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Mr. Dai Havard (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab): I have a particular view on referendums. I have some sympathy with the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) on them. I do not really like them as a basic idea, but we are in the historical situation that, since Harold Wilson's day, on constitutional issues we have devised the mechanism of referendums. Sometimes we have done so for reasons of political expediency, but they have become part of the fabric.

Interestingly enough, there were thresholds in the referendums that were held in the 1970s. Some say that referendums should not be provided for in the Bill. I say that it is important that the Bill contains a measure that institutionalises the fact that if we are to have primary powers, we will have to have a referendum. There are those who would not want to have one even at that stage. That was part of the discussion that surrounded the Richard commission and so on. There were people who wanted to proceed without such a mechanism. We have to go back to the people.

Those who forget where the last referendums were would do well to go and revisit them. Let us be clear. Only half of the electorate turned out, and only half of those who did voted yes. So, in the words of Antonio Gramsci, we have to temper our enthusiasm with the pessimism of the intellect. We had better not run too far ahead of the people on these questions.

Interestingly enough, I remember the report of the Welsh Affairs Committee, of which my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Dr. Francis) is a member. It was a unanimous report. It was certainly no minority report.
 
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Adam Price: The full quote from Gramsci referred not just to the pessimism of the intellect but to the optimism of the will. How about some of the latter in the hon. Gentleman's remarks?

Mr. Havard: Perhaps I can help the hon. Gentleman. It will not happen very often, but perhaps on this occasion I will help him. What has happened here is that those people have gone away and looked at the reality of where we are now against the historical process that we have come through with regard to referendums in Wales and they have determined that what is more sensible is the sort of proposition that has come from my hon. Friend. It does not debar the process from being revisited within sensible periods of time, but it does stop—I dread to say this because I do not want to start the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) off again about Northern Ireland. It is a strange twist on the "Vote early, vote often" theory that we have had from the Liberal Democrats.

There ought to be a great deal of support for the argument that has come from the Select Committee. It recognises that the mechanism needs to be enshrined in the Bill, but there is a tempered process that provides proper periods for reflection not only by the Houses of Parliament and the Assembly but by the people of Wales so that processes that have been put in place have the opportunity to mature.

The Assembly is a new institution. I forget when it was set up, but it has not had much of a life yet to mature. I differ from the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal in that I struggle with this question. Is the process that we are putting in place sufficient to justify a referendum now? I come down in a different position to him, but if we are going to look for primary powers we have to have a referendum. This seems to me the sensible process that follows that.

David T.C. Davies: I was one of the people who was involved in that last referendum, very much on the "anti" side. It is my experience that a significant number of people in Wales then and now want primary legislative powers. It is also fair to say, and I hope that everyone recognises, that a large number of people in Wales preferred the status quo and believed that Wales best played out its destiny as an integral part of the United Kingdom. I was one of those people; I was proud to be Welsh and proud to be British; proud to be a Welsh Unionist, if you like.

Many people in my situation are disappointed that the door effectively has been slammed shut on any change in the constitutional direction. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Mr. Öpik)seems to think that we should never change direction constitutionally; that we can never make mistakes. Perhaps I may remind my two Liberal Democrat colleagues that one of the biggest constitutional changes this country has ever made was to get rid of the monarchy. The experiment lasted only 11 years. We recognised that we had made a mistake and we went back in the other direction. It is a shame that we slammed the door on doing that in Wales.

Mr. Roger Williams: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the option of full primary legislative powers was never offered to the Welsh people? Is he saying now that he would be happy for the Assembly to be got rid of altogether?
 
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8.30 pm

David T.C. Davies: I would be happy to see another referendum that included that question, but that is my preference, not my party's. There is a slight difference between us on that. I have never made any secret of my view and I shall not pretend that I have changed my mind in the past few weeks. As the hon. Gentleman says, the referendum was on whether to have an Assembly, not a Parliament with primary legislative powers. If we are to have such a Parliament, we should have a full referendum on it.

I do not accept the implication that perhaps more people would have voted in favour of a Welsh Assembly had they been offered a Parliament. Had the Government thought that there was any support for having primary legislative powers in Wales, that would have been on offer in the first place, not the model we have now. Indeed, that would have been a far more coherent way to go about the project.

Lembit Öpik: The hon. Gentleman wrote on 30 June 2005:

"The Government are in the process of giving extra powers to the Welsh Assembly at present. Given the dreadful lack of competence in the areas in which the Assembly has got powers this is something I will be opposing."

There is an enormous difference between what he and his Welsh Conservative colleagues say and what their Front Benchers say. Does he regard a referendum as a potential way to fulfil his own goal of reducing the level of devolution, rather than increasing it or maintaining it at its current level?

David T.C. Davies: Time is short and I shall not go over my views again and again. Suffice it to say that I have not changed my mind. I am one of many people in Wales who did not want the Welsh Assembly, but unlike those who want a Parliament, I accept the situation as it is. I accept that we have an Assembly and I want to see it work, but I cannot accept a situation in which those who want primary legislative powers can come back over and over again, with one referendum after another, until they get the result that they want. That is why I support the amendments.

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Peter Hain): We have had some interesting contributions, and some tantalising bait was dangled before me by the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Havard) and the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies). I shall not bite at that bait because I am concerned about meeting the terms of the programme motion that was unanimously agreed.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Lembit Öpik) for his general support for the Bill, but a Liberal Democrat source was reported in The Times recently as saying that

"the last thing anyone wants is for him to declare for them. They're calling it the curse of Lemsip."

I shall luxuriate in the fact that he does not support me on this occasion.
 
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There is widespread agreement across the House, including the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs. Gillan), that there should be a referendum if we move to primary powers. I also agree with the spirit of amendment No. 189 in the sense that we cannot keep calling referendums until the voters, exhausted, simply say yes. That point was also made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams). The very idea that we should have an "everendum" that just kept going in the way that was described is completely unacceptable and I think that the people of Wales would revolt against it. We need to come down to earth politically on that point.

The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham asked about my motives. My view on the time frame is straightforward. In the end, the question of a referendum is not up to me because it is for the Assembly to initiate the process with a two-thirds majority. If she was asking for my view, I do not think that there is a case for considering holding a referendum in the next term of the Assembly, which will run from 2007 to 2011, because there will be a new political architecture in the Assembly if the Bill is passed and the new streamlined process of powers will be bedding down. I do not think that the issue will arise until at least the following Assembly term. We can all agree that the additional procedures provided under part 3 will need to establish themselves. We will then be able to determine whether that process has provided the streamlined process of decision making for which the Assembly has asked, whether there is a need to call a referendum, or whether a period of conflict has existed between Westminster and Wales that has provoked conditions such as those in the late 1990s that resulted in a turnaround of opinion from that in 1979 and produced the yes vote in 1997.

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