| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Ron Davies: The hon. Gentleman mentioned clause 53 and queried whether committee chairmen will
be from various parties. I draw his attention to clause 53(2)(b)--I realise that this is the Second Reading debate, and I shall not often intervene in such detail--which clearly provides that committee members
- "shall . . . be elected so as to secure that, as far as is practicable, the balance of the parties in the Assembly is reflected in the membership of the committee."
Mr. Robert Syms (Poole): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Livsey: I give way for the last time, because I have spoken for too long.
Mr. Syms: The hon. Gentleman said that he believes that the Secretary of State is a reasonable man. Did the Secretary of State consult him on appointing the Liberal Democrat member of the advisory committee? If so, in what way?
Mr. Livsey: We certainly discussed the matter--[Hon. Members: "Oh."] We were invited to the Welsh Office, as were members of Plaid Cymru, and we discussed the matter. The Conservative party did not take up the offer--which is unfortunate, but a statement of fact.
Liberal Democrats believe that regional committees must be strong throughout the length and breadth of Wales, perhaps to counteract too much power in the south-east. I am sure that all hon. Members wish power to be distributed fairly across Wales. I am sure that we shall get that right.
The block grant will be decided in the House. Many issues in the Bill--such as loans and the Secretary of State making payments to the assembly--have already been mentioned in this debate. The Barnett formula has also been mentioned. Liberal Democrats think it vital that the Barnett formula remains. There are also strong reasons why it should be reinforced. As Welsh Members know, in the past dozen years, gross domestic product in Wales has dropped by 10 per cent., and we need compensation through the Barnett formula for that drop. We shall need firmer commitments on that.
Quangos in Wales need to be sorted out, and I sincerely hope that some of them will be abolished in the next couple of years. I also hope that the assembly will have a big input into how quangos are run. We must test the Government's resolve in that respect. As a mid-Wales Member, the loss of the Development Board for Rural Wales I regret. We hope that we shall be given sufficient powers in the proposed powerhouse for mid-Wales to compensate for the loss of that body, but it will have to do an extremely good job to equal what the DBRW has done in the past 18 years.
We must look at the way in which the national parks are run. I shall refrain from discussing the current situation in my own national park, which is not exactly satisfactory. The national parks should be run according to a more democratic system, and the members governing
them should be elected from candidates drawn from residents within each national park. That would create more local support for the parks.
The concordat on Europe is extremely important. Wales will have its place in Europe as one of its regions. The current review of structural funds and the loss of objective 5b status should be discussed and resolved in the Welsh Assembly, but I understand that that decision is subject to a timetable and will be reached by 1999.
Mr. Rhodri Morgan (Cardiff, West):
My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers) was sitting in front of me earlier and he suggested that if I spoke I should declare an interest as I have expressed the intention to stand for the Welsh Assembly. I am not sure whether I will be the only Labour Member to do so. Some Opposition Members may do likewise, but obviously Conservative Members cannot declare such an interest, although some ex-Conservative Members, seeking re-entry into politics, may do so. I believe that some have expressed that intention.
I should like to question the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), who has again temporarily left the Chamber, about his mathematics. He complained that the Secretary of State for Wales had laughed at the abysmal performance of the Tories in Wales, who got less than 20 per cent. of the vote at the general election. He asked what was so terrible about getting 20 per cent. of the vote when the Government registered only 25 per cent. support for the Welsh Assembly in the referendum. Of course, he made the fundamental mistake of not comparing like with like. The yes vote for the assembly, at 50.3 per cent., was more than two and half times greater than the Conservatives' 20 per cent. in the general election.
If the right hon. Gentleman wants to use as a comparison the 25 per cent. of the electorate who voted yes at the referendum, and we allow for the turnout at the election, the Conservative share of the electorate is something like 14 per cent. Again, that is not far off half the yes vote recorded at the referendum. The right hon. Gentleman needs to be more careful in his use of figures.
The right hon. Gentleman's speech in response to the Secretary of State was short on the historical context for the debate. He did not seem to realise that this is an extremely historic measure because it is the sixth time that the House has attempted to deal with the status of the Celtic fringe countries of the British Isles. I say it is the sixth attempt because I am leaving out the unsuccessful government of Wales and Scotland Bills of the late 1970s.
Given that it is extremely likely that this Bill, based on the support registered at the referendum, will become an Act, we are talking about six Acts that have dealt with Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The two original Acts of Union for Wales were agreed in the middle of the
16th century. We then had the Scottish Act of Union in 1707; followed by the Irish Act of Union in 1801; and then the Government of Ireland Act 1920. The right hon. Member for Devizes was extremely complimentary about its preamble. The final piece of legislation, the Government of Wales Bill, is one of a mere six measures over 450 years designed to deal with matters of such historical importance. That demonstrates to all of us that we are participating in an historic debate.
I am sure that many previous Secretaries of State for Wales and other politicians representing Welsh constituencies would be rightly jealous of the fact that the current Secretary of State for Wales is in a position to introduce the Bill with the backing of the referendum.
There is now every likelihood that the Bill will pass into law and that there will be a Welsh Assembly, sitting, I should like to think, in Cardiff city hall. In fact, an emergency meeting of Cardiff county council's Labour group started five minutes ago and, who knows, it may decide to reverse its earlier decision on the matter. If we had a video conference link, of which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is so fond, between the Palace of Westminster and Cardiff county council's headquarters at Atlantic wharf, we would know what the Labour group was thinking, just as the group would know what we were thinking.
In 18 months' time, there may be a Welsh Assembly meeting for the first time. The last time that happened was for two weeks in 1404--quite unlike the situation in Scotland and Ireland--when there were incipient Welsh Parliaments during Owain Glyndwr's rebellion against English rule. They met once at Machynlleth and once at Dolgellau, although the historical record about that second meeting is vague. The representatives at the Machynlleth Parliament were chosen by rather more democratic means than the procedures governing the House at the time. At least two representatives were chosen from every Welsh commote, as the parishes were then called.
It is clear, therefore, that today's debate concerns events of major historical significance. The right hon. Member for Devizes, however, made daft alleged jokes about great halls of people and, by doing so, sold his party and Wales short. His performance as Opposition spokesman also sold the House short.
The right hon. Gentleman completely forgot the context of the democratic devolution which we have gradually built up in Wales in the past 75 years since the original Welsh Board of Health and the Welsh Board of Education were set up in Cardiff in the 1920s. That development was followed by the institution, 33 years ago, of the office of Secretary of State for Wales. That office has been held by more Conservative Members than Labour Members because of the political current in this country during that time. Certainly in the past 18 years of Conservative rule there was no lack of volunteers for that position, even when the Government ran out of Welsh ones. The same can be said of the period between 1970 and 1974, when the Conservatives first had the opportunity to fill that office.
The right hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) said that it is 111 years since the first public calls were made by recognised Welsh public bodies or major political parties for an elected council for Wales. The
demand has existed for many years and it has been met by various strategies to provide administrative devolution, without accompanying democratic devolution. The English regions will find out, however, that administrative devolution inevitably leads to demands for democratic devolution, because mere administrative devolution is considered to be too bureaucratic.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |