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Mr. Winterton: I am sure that the House is grateful for the right hon. Gentleman's reply to the question posed by the Scottish National party; but I am not wearing a party political hat, and I therefore cannot be expected to comment on his observation. I am here in the hope of representing--as I have so many times in the past--what my Committee and I hope is the best interest of the House of Commons.
Let me say, in a conciliatory way, that I know the Government favoured an evolutionary approach in the drafting of the concordats. I do not think, however, that the Government had much choice: I do not think that they could do other than feel their way gingerly through the constitutional minefield that they had created. Let me tell the Secretary of State, and the House as a whole, that the Procedure Committee, too, has decided on an evolutionary approach to the matters within its remit.
Huge constitutional issues remain unresolved, however. The concordats are a start. The Procedure Committee's recommendations are also a start, but they will not be enough in themselves; perhaps the speech by the Leader of the House showed that. I am grateful to her for being reasonably flexible. Although I have some criticism of her and of the answers that the Government have provided to our report, on many issues, she has left the door open for action and for changes to Standing Orders and procedures of the House. Some serious thinking has to be done by everyone who wishes our Union to be strong and stable in future.
I welcome the Government reply to our report, although with some reservations. The memorandum of understanding states--it is worth reading it out--
Implementing devolution without changing the procedures of the House is like giving a person one's wallet but keeping a string of elastic attached to it: he has the wallet in his hand, but if he wants to use it to make a purchase that one disapproves of, one tug and the two are locked in conflict.
We have decided to hand over powers. Let us, then, do it properly and accept that the House will have to curtail some of its activities in consequence of Parliament's decision. It would be unfair--I hope that the hon. Member for Edinburgh, South (Mr. Griffiths), who is a distinguished member of our Committee, agrees with my sentiments--to the devolved legislatures not to do just that.
The Government have replied to our report and have indicated that they wish to retain the Grand Committees. There seems to be a misunderstanding in the Government's mind about Grand Committees and the Procedure Committee's recommendation. The Procedure Committee gave the matter careful consideration. We suggested not abolishing the Grand Committees, which would close the option for all time, but suspending them for the period of the experiment in Westminster Hall to find out whether there was an on-going purpose for the Grand Committees. My own view is that they should go, but in its wisdom the Committee rightly said that, in the interim, while we learn a bit more about devolution, they should be suspended.
The matter that I am most clear about is that, once devolution is achieved, there is no place in the House of Commons for Grand Committees--which, I remind the House and those who perhaps have come to the House only in recent times--were set up as substitutes for devolution.
I understand that the Government do not wish to crowd rewarding debates out of sittings in Westminster Hall, but that is to miss the point. The Grand Committees will be
concerned with reserved matters, or perhaps with devolved ones. The argument against debating devolved matters in the Grand Committees is surely obvious to the House. The temptation in those Committees to second-guess devolved legislatures will be considerable.
We must recognise that, following the Scotland Act 1998, the House is now concerned with reserved matters. Reserved matters are reserved for good reason: as has been said, they pertain to the United Kingdom as a whole. The Procedure Committee accepts that there may be a need for debates on reserved matters as they pertain to Scotland or Wales and that such debates may be of particular interest to Scottish or Welsh Members, but all Members--I repeat, all Members--of the House of Commons potentially have an interest in such matters; the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross made that very point. We need to know how United Kingdom policies work throughout the United Kingdom. As has been pointed out, the Grand Committees, which are limited in their membership, are no longer an appropriate forum for such debates.
Sir Raymond Powell (Ogmore):
On that very issue, as a Welsh Member who has been in the House for 20 years and regularly attended the Welsh Grand Committee, I can say that the purpose that it served was to allow Welsh Members to express opinions--it was very limited, but it was especially in connection with Wales.
I, too, have in the past served on the Committee appointing Members to serve on the House's Committees. Having read the list of the Members appointed, I cannot understand why, to my knowledge, not one Welsh Member served on the Procedure Committee, with the result that the views of Welsh Members were not expressed to the hon. Gentleman when the Procedure Committee was talking about the Welsh Grand Committee.
Mr. Winterton:
The hon. Gentleman has been in the House for many years. I happen to have been here for 28 years, if we are making play of how long we have been here. We took evidence from the Welsh Grand Committee and from the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones), who chairs that Committee with great distinction. We also took evidence from the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, so those who come from the Principality contributed considerably to the evidence that we took for our report. The hon. Gentleman has, I believe, been a Whip of his party. It is not up to me as Chairman to dictate who is appointed to my Committee. Sadly, that is done through the usual channels--that dark hole that many people refer to from time to time.
Towards the end of our inquiry, we were fortunate to have appointed to our Committee a Member of the United Kingdom Parliament from Scotland, but it took me quite a lot of effort and representation behind the scenes to get a Member who represents a very important part of the Union of the United Kingdom, north of Hadrian's wall, on our Committee. If there was any implied criticism of the Committee or me as Chairman, it was misdirected and off target. It does not lie with me to decide who serves on my Committee. That is no cause for criticism of the Chair.
In shadowing the Secretaries of State, the territorial Committees will inevitably touch on the work of many, if not all, the United Kingdom Departments. Moreover, the
territorial Committees will inevitably have much contact with the devolved legislatures. That is, as hon. Members have said, already the case, and I hope that it will continue to be so.
Surely it would be better to appoint freestanding Committees now. That would abandon the pretence that the Committees should concentrate on "expenditure and administration", when much of that responsibility in relation to Scotland and Wales has been devolved. It would also make future amendments to the Committees' terms of reference very much more simple. I am sure that, eventually, relations between Westminster and the devolved legislatures will necessitate an amendment to the territorial Committees for Wales and Scotland, and possibly Northern Ireland.
Our report deals with one matter that may soon become very pressing: co-operation between Westminster and the devolved legislatures. The Government seem unaware of the real difficulties in formal co-operation, saying that--like me--they hope that
In this House, we operate under the protection of parliamentary privilege and the privilege of the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840. We have a near-complete protection--it is so good that we are hardly aware of it. Our speeches in debates, our proceedings in Select Committees and the documents prepared for those Committees are all protected. Our colleagues in the devolved legislatures have no such complete privilege. That technical subject is dealt with in our report. Now, I shall merely point out that, although it would be possible to do much by informal agreement, it is also possible that Committees will find that formal co-operation is much more satisfactory.
I tell the Scottish Secretary that I would be a bit queasy and uneasy about Committees informally exchanging papers with bodies outside the House--they need the authority of Standing Orders to exchange papers with one another--if the House had not previously agreed to the principle of such changes.
I understand why the Government have not yet proceeded with some Standing Order changes. In our report, we note that it is not for Westminster to prescribe the nature of the relationship with devolved bodies. As the Scottish Secretary has said, such relationships must evolve, and both sides will have an influence on their evolution. There are, however, legal questions to be addressed, and I trust that the Leader of the House and the Scottish Secretary will recognise that, in time, there may have to be a resolution of the House, and meaningful Standing Order changes, to comply with the recommendations of our report.
"The United Kingdom Parliament retains the absolute right to debate, enquire into or make representations about devolved matters. It is ultimately for Parliament to decide what use to make of that power, but the UK Government will encourage the UK Parliament to bear in mind the primary responsibility of devolved legislatures and administrations in these fields and to recognise that it is a consequence of Parliament's decision to devolve certain matters that Parliament itself will in future be more restricted in its field of operation."
I could not agree more. That chimes with the first of the guiding principles that the Procedure Committee identified in discussing devolution, a principle with which the Government agree:
"In passing the legislation which underlies devolution, Parliament has agreed that certain powers and responsibilities should pass from it to the devolved legislatures; parliamentary procedure or custom should not be called in aid to undermine that decision."
The Government are right that it is for the House, not the Government, to determine its own procedures, but the House can do that only if the Government in due course table the proposals for procedural change that would allow it to do so. In its report, the Committee identified several procedural changes that should be made in response to devolution. I pay tribute to all members of the Committee who played an important role in the inquiry and the report that we produced, to those who came before us as individuals or as Committee Chairmen to give evidence and, of course, to the staff of our Committee.
"the House will not take too restrictive a view of its procedures"
in such relations with the devolved countries of the United Kingdom. However, the problems arise from statute, not from procedure.
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