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Mr. Salmond: I can confirm to the right hon. Gentleman that that was what I asked the Prime Minister and that that was his answer, and it is in Hansard. I also remind him that the Prime Minister has not always recently shown himself to be fully in command of this subject.
Mr. Maude: The hon. Gentleman may think that: I could not possibly comment. The Prime Minister must answer for himself. If he got it wrong, he should come to the House and say so. The Secretary of State for Scotland says that that is a pompous suggestion, but the Prime Minister made that apparently considered remark to the House of Commons. I happen to think that the House of Commons matters and that the Prime Minister should consider what he says to us to be important.
Mr. Dewar: The right hon. Gentleman may criticise and make his point, but I do not want him to be under a misapprehension. If he has been following the debate with care, including speeches made on several occasions and other statements by the Government, he will understand that the situation is straightforward and well understood, certainly by most of my hon. Friends. He is in danger of making myths.
Mr. Maude: I do not think so. I cannot say whether the Prime Minister was not in command of his brief or whether the policy has been changed and made on the hoof, as has happened so often in this tawdry saga. If the Prime Minister made an honest mistake, as the Secretary of State suggests, let him come here and tell us. The House of Commons deserves no less.
The point matters because of the dynamic of the sequence of events. The Government propose to publish some proposals in a White Paper that may--or may not, we do not know--deal with the great unanswered questions that the hon. Member for Linlithgow and others
have raised, including the West Lothian question, and others about scrutiny of the spending of money raised by this House but disbursed by the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament. How will that money be controlled and what will happen to the funding formula? Those are substantial and important matters, and they must be resolved. Will they be dealt with satisfactorily in the White Paper? I do not think so.
Those matters must be set forth in a draft Bill so that the people of Scotland and Wales can make a mature and considered judgment about whether they like the look of the creature that is offered to them. If they do not, as I suspect they may not, that should be tested fully. Otherwise, to use the phrase of the hon. Member for Linlithgow, the people will be offered a pig in a poke. It may be accepted because the details will be unclear, but the questions will remain unanswered.
If the proposals are accepted, the Government will claim that they have a mandate. They will claim that they have not only the endorsement of their fabled manifesto in the general election, but the endorsement given by the referendum. They will say that they do not need to bother with any more tiresome business in the House of Commons and they will just bang the proposals through. If the Secretary of State for Scotland thinks that that is scaremongering, he should remember what the Prime Minister said on the issue, in his first debate as Prime Minister, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire:
I said at the outset that I first entered the House as part of a landslide victory. I remember the feeling that that induced. We had a majority--not quite on the grandiose scale of the Government's, but not far off--but we did not believe that a big election victory translated into the Government owning the House of Commons. Indeed, rather than blasting through measures that reduced the House of Commons' power, one of the first things we did after winning in 1979, was to enhance it and make life more difficult for the Executive. We introduced Select Committees, which have been an adornment to the House--not always convenient to those of us who have been Ministers, and often a nuisance--and have enhanced its ability to hold Ministers to account.
The Government are only a month old, yet a pattern is developing--a pattern of thinking that they can take the House of Commons for granted, feeling that, because they have most of the seats in the House, they own it. Well, they do not. This House has been here for much longer than this Parliament or this Government and it will be here for a long time afterwards. Its powers may be reduced as a result of this legislation and what the Prime Minister decides to hand over in Amsterdam in a few weeks' time, but it will continue to take seriously its historic task of holding the Government to account.
I hope that the Government will at least do the House the courtesy of answering some of the questions that have been asked. Will the devolution Bill--if we get to that stage--be debated on the Floor of the House in Committee? Unquestionably, it is a major constitutional measure, yet all we have heard so far has been waffle and prevarication: "Well, it will all have to be looked at; it is all very difficult. Who can tell?" If it comes about, it will be one of the most important constitutional measures this century. If it is not to be taken step by step, clause by painful clause and amendment by amendment on the Floor of the House, it is difficult to envisage what should be.
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough):
The point made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the shadow Home Secretary, at the outset of the debate is worth repeating. He quoted from "Erskine May". Describing guillotine motions, it says:
If I have to take responsibility at all as an Opposition Back Bencher, I must accept the general rebuke of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell)--it is not worth pretending otherwise. Some silly amendments have been tabled in the sense that they would not lead to much light being thrown on the Bill.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Ron Davies):
Which particular ones?
Mr. Garnier:
I do not want to confuse the right hon. Gentleman; he is not a man of great thought. Nor do I want to delay the debate.
As the Secretary of State for Scotland admitted, on occasion, Opposition Back Benchers table amendments which they know are unlikely to draw favour from the Chairman of Ways and Means. The important point, however, is that, among the amendments tabled, plenty of subjects that deserve sensible debate are raised. As a consequence of the timetable motion, a raft of those important issues will not be debated. They include the publication and form of the Government's proposals, procedures for the conduct of the referendums, the name and tax-raising powers of any Welsh Assembly, the financing and organisation of the referendum campaign
and, perhaps most important, the required majorities--the threshold question. None of those is to be debated. Whether the Government like it or not, those issues are entitled to be debated, yet by virtue of the timetable motion, they are unable to be debated, let alone voted on.
The Secretary of State for Scotland, in partly pooh-poohing the subject of precedent--which was interesting for a lawyer--attempted to draw comfort from the proceedings on the Wales Bill and the Scotland Bill in 1977. He said that, under a Labour Government--some precedent that--guillotine motions were moved before the Bills went into Committee. What he failed to say was that the timetable motions permitted, under the Scotland Bill, 17 further days of debate, and, under the Wales Bill, 11 further days of debate--not the two very limited days with which we are presented today.
As an Opposition Member of a party that has been badly defeated, I must accept that the arithmetic of the House means that the timetable motion and the Referendums (Scotland and Wales) Bill will go ramming through and that we will have what I gather is now called an advisory referendum in due course, whatever that may be. That is a fact of life with which I must come to terms. Nonetheless, the Government are seeking to stifle arguments that ought to be deployed and arguments that my constituents want to be deployed.
The attitude to opposition and argument is informed by comments made by those who now sit on the Treasury Bench. It is instructive to read an article that appeared in The Western Mail on 23 April--during the election campaign. The new Secretary of State for Wales was asked about the devolution Bill. After making some rude remarks about the then Lord Chancellor, my right hon. and noble Friend Lord MacKay, pooh-poohing his ability and right to hold views on matters of political interest, the right hon. Gentleman said:
The Secretary of State for Wales went on to say in The Western Mail article:
"There will be ample time for debate"--
on the substantive devolution Bill--
"but I have to say to the hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members that if the firmly established will of the Scottish and Welsh people is demonstrated in the referendums, the people will not expect us to be game-playing here--they will expect us to legislate."--[Official Report, 14 May 1997; Vol. 294, c. 67.]
That is a chilling indication of what is to come. The Government will bang through this wretched Bill without proper debate, seek a popular mandate in the referendums, then come back here and say, "Tough luck House of Commons, we have got our mandate. You can go hang." That will not do.
"They may be regarded as the extreme limit to which procedure goes in affirming the rights of the majority at the expense of the minorities of the House, and it cannot be denied that they are capable of being used in such a way as to upset the balance, generally so carefully preserved, between the claims of business and the rights of debate."
The guillotine is not lightly used and not applied without reason. The usual reason is to counter delaying tactics, actual or threatened, amounting in the Government's view to obstruction.
"The Labour party will have a very clear mandate, and it's offensive to any democrat to countenance the unelected House of Lords interfering in the democratic process."
It just so happens that, under our constitution, the House of Lords is very much part of our democratic process and constitutional arrangements. How one gets there is another matter and, perhaps, for debate another day. Huge chunks of debates that we may or may not be having over the next few days will lead to the Bill going to another place without many of the issues being considered.
"The process by which the devolution legislation that will be passed through the House of Commons will be a matter for the House of Commons . . . The next House of Commons will decide its own procedure. The Labour Party has included in its manifesto very precise details of our intention of a referendum. If we have a Labour Party elected on its manifesto, it will have a very clear and precise mandate and, in compliance with the Salisbury convention, the next Labour government will brook no interference from people who speak for no one but themselves and their own vested interests."
The House should notice the language. It is the language of the Lord Protector, the control freak. [Interruption.] Notice how Labour Members smirk and snigger when they are brought to understand. Not everybody agrees with them. Of course the Government have a majority. Let them smile and smirk at it. On behalf of our constituents, we as Opposition Back Benchers are entitled to expect to be listened to with some respect in the House.
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