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Mr. Dalyell: How will the farmers get a stronger voice in Brussels?
Mr. Edwards: There will be more direct representation. At present, the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths) is not involved in negotiations in Brussels in the same way as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Agriculture. The Welsh Assembly will provide stronger representation in Europe. [Interruption.] It is clearly a matter of dispute. I hope that my hon. Friend is in favour of stronger representation, and will support any amendments to that end.
There are important challenges. I support the principle of a more democratic Wales through a Welsh Assembly. May I draw attention to one or two key aspects in which I have a particular interest?
First, the Welsh Assembly should have an all-Wales anti- poverty strategy. That offers a rich opportunity. Recently, I attended an excellent conference at Swansea arranged by the city and county of Swansea, which has played a leading role in the development of a local anti-poverty strategy. I hope that it will be a responsibility of the Welsh Assembly to develop an all-Wales anti-poverty strategy, and perhaps a social exclusion unit for Wales, to co-ordinate policy across the assembly's departmental responsibilities, to monitor the implementation of the minimum wage and to develop social and economic policies to attack poverty in Wales.
Secondly, there will be the important challenge of co-ordinating a more effective strategy for care in the community. Like Scotland, Wales is in a distinct position to develop a more co-ordinated strategy for long-term care and support for people with physical and learning disabilities. There has been an effective all-Wales mental handicap strategy, which was widely commended outside Wales. I hope that, under the Welsh Assembly, there will be more co-ordinated all-Wales strategies. They would be the envy of England.
There will and must be safeguards in the Bill. We must expect high standards of public conduct under the Nolan recommendations. We must have--it is in the Bill--an auditor-general for Wales to ensure efficient discharge of public resources. There will be an electoral system to give fair representation. The proposal for an electoral system with an element of proportionality is one of the radical innovations in Britain that has come about as a result of the Bill. True democrats will support the principle of fair representation. The element of proportionality will ensure that the assembly broadly reflects the popular vote for the respective parties in Wales.
A national assembly for Wales provides a new beginning, a new strategic approach, which will be inclusive and will ensure that Wales is a more democratic and better place.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord):
Order. Before I call the next speaker, I remind the House that an awful lot of hon. Members want to speak. Extremely long speeches are being made, and it would be very helpful if they were a little shorter.
Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones (Ynys Mon):
I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in the debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Monmouth (Mr. Edwards) on his speech. We very much welcome him back to the House. We are grateful for the contribution that he has already made to the debate and the cause of Wales.
I want to refer to the speech of the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd)--although I see that he is about to leave the Chamber. Joseph Chamberlain would have been proud of him. It was a good speech, although I profoundly disagreed with his analysis. It was the kind of speech that Chamberlain would have made in the House just over 100 years ago. It was a classic speech in defence of the Union.
The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills must remember why there is a growing demand in Wales for greater democracy and greater accountability. There have been occasions on which the Conservative party has not been kind to Wales. The 18 years of Conservative rule separated the votes in 1979 and 1997. During those 18 years, the kind of principles that the hon. Gentleman enunciated unfortunately meant the centralisation of power, the gradual taking away of powers from local authorities--which he applauded--and their transfer to unelected people, rather than the kind of devolution that he advocated. The then Secretary of State for Wales invariably appointed Conservatives who had been rejected by the Welsh electorate--thrown out by the Welsh people,
but imposed on Wales by the Secretary of State to throw down our throats some of the things that happened over those years.
Although the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills made a classic speech in defence of the Union, he must recognise that there is a mood in Wales for change, which was reflected in the vote on 18 September. It was not the ringing endorsement that those in favour of the proposals wanted, but the difference between the votes in Wales in 1979 and 1997 was substantially greater than the difference in the votes in Scotland.
In his very interesting speech, the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills criticised the proposals for being piecemeal and not part of a coherent approach. That has always been the problem with this House of Commons. It has always approached constitutional change in such a piecemeal way and never really addressed the issue throughout the United Kingdom. One of the reasons why the Liberal party split at the end of the last century was because it failed to grasp that nettle. I ask the hon. Gentleman not to agree with what many of us in Wales are saying but to recognise that things have changed and that the people of Wales want to move forward--although there was a certain reticence among some of them on 18 September.
I recognise that I have spent a little time dealing with the speech of the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills, but I want to deal with one more of his points. I did not take kindly to his referring to us as a bunch of separatists. If he looks back over the 23 or 24 years of Plaid Cymru Members of Parliament, he will realise the extremely valuable contribution that they have made in the Chamber, in Committees and in representing their constituents, especially since 1974. We have been part of the great change in Wales over the past quarter of a century or so. I am sorry to have detained the hon. Gentleman, but it was important to put some of the facts on the record.
The Under-Secretary of State will be aware that we have always maintained a very constructive and positive approach to the proposals that the Government have enshrined in the Bill. We all recognise that, following the result of the referendum, we have a responsibility to all those in Wales--those who voted yes and those who voted no--to ensure that the national assembly begins its work with as much good will and support as we can collectively generate.
Yesterday my right hon. Friend the Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) outlined some of the recent history of the battle to secure greater democracy in Wales and Scotland. That battle has gone on for about 120 years. In the 1880s, we saw the beginning of some of the debates that have culminated in the Bill. I will concentrate on three aspects of the Bill. I recognise that there are ways in which the measure can be improved, and I make my comments in that spirit.
The Bill's main weakness, as Plaid Cymru sees it, is its lack of legislative proposals. Many of the points addressed by the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) could have been solved had the Welsh Assembly been given legislative powers. I recognise that there are debates about the relationship between the assembly and Westminster and the Whitehall machine.
They are well understood. If one reads the White Paper and the Bill, one clearly sees that that matter needs to be addressed.
Although there are no legislative powers in the White Paper and the Bill, there are very limited powers to amend or repeal legislation under the Henry VIII reserve powers. The problem is that the Welsh Assembly will be restricted in some ways in developing policy initiatives. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the assembly wants to do things a little differently in education, health or other areas. It will not have the powers to do so. It will have only limited power through secondary legislation. The way in which we can develop legislation depends on how the primary legislative framework is prepared. It could be narrowly or widely defined. There are certain areas where we could do a great deal and others where we would be very restricted.
Recognising that the assembly will not have legislative powers, Plaid Cymru has put forward what I think many people regard as an interesting suggestion. If the assembly considers that it might be necessary for minor legislative changes, all that would happen under the Bill is that the proposal would go to the back of the queue in Westminster. We all know how difficult it is to get Bills through the Queen's Speech and into the legislative programme. Might it not be possible to accept a minor amendment to enable some fast-track procedure in Whitehall to deal with such a problem--if there were, say, a clear wish of a two-thirds majority in the assembly?
Why not revamp the Welsh Grand Committee? That proposal might find favour with some hon. Members who might have difficulty understanding the correct relationship between Westminster and the assembly. Under such a fast-track procedure, the Grand Committee could deal with Second Reading and Committee stages of legislation, and later stages could be taken in the Chamber. By that means, the assembly would not be frustrated in carrying out some of its work. Negotiations would still need to be held between the Secretary of State, the Government and the assembly about which Bills would be appropriate for that procedure, but I ask the Minister seriously to consider that proposal.
6.40 pm
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