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Mr. Rogers: I do not know why the Government Whip is laughing.
Mr. Wigley: The Government Whip would laugh because Conservative Members know that they will get their way. Government Whips will marshal Conservative Members in the Lobby. Whatever we decide in the Welsh Grand Committee or in the Welsh Select Committee, the Tory majority from England will decide what happens in Wales. That is the reality of the mechanism of non-democracy in our country.
In the 1970s, we had opportunities to discuss and debate legislation in the Welsh Grand Committee.If I remember correctly, legislation on the Development Board for Rural Wales was debated there. If we are democrats, there is no reason why we should not debate legislation at Second Reading or Committee stages in the Welsh Grand Committee, but we are not allowed to do so in case we start taking decisions in the interests of the people of Wales and in line with their wishes. We can talk about things, but we are not allowed to decide anything. The governor general knows better than that.
Mr. Wigley:
As the hon. Gentleman says, the viceroy. An hon. Member from outside Wales knows better than we do and he has the troops behind him. It is the majority of Tory Members from England who decide what is good for Wales, not the people of Wales.
The use of the Welsh language in Welsh Grand Committee meetings in Wales has been mentioned. I was glad that that has at least reached the agenda--as shown by the Leader of the House--and that it will be discussed further, but, as that matter has clearly been under consideration for a time, I would have expected it to move further down the agenda by now.
I welcome the fact that the right hon. Member for Conwy (Sir W. Roberts) is present. He steered the 1993 Act through Parliament. I make it clear to the Leader of the House--I would do so if he were here--and to the Secretary of State for Wales that I intend to speak Welsh in the Welsh Grand Committee when it meets in Wales.I will do so in line with the law of the land that has been passed by the Government. That law allows public business in Wales to be debated in Welsh. If whoever is chairing the Committee deems that I am not allowed to do that, he or she will be in breach of that law.The Government should sort that one out before the Committee meets in Wales. I declare that it is my earnest intention to speak in Welsh when the Committee next meets in Wales. I rely on the law of the land to protect me and I have no doubt that the right hon. Member for Conwy will be the first to ensure that support is given to that view.
The hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney proposed using the device that has been developed in European Standing Committees A and B. That would be worth while and we discussed it for a short time at the Welsh parliamentary meeting that some of us attended.I hope that important statements by the Secretary of State that he cannot make now because there is no time can be analysed in an hour of questions and answers and an hour and a half of debate.
I was a member of European Standing Committee B for four years, but I am no longer a member.The Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Evans), was in that Committee when I tried to put questions to him and he knows that it can be a rigorous process. No doubt Ministers will try to wriggle, but they get fewer chances to do that when we come back four or five times on the same theme. One can nail them down and then make a speech.
The quorum in the Welsh Grand Committee should be determined in line with the number of Welsh Members--seven or whatever the figure should be. The last thing that I would accept is a quorum that is dictated by hon. Members from outside Wales, which is the practice in other Committees. When subjects are called for debate in the Welsh Grand Committee, there should be not only notional dialogue in the usual channels but an acceptance that the majority of Welsh Members should call the subjects for debate: they should not be subjects that are merely for the convenience of the Government.We should re-establish the ability of all parties to have subjects aired.
The Select Committee on Welsh Affairs is excellent and has carried out much good work under the outstanding chairmanship of the hon. Member for Gower
(Mr. Wardell). But its reports lie forgotten on dusty shelves although many of the good proposals in them should be taken on board.
Mr. Rowlands:
I received a written answer from the Leader of the House on 4 December. I had asked how many reports had been received from the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs and how many had been debated in the House. I was told that there had been 36 such reports and that none had been debated on the Floor of the House.
Mr. Wigley:
That shows the breakdown of the intentions that were put to the House in 1979 by the now Lord St. John of Fawsley. There was supposed to be a progression from the Select Committee investigation to debate in the House and decisions were to be taken.That system has broken down because the House does not have the time or the will to address such matters. That may be acceptable in the context of other Select Committees, although I doubt it, but it is certainly not acceptable to Welsh Members.
Mr. Paul Flynn (Newport, West):
The status of the Welsh language in the House is the same as that of riotous behaviour. If we speak in Welsh in the House, as many hon. Members have done, we are called to order, and if we persist we are thrown out of the House. Many of us have considered that course and it is inevitable that it will be taken if the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) sticks by his threat. Many of us have great sympathy for that course.
The Standing Order that covers the matter is incredible. It says that speeches must be made in English but that quotations in a foreign tongue may be allowed occasionally although a translation should be provided. Where is Welsh in there? Welsh is not English but it is certainly not a foreign tongue. This is the only Parliament of Wales but the ancient language of Wales is not heard here. That is an ancient injustice that we can put right now. People have tried. Mabon in 1896 spoke in Welsh and quoted the illustrious Member for Rhondda, which is now represented by another illustrious person, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers).
What is the present status? Even if the Standing Order is right, we are not allowed to quote in Welsh. A month ago during a debate on ferries I quoted from an account of a crossing of the channel that took place 50 years before the birth of Christ. Not unexpectedly, the account was in Latin and I quoted some 70 words, which was acceptable. My hon. Friends from Labour comprehensives understood what I was talking about, but I provided a translation for the Conservative victims of public school
education. It is extraordinary that speaking in Latin was permissible whereas I would have been stopped if I had uttered more than two or three words in Welsh.
My constituency used to be wholly bilingual.The children in the town of Caerleon spoke Latin, but the children outside the walls of the town spoke Welsh. Today one does not hear much Latin on the tongues of the children in Caerleon but, happily, one can still hear Welsh. That extraordinary language has echoed down the centuries and is still with us as a living treasure of enormous worth and it means so much to so many of us.
I did not have the advantage enjoyed by many hon. Members of speaking Welsh from the cradle, but as an adolescent I had the good luck to have a marvellous teacher who introduced me to Gweledigaethau'r Bardd Cwrsg, y Gododdin, Dafydd ap Gwilym and to the wonderful, majestic works of T. Gwyn Jones and the lyrical beauty of the imagery of Robert Williams Parry. No one has written with more accuracy, feeling and inspiration about working-class suffering in Wales in the north and south and about the quarry workers and miners than the Gwenally in the south or those who wrote about the quarry workers in north Wales.
It is difficult to express to those who live in one language the experience of living in more than one. It is difficult to explain that the first language that one hears at one's mother's breast, the last one that is expressed in the final prayers before death and the only language with the tenderness to make love in or in which one can curse effectively is that mother tongue, the one--
Madam Deputy Speaker:
Order. I am not sure whether it would be necessary in the Welsh Grand Committee to curse in Welsh or in any other language. The hon. Gentleman must relate his remarks more closely to the subject under consideration.
Mr. Flynn:
We express strong words in the House. One of the disadvantages of a lack of simultaneous translation is that when curses in Welsh are made in the House--and I have heard them--there is no way that Front-Bench Members understand what is being said.
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