visitor. They are among the most interesting Committees. The procedure that they have adopted makes Ministers work for their corn. Detailed documents are put before the Committee and, for an hour, hon. Members can pose any question relating to them. Ministers are made to get up and down. They do not like it--it must be most uncomfortable. I am glad that it did not form part of ministerial experience in my time and that I did not have to go through it, because it is wearing.
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