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Mr. Rowlands: I understand that the Labour party does not fight elections formally as the Labour party in Northern Ireland and that the other parties follow the same policy, but that is not relevant to the point that from the Conservatives' Front-Bench spokesman should have come rather more humility than we heard today. The hon. Member for Ribble Valley contributed little, either to his party's cause, or to the debate on the Bill.
I have no wish to revisit the referendum result, save to say to hon. Members on both sides of the House that we should be as concerned about the fact that 50 per cent.
of the population did not vote as about the 49 per cent. of those who did vote who voted no. If I heard this remark once, I heard it dozens of times during the campaign: "We did not really know enough about it--we did not understand the implications." We should all accept that, during the referendum campaign and in the preceding months, we failed collectively to get across to the public the issues and the implications of the proposals. Now, with the Bill before us, we have a chance to do just that. We should take this opportunity not only to explore the implications ourselves, but to communicate them to a wider audience--the Welsh public.
I hope that, in my next remarks, I am not treading on contentious territory for Labour, although I am happy to tread on it as far as the Conservatives are concerned. I hope to gain some measure of, if not consensus, at least understanding. I suspect that, among the 50 per cent. who did not vote and the 49 per cent. of voters who voted no, people were saying--albeit not coherently--that they were uneasy about what was going to happen. There was an air of queasiness surrounding the relationship between Wales and Britain.
The Welsh-British relationship is an enduring and important relationship--one that is felt strongly, no matter how Welsh we are. In constituencies such as mine and in other parts of the country, people were worried that that relationship would be influenced or affected negatively. During our debates on the Bill, we should hold that concern centrally in our minds. I did not hear it from the lips of any of my constituents, but I thought that my right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies) uttered a memorable phrase when he talked about the unbundling of the constitution. In some curious way, that was what people were trying to say--they wanted devolution, but did not want the constitution to be unbundled. It is that careful balance of devolution and remaining part of the United Kingdom that is central to our debates.
I intend to address on Second Reading two central relationships arising from the Bill: first, the assembly- Whitehall-Secretary of State relationship and, secondly, the assembly-Westminster relationship. There are other issues I care about in the Bill, but they can be dealt with in Committee.
In respect of the first relationship, I read with great interest the latest document from the Institute of Welsh Affairs. I am astonished that Conservative Members have not read the documents produced by the institute and thought about the arguments presented in them. I find that, when reading many of the institute's documents about devolution, all I can hear is the sound of axes grinding. I heard them when reading "Making the Assembly work", but I also heard the sound of a large number of pennies dropping.
The document, produced by a traditionally pro- devolution organisation, posed several questions about the relationships between Whitehall, the Secretary of State and the assembly. It asked:
The document went further, stating:
When those questions are asked, and when I hear references such as I heard yesterday to concordats between the assembly and Whitehall Departments, I ask myself whether it is intended that assembly officials and possibly assembly members--who will owe an allegiance to the very different political organisation that is to be known as the national assembly for Wales--are somehow to become enmeshed in Whitehall policy making. If so, how are Whitehall officials to relate to assembly officials?
For example, if members or officials of the assembly enmeshed in the process of confidential discussions on the preparation of a Bill or a major policy decision discover things they feel are not to the best advantage to the membership of the Welsh Assembly, is it to be their duty immediately to break whatever confidentiality applies and report back to the assembly? What is the relationship to be? It is indeed uncharted territory, and it has not yet been explained in this Second Reading debate how the system is to work. I assume that it will be explained in the form of the concordats. If so, the quicker we see them, the better. This is not a marginal issue--it is a matter of fundamental and central concern.
I have been doing some thinking about the practical and political problems that might give rise to anxieties about the relationships between the assembly and Whitehall, and the assembly and central Government. My worries may seem at first sight rather prosaic.
There is, first, the question of standards in health and food safety. Section 16 of the Food Safety Act 1990 is a case in point. The statutory instruments made under that section could scarcely be called politically sexy, one might think. Hon. Members may not feel that they are the meat and drink of British politics--yet it will be under section 16 of the Food Safety Act 1990 that the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will, on 16 December, ban beef on the bone.
Mr. Rhodri Morgan:
That is meat and drink.
Mr. Rowlands:
It certainly is.
We need to know, therefore, how such an issue would be dealt with if it were re-enacted in a few years' time. What, in that event, will be the function and role of the assembly? My right hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli
fastened on this point during an exchange late yesterday evening, which I read with particular interest since I was meaning to raise it myself. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State intervened to say:
Many of the supporters of devolution tend to oversell it. It may be thought that the difficulties facing Welsh farmers at the moment could be dealt with by powers that the assembly will have, but it turns out that certain decisions on food will not belong to the assembly but will remain to be made by the Secretary of State jointly with the Agriculture Minister. So it appears that there will be limitations to the assembly's ability to help farming communities.
Mr. Ron Davies:
My hon. Friend's last assertion is right: no one would claim that the Welsh Assembly will have the ability to deal with matters such as BSE; at least, not by statutory action. I would, however, draw to my hon. Friend's attention two important principles. First, the whole devolution construct is based on the premise that the powers that I exercise will be transferred to the assembly. My hon. Friend, on the other hand, is referring to powers that I exercise jointly with other Ministers. We have always made it clear that certain elements, especially to do with human and animal health, will have to be examined carefully.
The second principle concerns the fact that the powers that I exercise jointly, or retain to be exercised jointly or to transfer back to another Department, will be specified in a transfer order. In Committee, the House will have the opportunity to see exactly how the powers are divided up, during discussion of the transfer order.
Mr. Rowlands:
I am glad of that statement, but these are not matters of mere detail. They are fundamental, as they define the functions of the Secretary of State for Wales at Westminster and in Whitehall and the functions that are to be devolved. That means that we shall need a list or schedule of reserved powers as soon as possible.
"To what extent will the Assembly in practice be permitted to examine policy proposals which are still being formulated by a Ministry, since it will have no formal institutional links?"
The document continued:
"Are all Assembly members to be treated as in the same position vis a vis the Government machine as Ministers who are expected to keep confidential the discussions that precede the decisions as to the exact contents of a Bill?"
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Those are not nit-picking Committee points; they are questions that go to the heart of a vital issue--the relationships between an assembly and Whitehall and an assembly and central Government.
"Against this background the Secretary of State may be drawn into the role of becoming the main link between the Assembly and Whitehall, with a consequent weakening of the direct role of the Assembly and its civil servants in negotiating on policy matters with Whitehall departments."
I shall dwell later on that serious and fundamental issue of how the assembly is to relate to the Whitehall and Westminster machinery of government. It is little wonder that the section concluded:
"With all these issues and questions we are operating in uncharted territory involving constitutional innovations that will need clarification and perhaps certain statutory guarantees."
The issue is of fundamental concern to us all: how is the assembly to relate to central Government?
"matters relating to animal or human health are likely to be reserved."--[Official Report, 8 December 1997; Vol. 302, c. 755.]
I have seen no such statement anywhere else. What else will be reserved to the Secretary of State? These arguments are not marginal: they are central to the relationship between the Government and the assembly.
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