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Mr. Dalyell: On the question of proper scrutiny, are the hon. Gentleman and his collective colleagues, if I may use those words, in favour of proper scrutiny of the crucial devolution White Paper?

Mr. Wallace: I have no doubt that there will be a debate on the White Paper. More importantly, we would certainly expect proper scrutiny of legislation flowing from that White Paper. I do not see how, except in a one-day debate, we could have scrutiny of a White Paper. The House would, however, expect proper scrutiny of any legislation that followed. I believe that the House will get proper scrutiny.

Mr. Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Wallace: I had concluded my remarks, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) has concluded his remarks.

4.43 pm

Mr. Francis Maude (Horsham): I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Conwy (Mrs. Williams). All Conservative Members will have appreciated her kind remarks about our old friend and colleague, Sir Wyn Roberts. The only advice he would have added to what she said was that if she addresses the House in a prolonged way in the native language of which both he and she are rightly proud, she may not always be addressing a Chamber quite as well filled as this. I congratulate her, however, on a speech that was well delivered with a nice light note and we look forward to much more from her.

I have been out of the House for five years--what is delicately known as broken service. I hope, therefore, that I may be indulged if I make one or two remarks about my predecessor, Sir Peter Hordern, who represented Horsham with great dedication for more than 32 years. He did great service to his constituency where he is still very much loved and I know that he attracted a lot of affection and admiration in the House.

Sir Peter never sought high office; he believed that representing his constituents in the United Kingdom Parliament was high enough privilege in itself, as I do. He believed that it was the function of this House to scrutinise legislation and to act as a proper check on what

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the Government did. He always did that, whether he sat on the Government Benches or on the Opposition Benches. That is what is important in this debate.

When I first came into the House 14 years ago, I, too, was part of a landslide. I came in when the Conservative party had a majority of 144, yet we did not believe then that we owned the House of Commons because we had had a big election victory. We believed that the House of Commons had its rights and that those rights had been fought for for centuries and were to be preserved, even at the Government's inconvenience.

The Government have become a little confused on some specific points. There seems to be some confusion about whether they consider the Bill to be a constitutional Bill. The Prime Minister does--or did. In his speech during the debate on the Gracious Speech on 14 May, when my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack) asked him to give an undertaking that


my hon. Friend was not referring specifically to this Bill--


    "will be taken in Committee on the Floor of the House",

the Prime Minister replied:


    "As I have said before to the hon. Gentleman, the referendum Bill will of course be taken on the Floor of the House."--[Official Report, 14 May 1997; Vol. 294, c. 67.]

The Prime Minister clearly thought that the Bill was a constitutional measure.

The Minister for Home Affairs and Devolution, Scottish Office also thought that the Bill was a constitutional Bill. When he wound up the debate on Second Reading, he specifically referred to it as being a constitutional measure. He said:


words that must be sticking in his craw at the moment--


    "of every part of the House."

The hon. Gentleman was not talking about general constitutional measures; he was talking about this Bill. He said:


    "That should be the case when we are dealing with serious constitutional issues."--[Official Report, 21 May 1997; Vol. 294, c. 804.]

We need to know whether the Government believe this to be a constitutional Bill. If it is a constitutional Bill, how can it be right, before we have even embarked on the Committee stage, for the Government to act in this way to gag debate? If it is not a constitutional Bill, but it is, as the Leader of the House said last night and as the Secretary of State for Scotland said today, merely a technical or paving Bill, why is it being taken on the Floor of the House at all? The House is entitled to have answers to those questions.

Whatever the answer, the House is being denied the opportunity for proper scrutiny. It is being denied the opportunity for detailed consideration of amendments and clauses, sometimes at inconvenient length, in Standing Committee because the Bill is being considered here, where there is more pressure on time. Having discussed the Bill here on the basis of its being a constitutional Bill--or not, we do not know because no light has been shed on the matter--the opportunity for maximum debate in all parts of the House, as the Minister of State promised, has been removed.

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It would be helpful if the Minister who is to wind up the debate could shed some light on another matter. Will the full, substantive devolution Bill be published before the referendums take place? Again, we have had conflicting messages on that. On 14 May, the Prime Minister was challenged on the subject by the leader of the Scottish National party. The Prime Minister said:


That is the last we have heard of that suggestion. Since then, all the talk has been merely that the White Paper will be published before the referendum. The question is not just dancing on the head of a pin, because the sequence matters.

The sequence that is now proposed is the Referendums (Scotland and Wales) Bill; followed by a White Paper; followed by the referendum; followed by the devolution Bill if the referendum is favourable; followed by implementation. We all know--the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has made it clear, and the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) has also made the point--that there can be great differences between the aims and aspirations of policy set out in a White Paper and how they are translated into practice and into hard statutory fact when a Bill comes before Parliament. That fact makes a difference to the Bill we are considering today, because of the effect of the referendums. A referendum that has been held on a published Bill, albeit not yet enacted by Parliament, will have a different effect from one that has been held on a mere set of policies set out in a White Paper.

Mr. Dalyell: May I clarify the right hon. Gentleman's reference to me? Whatever happens, it is my personal view, for what it is worth, that a final referendum should be held on the one meaningful question that can be asked, which is "Do you approve of the Scotland Act 1997--or 1998--as passed by Parliament?" That would mean another referendum.

Mr. Maude: The hon. Gentleman puts it very well and I do not want to add to or subtract from that point. A final referendum is desirable. It is what he has argued for and the way that it was done last time. It may be that that unhappy experience is carved deep on the minds of Ministers and led them to come up with this procedure. The dynamic of the procedure matters a great deal.

Mr. Dewar: I do not wish the right hon. Gentleman to labour mightily under a misapprehension. It is clear from the passage that he quoted, if one reads the whole passage, that it was a reference to the White Paper, and everybody understood that. To avoid all doubt, we propose that the White Paper should be published before the House rises--

Mr. Fallon: And debated?

Mr. Dewar: Yes.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Not guillotined.

Mr. Dewar: Someone is showing his grasp of parliamentary procedure. I wish to make it clear that a

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White Paper will be published before the House rises. It will set out the scheme in some detail and the referendum will be held on the basis of the proposals in the White Paper. We will go on from there, as the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) would expect.

Mr. Maude: The right hon. Gentleman says that I am under a misapprehension, but if so it is a widespread one. What the Prime Minister said was very clear. He was asked in terms by the leader of the Scottish National party:


The answer was:


    "Of course the Bill"--

not the White Paper--


    "will be published in time for the referendum".

That was not just a casual remark, because the Prime Minister went on to say:


    "because the referendum will take place on those proposals."--[Official Report, 14 May 1997; Vol. 294, c. 64.]

He did not say it will take place on the White Paper. That matters because all the unanswered questions that lie in the morass that the Government are in must be resolved. They cannot be resolved only in the White Paper: they must be resolved in hard statutory fact by a Bill.


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