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Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con): Very centralising.
Mr. Hain: The shadow Attorney-General mutters from a sedentary position that that is very centralising, but it is very much in tune with the settlement endorsed by the people of Wales, which puts Parliament in charge and allows the Assembly to have extra powers—
Mr. Grieve: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Mr. Hain: I am happy to give way, but I am not clear who is speaking for the Conservatives from the Front Bench. The shadow Welsh Secretary is welcome to intervene on me. If the shadow Attorney-General wants to do her job for her, I am happy to have him do it.
Mr. Grieve: The Secretary of State says that the proposal is in tune with the people of Wales and with democratic principles, but that is the very thing that the Bill is not, because it provides a mechanism for Government by Orders in Council, bypassing the scrutiny of this House and doing so without asking the Welsh people whether that is the system that they wish to have. Would he please address that issue, because it is fundamental?
Mr. Hain: I will do so with great enthusiasm. There is the Conservative party seeking to speak with a modern, consensual voice in the language and rhetoric of its new leader, but actually returning to the old anti-devolution, anti-Wales, anti-Welsh Assembly politics.
Let me respond to the hon. Gentleman's point by quoting the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Nick Bourne. He said:
We either need to move forward to legislative powers or abolish the assembly and I think that's not an option. We've got to see how we can move things forward and that's got to mean legislative powers."
He was accepting the need for new powers, whereas it appears that Conservative Front Benchers do not want to do that.
Mr. Grieve:
The Secretary of State clearly did not listen to what I said to him. I did not suggest that there was anything undemocratic about devolving further powers to the Welsh Assembly. If the Government wish to give the Welsh Assembly primary legislative
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functions—for which they provide in the Bill— they can do so, if they can secure the approval of the Welsh people by referendum. But that is not what the Government are trying to do in the Bill. The most important part of it is about bypassing, ultimately, both the Assembly and this place to govern by Order in Council. What is the democratic justification for such an extraordinary system?
Mr. Hain: I realise that the hon. Gentleman is not a Welsh Member of Parliament, but he clearly does not understand the Bill. The Bill provides for Parliament to be in charge, just as it is now. Instead of providing for the devolving of powers to the Assembly through primary legislation, it provides an opportunity to devolve powers to the Assembly through Orders in Council—subject, as I shall explain, to prior scrutiny. And Conservative Front Benchers propose a referendum on that! What a bizarre, astonishing idea, and one that would cost £7 million.
Can the hon. Gentleman imagine asking local people on their doorsteps, "Do you want to vote yes or no on whether measures should be decided through primary legislation or through Orders in Council?"? Can he imagine the response that he would receive?
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab): Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the great successes of the devolution settlement since 2001 has been the development of consideration of legislation by means of pre-legislative scrutiny through joint committees of the Assembly and the House of Commons? We have heard no call from the Conservatives previously for a referendum to seek the consent of the people of Wales to the procedure that already operates.
Mr. Hain: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That illustrates the absurdity of the Conservative party, whose Front Benchers have contrived to get into a lather about this issue while hiding their anti-devolution, anti-Welsh Assembly, anti-Wales position. They are still the same old Tories.
Mrs. Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con): I think that we should look quite closely at what the Secretary of State proposes in the Bill. Lord Richard has said:
"Let's be frank about it, it is a device to avoid having to come to Westminster and ask for primary powers to be formally devolved . . . you end up with . . . a situation in which Cardiff ends up with greater powers, Westminster can say they have not devolved primary legislative powers".
Is that not what the right hon. Gentleman is trying to do? He is trying to keep the Labour party happy at Westminster and the Labour party happy in the Welsh Assembly. He will end up appeasing neither, and cheating the people of Wales.
Mr. Hain:
So there we have it: the first words spoken from the Dispatch Box by the hon. Lady, with her customary eloquence and courtesy. What did she say? She tried to construct a fantasy argument about Orders in Council versus Bills in the House, both of which are subject to the sovereign will of the House. If Parliament
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does not want to pass the Orders in Council, it does not have to. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) made clear, they will—I hope—be subject to a process of prior scrutiny very similar to that which has been applied so successfully to Welsh legislation in recent years.
Huw Irranca-Davies : Will my right hon. Friend note the words of the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), whom I, too, welcome to her new role? She was quoted in the Western Mail of 17 December as saying:
Does my right hon. Friend see anything in the Opposition's amendment that would build on what has been achieved by the Assembly, or does he suspect that the Opposition are tearing down the whole devolution process?
Mr. Hain: I suspect that it is exactly the latter. It is a wrecking amendment. The Conservatives, at the first opportunity, are asking us to kill the Bill. They could have achieved a debate, vote and decision on their concerns by tabling three new clauses on a referendum on bringing into force the part 3 Orders in Council, and an amendment to clause 7 on dual candidacy. If they were acting in the spirit of consensus promised by the Leader of the Opposition and echoed by the shadow Secretary of State, that is what they could have done. Instead, they have chosen to try to kill the Bill at the first opportunity; the same old anti-devolution, anti-Welsh conservatives.
Mr. Elfyn Llwyd (Meirionnydd Nant Conwy) (PC): In agreeing with the Secretary of State, may I say that the reasoned amendment is the most unreasonable thing that I have seen in a long time and defies any scrutiny? It is absolute nonsense. On Orders in Council, will the Salisbury convention apply to proposed legislation by whoever governs in Cardiff? Were he, of his own volition, to say that he was not prepared to accept a measure from the National Assembly, should not there be some form of review or appellate procedure within the Bill?
Mr. Hain: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point in the first part of his question and asks a reasonable question to follow. If we were to see an unreasonable or anti-Welsh Secretary of State—[Interruption.] If we saw another Secretary of State of the kind that we had in the 1990s before 1997, clearly there could be some tension, but there could be tension now. Under the existing settlement, it is far worse. A Welsh Assembly Government seeking to get an agreement from Parliament to allow it to take extra powers would have to fight for space in the Queen's Speech, so there is a business management obstacle as well as a policy principle one. At least we will now have an hour and a half of debate in the House, providing a much better settlement.
I do not think that any appellate procedure is necessary because, as the hon. Gentleman will note, I have provided up to a maximum of 60 sitting days, including weekends, for a proper explanation to be
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given by the Secretary of State if he or she is not proceeding with a request. That would be subject to judicial review, providing the necessary safeguards.
Mr. Llwyd: Far be it from me to take bread from the mouths of my fellow lawyers, but surely we should put within the Bill a procedure to avoid having to run back and forth to the High Court. Hitherto, the only assurance given in the White Paper is that the Secretary of State, or his successor, should not turn down legislation for a trivial reason. In two or three places in the Bill—clauses 98 and 101, I believe—there are references to the Supreme Court. Could we not put in a form of reference to the Supreme Court to see whether the reason given was reasonable? That would be quicker than going through judicial review and, in my view, far better.
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