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5.57 pm
Mr. John Morris (Aberavon): This is a wide-ranging debate and I shall concentrate on my nation of Wales in the context of its place in the United Kingdom. I start with the obvious proposition that the Conservative party, as always, is against constitutional change, whether it is in Wales, Scotland or the House of Lords. It is the traditional defence of the status quo.
Before I deal with the Prime Minister's speech to the Conservative Welsh conference at a hotel somewhere across the border in north Wales, let me say why devolution is needed in Wales.
It was my privilege on two occasions in 1976 and 1977 to speak from the Government Dispatch Box on the Scotland and Wales Bill and then the Wales Bill. I promised the House that, whatever happened, we would return to the issue in due course. Now, 20 years have gone by and we make it clear that, at the earliest opportunity after the next election, we will fulfil the promise that I made to the House 20 years ago.
In 1977 we believed that extending democracy through participation and accountability in Wales would help to preserve and strengthen the unity of the United Kingdom.
It will not harm the unity of this kingdom, but enhance it. The quality of decision making will be improved because the decision makers, drawn from all over Wales, will be attuned to the needs of Wales.
Decentralisation of power to the Welsh Office was the precursor of devolution, and in my time, with the addition of agriculture, industry and education, we doubled that office's size. However, it was never the intention that those new responsibilities would permanently be carried out by one man. It is certainly one of the most difficult tasks and it is probably even more difficult in Scotland. When one weighs the red boxes that come at the weekend and tries to master the functions of eight functional colleagues in England, it is no little task. I believe in democratic accountability. The Principality is entitled, within the context of the unity of the kingdom, to have substantial control of its own domestic policies, particularly in environmental and social matters. Let the voters of Wales decide those matters.
The Conservatives have always been against change. They were against the establishment of a Secretary of State for Wales. It was Harold Wilson who appointed the first, more than 50 years after it was deemed desirable for Scotland. Mind you, it was typical of the Conservatives that, once the office had been created, they kept it clutched it to their bosoms and gave it to their nominees, one after the other. Incidentally, that is the answer to the Secretary of State for Health and his threats.
What have we had since? A series of Secretaries of State for Wales, but not one with an electoral base in Wales. Mr. Peter Walker, then the right hon. Member for Worcester, and the right hon. Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hunt) came and went. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood)--of all people--was appointed, but refused to sleep in Wales. Mind you, the fact that he kept his time in Wales to a minimum meant that he did less damage. At the end of the financial year, despite the appalling situation in Wales, he returned some of the money that had been hard won by the Welsh Office to the Treasury, and he thought he would get some brownie points from the Prime Minister. Now we have the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague), who has allegedly improved on his predecessor by learning the Welsh national anthem, but nothing has really changed.
What did we have before we had Secretaries of State for Wales? We had a series of appointed Ministers who were asked to add a few minutes each week to their existing responsibilities. We had David Maxwell Fyfe--known familiarly in Wales as Dai Bananas--who was the right hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby; Keith Joseph, then the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East; and Dr. Charles Hill, then the hon. Member for Luton, who was also known as the radio doctor. They and others came and went, looking after Wales in their spare time.
The Prime Minister talks of a thousand years, but I doubt he knows what has really happened in that thousand years--he has certainly got the dates of the Acts of Union wrong. We took 400 years to right the wrongs done to the Welsh language in the Act of Union of 1536, whereby one could be deprived of one's office for speaking Welsh. Throughout history, the story is the same. In 1846, three commissioners sent to look at the conditions in Wales said that our depravity was the result of using the Welsh language. Even in my grandfather's boyhood, the "Welsh Not" was passed from one child to
the next when they were caught speaking Welsh in school. Those are the parts of our history with which the Prime Minister is totally unfamiliar.
Mr. Rod Richards (Clwyd, North-West):
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Morris:
Not to that hon. Gentleman.
The way in which Wales is now governed is exactly like that of a colony with its governor--a nominated appointee, with the executive role of Government carried out by quangos and nominated councils. The Conservative party has been the minority party in Wales since 1852--the last 140 years of the Prime Minister's 1,000 years--so what do the Conservative Government do? They scour Wales for suitable nominees to carry out the executive roles of Government.
Who do they find? While having a splendid lunch in Swansea, Mr. Peter Walker met a man who happened to be agreeable to him and set him up as the chairman of the Welsh Development Agency and, to give him even greater comfort, also made him Welsh governor of the BBC. He then discovered that the chairman had committed more hours than the working week allowed to both those functions. The Public Accounts Committee found the chairman--and the board--of the WDA out and he had to be sent packing. That is the calibre of person who is found during the casual trips made by Welsh Secretaries to Wales.
Mr. Tim Rathbone (Lewes):
We started the debate with some pretty sorry contributions from the other side of the House, with the haughty, preachy and dodging speech from the Leader of the Official Opposition, the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), followed by the sophistry and rumour-mongering of the Leader of the Liberal Democrats, the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown). Speaking from my experience of the Liberal Democrats in my area of Sussex, I know that they are experts in scaremongering.
Compare those speeches with that of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, which was straightforward and thoughtful--[Laughter.] The speech may not have struck sparks with Opposition Members, but it was a straightforward, thoughtful and positive argument against change.
I do not actually share my right hon. Friend's views on constitutional change, and I want to develop some thoughts along those lines. Constitutional reform has not kept pace with reform in other areas in this country. There has been too little improvement, and that has contributed to the complete lack of respect that so many people outside this House have for people inside it, and to the
lack of interest in good government. That feeling is not healthy scepticism, but all too often downright mistrust. On that basis, above all else, I argue for a Bill of Rights.
Conservatives believe that the Government are the people's servant, not their master. The Government do not dictate, and we have therefore cut back regulations and controls during our period in office; we have reduced state ownership and increased personal ownership; and we have widened choice and returned power and trust to people. The British constitution, being unwritten, is flexible, which is an advantage; however, rights are not inalienable but conditional, and I believe that we must have a yardstick against which decisions can be made in respect of setting one right over another right.
We can extend the commitment that we made in 1957, when we were one of the first signatories to the convention on human rights in the Council of Europe. That was six years before the treaty of Rome created the European Community. The convention allows individual petition to a court in Europe; would it not be so much wiser to have that same right of individual petition to a court in this country? We have to acknowledge, however, that a Bill of Rights is not an automatic safeguard. It tends to play a minor role in protecting human rights, and we must therefore take further steps in order to make it effective. I shall suggest one or two for consideration.
Should there not be a human rights assessment in every Bill? Should not the Speaker, the Attorney-General or a Committee of Law Lords certify compliance with that statement? Or perhaps there should be a Special Standing Committee to review the matter, with the help of a human rights commissioner or commission, or perhaps a Joint Committee of both Houses--a hybrid of a Select Committee and a Standing Committee--should advise after the first Second Reading, in whichever House it took place.
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