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Mr. Peter Hain (Neath): I agree with my hon. Friend--I whip the European Standing Committees for the Labour party. It is a characteristic of those Committees that Ministers are unable to wriggle off the hook easily because hon. Members can come back at them and tease out the reality behind the answers that they receive. There are few similar opportunities available on the Floor.
Mr. Rowlands: My hon. Friend has a detailed knowledge of the working of those Committees. I am sure that a combination of ministerial and departmental ingenuity maintains the Government line, but it is much harder to do so in those Committees than under any other procedures available to us on the Floor of the House or in other Standing Committees.
Mr. Alan W. Williams (Carmarthen): Would not there be a problem for the Conservative party if what my hon. Friend suggests were to happen, in that there is such a lack of choice of Conservatives who could be Ministers? It must be a gruelling test--the Conservatives have already had four successive Secretaries of State from England and the Under-Secretary of State comes from England, too.
Mr. Rowlands: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. We cannot build our procedures around the inadequacies of the present ministerial lot.
I read in a minute from 1957-58 that the objection to creating a Welsh Office was that, as one official said, there were not enough good or clever Conservative Members to fill the posts available. That was one of the practical objections in the 1950s even to the appointment of a Secretary of State for Wales.
I hope that I have not spoken in a partisan spirit, but the European Standing Committee procedure is a useful way in which to scrutinise expenditure. It would complement other procedures and, unlike the proposed Standing Orders, it would not duplicate what we can already do on the Floor of the House.
Amendment (aa) refers to departmental expenditure reports because the current Secretary of State's predecessor, when submitting the previous report to the House, boasted in the foreword about the size of public expenditure in Wales. That was interesting coming from
the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), who is a curious mix in all sorts of ways. He said in the foreword:
If that is the real level of expenditure per household, it should be subject to greater scrutiny than existing procedure allows.
Mr. Dafydd Wigley (Caernarfon):
I congratulate the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney(Mr. Rowlands) on a strong and well-researched speech. We all look forward to reading the lecture that he has given at Bangor and which includes some of the same material. It was, historically speaking, a persuasive analysis of the situation. When we see the Conservatives dangling half a cake, we should be aware that there is a need for a substantial cake but that we are to get only some of the crumbs.
The question today is why we should have a Welsh Grand Committee at all. The answer is that the Welsh Grand Committee exists because Wales is a nation. The Welsh Grand Committee is given no powers in case Wales starts behaving like a nation and takes decisions for itself rather than having the ability to debate ad infinitum but, at the end of the day, is not able to take any meaningful decisions for the people of Wales.
There are two deficits in Wales. The first is a democratic deficit and the second is a deficit of accountability. The proposals that we are discussing do not, in any shape or form, deal with the fundamental democratic deficit. It might have been possible to try to go down that road by giving the Welsh Grand Committee additional powers. Some of tonight's speeches have touched on some of those powers, but clearly the Government are not prepared to tackle the democratic deficit in any shape or form. There are 38 Members of Parliament in Wales and the governing party, even having won a general election, has only six seats. If it loses a general election, goodness knows how many seats it will have.
Mr. Allan Rogers (Rhondda):
None at all.
Mr. Wigley:
Perhaps none at all, as the hon. Gentleman says. The number of Conservative Members shows the Welsh electorate's rejection of the Government, who for the past 17 years have governed our country on a platform that has no support from the people of Wales, pursuing policies that are often diametrically opposed to their economic and social good. The structures of Westminster do not allow the people of Wales even to take a single decision on matters of concern to them.
That was shown two or three years ago in a most lamentable manner when a couple of Bills exclusively to deal with Wales were introduced. I accept that the Welsh Language Act 1993 was a modest step forward, but it
was debated in a Committee that was packed with Tory Members representing English constituencies, who did not have the background to debate the subject or, knowledge of the subject and who did not have to live with the legislation's consequences. They were able, however, as my hon. Friend the Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) pointed out, to make progress on the language agenda that was agreed by all Opposition parties. Legislation was imposed on us that was acceptable to the Conservative minority and not to the non-Conservative majority of the people of Wales.
That became more evident when Parliament debated the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994. From the turn of the century, the Standing Orders of this place have allowed all Welsh Members to sit on Committees that consider Bills which exclusively deal with Wales. That was overridden by the Government to ensure that Welsh Members did not have a majority say when it came to the brass tacks and legislative decisions were to be taken. With these proposals, we make no modicum of movement forward in dealing with that democratic deficit. From now to kingdom come, we will have to accept laws and decisions imposed on us by a Conservative majority. That will apply for as long as a Conservative party receives a majority in England, but it never has and never will win a majority in Wales.
There is a modest movement forward on the accountability deficit. The Government are trying,I suppose, to allow the Executive to be a little more answerable to Welsh Members, but Welsh question Time--one of the tools available to Welsh Members to question the Executive--has already been undermined by the Government Whips getting English Conservative Members to hog the Order Paper on the one Monday a month when we have 35 or 40 minutes to ask questions on Welsh affairs. The agenda is set by the first question that is called and we must ask supplementary questions in the wake of that agenda laid down by Conservative Members. That is why we will have a little movement on answering questions in the Welsh Grand Committee--questions that we will have no time to ask on the Floor of the House.
I share some of the reservations of the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney that some of these issues will be shovelled upstairs, where the press will often not be present and where we will not have the powers of scrutiny or the attention that is necessary. That is why, in terms not only of the democratic deficit but of the accountability deficit, we should debate these matters in an elected Parliament in Cardiff that can make its own laws and not be a talking shop, which the Welsh Grand Committee has been and will continue to be if we accept these modest proposals.
I want to take up four or five specific points with regard to the powers that the Welsh Grand Committee should have. The first is to do with the type of motions that its members are allowed to debate. It is a farce that the Committee must consider "take note" motions, for example, on education in Wales. When at the end of that debate we vote against the Government, does it mean that we have not taken note of the issue of education in Wales?
Opposition Members cannot table any substantive motion that can call the Government or the Welsh Office to account. All we can table is a "take note" motion and take part in a meaningless vote at the end. The Standing
Orders should allow us to debate substantive motions that can be tabled not just by Conservative Members, but by any hon. Member.
Mr. Rogers:
My experience in this place gradually leads me almost to the same view as the hon. Gentleman in relation to the Welsh Grand Committee. He mentioned education. The comprehensive system in England or in certain inner-city areas has deteriorated, but in Wales it has made a substantial contribution to raising education standards. Although there may be small particular problems, generally in Wales it is of the highest standard, yet we must have policies imposed by English Members.
Madam Deputy Speaker:
Order. This is becoming a very long intervention.
Mr. Wigley:
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers). I agree entirely. The Welsh education tradition has been valued and developed over decades to respond to the experience of ordinary people in Wales. They have viewed education as a key to improving their lives in material terms and in terms of opportunities and enjoyment of the best things of life.
"Public expenditure provision for programmes within my responsibility will be £6,644 million . . . equal to some £6,000 for every household in Wales."
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