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Mr. Roger Williams: The right hon. Gentleman will accept that the Liberal Democrats, and various other parties, have always favoured devolution as a way of giving the Welsh Assembly primary legislative powers. As he said, a referendum would consult only the Welsh people and not the English, even though the outcome affects them as much as the Welsh. That is why we believe that there should not be a referendum.

Mr. Gummer: I have various problems with that observation. First, it is not true that the Liberal Democrats have always been in favour of devolution. When they managed to win an election in Britain as a whole, they were against it. They were happy not to have devolution when they thought that they could have power in the country as a whole. They became keen on devolution when they lost power, as devolution offered a different opportunity.

Lembit Öpik: The right hon. Gentleman is going back to 1922.

8.15 pm

Mr. Gummer: The hon. Gentleman says that I am going back to 1922, but that is how far one has to go back to find the last time that the Liberals played an active part in British politics.
 
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We have decided that decisions on these matters will be made at a referendum. I oppose referendums, which I consider to be inimical to the British system. However, if the referendum mechanism is to be used, it is vital to ensure that major decisions are arrived at as a result. The affair in question must be settled, at least for a reasonable period of time.

We can argue about how long is reasonable, and I agree that a referendum cannot be held whose result is that no other referendum can ever be held. On the other hand, it cannot be desirable to have a system under which referendums are held so often that people become so fed up with voting that only a few zealots turn out. If those zealots should win by two votes, they would call it a remarkable victory. That is what the Father of the House is worried about, and any democrat should share his concern. The Select Committee was of the same opinion, even though its Chairman holds a view about devolution that is the complete opposite of the one held by the Father of the House.

That shows that serious people with different views can come to the same conclusion on the question of referendums. They agree that a proper timetable is needed to prevent referendums from being used for what may be called "partial" purposes.

The Secretary of State may say that we should not worry about what he and his Ministers do, as they will behave perfectly properly, but that is not my experience of the referendum process in England. The Government wanted to hold three referendums about the governance of the English regions, but when it became clear that they would lose at least two of them, they were not held.

The parallel that I am making is related to the amendment under discussion, as a referendum was held in the north-east. The Government thought that they would win it, but they lost so heavily that the result looked like a vote in an African dictatorship, only in reverse. The Government lost appallingly badly in an area where Ministers were very active and indeed represented parliamentary seats.

My point is that, although the Government failed to win the planned referendums, they nevertheless carried on implementing their regional policy, come what may. That is what could happen in Wales: a referendum is not held because it cannot be won, but the policy that would have followed a victory is implemented anyway.

I should point out that, under this Government, "regionalism" means taking away powers from local government and giving them to a regional assembly. The Government's failure in the first referendum of the proposed three was so bad that the other two were never held but, even so, they were determined to go ahead with the process that they had decided on. That is the problem with this Bill, and it is emphasised in this clause.

The Father of the House made the same point. On no other occasion over many years have he and I agreed on so much. I want to celebrate that: it does not embarrass me, even though it may embarrass him. His reverence for Parliament and his longevity—which I hope to emulate—

Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab): This speech is longer than his.
 
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Mr. Gummer: It is a pleasure for me to say that the observations of the Father of the House contain a very important truth—that the Bill, if it is not dishonest, is deeply flawed. The Bill pretends to have two parts. One part gives some additional powers to the Welsh Assembly, in accordance with the Labour party's manifesto. The other part gives full devolution to Wales, after a referendum.

Unlike many Conservative Members, I am not especially opposed to a devolved structure. However, I do oppose a devolved structure that disfranchises my constituents and renders English Members of Parliament second rate, at least in terms of the powers available to them. I am not opposed to the nature and principle of devolution. I do not stand on the same side as the Father of the House on that. I do think, however, that we ought to face all the issues at once instead of having the system we have, which is a dog's breakfast that fails to recognise the problems of the West Lothian question.

We are being asked to have a referendum on a new basis—that the referendum will be part of normal governmental activity until the Government have managed to achieve devolution. That is what the Bill means. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan) made that very clear, and I believe her to be right.

The parallel with Northern Ireland is manifest nonsense. In the north of Ireland, we have had a continuing situation of violence and disorder. The six counties are constantly upset by two powerful tribal issues: unity and independence from the south. Those battles are unique to that part of the United Kingdom, and, happily, pretty unusual in the world as a whole. The House has always accepted that dealing with the six counties is a matter of total difference from what we do elsewhere because its history is totally different. It would be ridiculous to say that because we have to do X, Y or Z in the north of Ireland, we have to do the same elsewhere, or, indeed, to say that because we want to do something different elsewhere we have for some reason or other to do it in Northern Ireland.

If the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire does not remember what an 8th century pope said, it would be a good idea for him to do so now. In the 8th century, a pope very properly said that Ireland is different and has to be treated differently. It would have been wise of the House to have thought that in the 19th century and to have followed the views of Cardinal Manning instead of those of Lord Salisbury.

The referendum is being presented as a continuous part of governmental life. We shall have it again and again until the people of Wales make the choice that the Secretary of State wants them to make. That seems to me to be the opposite of democracy. It is an example, again, from the Government of Louis Napoleon—Napoleon III. It is how he used referendums. Whenever he found the Government a little difficult or whenever the structure that he had invented produced a result that he did not like, he had a referendum. He even had a particularly nasty and unpleasant one that he called "crowning the edifice". It was held to make sure that what he wanted was voted for, because he arranged for it to work like that. That is one of the reasons why I so deeply object to referendums.
 
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All referendums actually do is ask people the question we want to ask them in the way most calculated to get the answer we want and which is an answer that happens to be true on the day the referendum is held. It is often an answer that has nothing to do with the question, being about what people feel about the Government or whoever asked it. It is a load of nonsense and we should never have joined up to it. I am sorry that my party has agreed to referendums on a whole range of situations in which they are wholly unsuitable.

Having had a referendum in Wales, however, we cannot go for the Liberal concept of slipping a whole matter through because the electorate have made their bed and must lie in it. Nor can we go for the socialist concept of creating a part 3 of the Bill that makes sure that we deliver the whole thing by salami slicing it. Nor, if they do not get it that way, can we allow part 4 to let them have as many referendums as it takes for the Secretary of State for Wales to be able to say to his grandchildren that he was the one who forced devolution on the Welsh. Given the right hon. Gentleman's background, I am not sure that I think he is suitable to do that.

We ought to have a change to this part of the Bill for democratic reasons. We should change it because it makes referendums even more silly than they were in the first place. Above all, we should have a change to remind the people of Wales just how devious the Bill is and how much it is using time in the House of Commons to sew together the divisions in the Labour party.

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