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Mr. Ron Davies: It is not needed.
Mr. Jenkin: That bears out the foreboding of Government Members who have spoken of devolution in terms of the Balkanisation or unbundling of Britain, and have warned that we are embarking on a constitutional magical mystery tour. Their prescience before seeing the terms of the Bill was admirable. The chill of their words is now all the more striking.
If there is to be devolved government for Wales, we want a scheme that will work. To achieve that, it must be clear, practical, have some prospect of stability and enjoy the broad and informed consent of the people. The Bill satisfies none of those criteria. My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) was right to say that it was the start, not the end, of many years of argument.
Far from giving Wales a voice in Britain and in Europe, where so many of the key decisions affecting the future of Wales are made, the Bill looks set to cut Wales off from the main stream of European and British politics, leaving the Welsh to voice the concerns of their now divided nation to nobody but themselves. Look what happened when Northern Ireland was given Stormont: the long tradition of politicians such as Castlereagh, who played a leading role in the governance of the United Kingdom, was directly ended. Northern Irish politics drew in upon itself, and the parties and politics ceased to have much to do with Westminster. Is that the new destiny for Wales? The Conservatives in Wales are determined to avert such a disaster.
We shall fight for sense and certainty in Wales, whatever constitutional contraptions the Labour party is determined to create in pursuit of its sectional interests. Wales has played a long and vital role in the history of the United Kingdom, and it has benefited accordingly. That must continue. I should have thought that Ministers would assent to that proposition.
We shall argue long and hard for the improvements that the Bill needs in the interests of Wales. We hope that the Government may yet find the humility to listen and to accept that their creations are not beyond perfection. Then we shall once again put our shoulder to the wheel of elections in Wales, to ensure that sensible voices are raised in the assembly for the benefit of Wales. That is our pledge to the House, to Wales and to the United Kingdom as a whole.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Win Griffiths):
We have had another day of wide-ranging, interesting debate. It is striking that the
Mr. Deputy Speaker:
Order. There must be no interruptions from Front Benchers.
Mr. Griffiths:
I thank Labour Members for their contributions. I also thank the hon. Members for Ynys Mon (Mr. Jones) and for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd). While I see little prospect of the fast-track procedure becoming reality, it is at least something that can be considered, a constructive contribution to the debate. All we have had from the Tories is a look back to the old British empire and the way in which the Union was organised in the 19th century.
The turnout argument was repeated. We must consider it in the context of the fact that 80 per cent. of the people who voted in the general election voted for parties committed to a referendum on a Welsh Assembly. In the referendum, it is true that almost 50 per cent. of the people did not vote. It can be argued that those people were content and did not feel the need to take part, that they were bemused and did not feel they had enough knowledge to vote, or that they had full confidence in the Labour Government to deliver an assembly. The overall impact is that only 25 per cent. of people voted against having one.
It is the job of this Parliament to carry through the White Paper, which had a majority, and to take account of the issues that have been raised. I am pleased that my hon. Friends the Members for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands), for Monmouth (Mr. Edwards), for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith), for Cardiff, North (Ms Morgan), for Clwyd, West (Mr. Thomas) and for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Ms Lawrence) all tried to advance positive proposals to improve the Bill.
Mr. Shepherd:
The Welsh electorate were directly asked whether they supported the Government's proposals. Only 25 per cent. said yes and 25 per cent. said no. As for the 50 per cent. who did not vote, every constitutional arrangement from that in ancient Greece onwards has accepted that that does not represent support for a proposition. That is the reality.
Mr. Griffiths:
The reality is that the House enacted a referendum Bill that set the rules. Those rules were met, and however much the hon. Gentleman may be disconcerted by the result, and upset that we did not set the sort of thresholds that he recalls from ancient Greece or wherever, the fact is that this House enacted a Bill to which the Welsh people responded positively. We are now moving forward.
Mr. Griffiths:
The point is that the Bill will give the people of Wales what they have lacked for so long.
We want to make sure that the power which was previously concentrated in London and Cardiff is given to the Welsh people and that the Government are responsive to their needs through the elected assembly. The assembly is about bringing the pervasive network of Welsh quangos under democratic control for the first time. It is about ensuring that they work efficiently to serve the needs of Wales--the whole of Wales. The assembly will replace secrecy and the threat of corruption with openness and transparency. It is about creating a national assembly for Wales and for all its people, whatever their background, whatever their views, and wherever they live in Wales.
The assembly is a new form of government, which will draw the best practice from both national and local government, but it will also innovate where there is a need for greater accountability and greater ownership by the people of Wales.
Mr. St. Aubyn:
If the Minister is so confident of the case for the proposal, why did his Government not provide any money for the alternative argument put by the no campaign, so that the result of the referendum was accepted as fair by everyone?
Mr. Griffiths:
Because we gave no money for the yes campaign, either. The truth of the matter is that each campaign had to provide its own resources.
Mr. Jenkin:
Will the Minister give way?
Mr. Griffiths:
In a moment. I want to deal with another point.
Some interesting points were raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands). He dealt with a number of details on constitutional relationships, transfer orders, concordats, where the sympathies of civil servants would lie, and so on. The civil servants in the assembly will serve the elected members of the assembly. They will not be servants of the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State will have his own small office of civil servants to provide for his role at Westminster and in Cardiff. Nor will they be servants of other Ministers in Whitehall, any more than the Welsh Office civil servants owe their loyalty to another Department now.
As for concordats, they will be voluntary matters. It will be for the Departments and the assembly to determine and agree them, but they will both have an
interest in good communications. The implementation of primary legislation will depend heavily on the secondary legislation and administrative action of the assembly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney raised several issues in the context of the Institute of Welsh Affairs report and its concerns about the relationship between civil servants, the assembly and Whitehall, which, I have to confess, rest on a rather old-fashioned view of policy-making. In the past, the influence of Wales was confined to a secret world. We know that, in future, such influence will not be exercised solely by the Secretary of State at the Cabinet table, as used to be the case, when Welsh Office civil servants were confined to confidential meetings in Whitehall.
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