The Chairman: It might be helpful if I remind Members of the timing of the debate. We have from now until 11.25 am. We will meet again at 2 pm, with Mr. Martin Caton in the Chair, and the debate on the motion can continue until 4 o’clock.

The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Peter Hain): I beg to move,

For the benefit of the Committee members—and after seeking your approval, Mr. Jones, and that of others—I thought it would be appropriate for my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon to open the debate as we are discussing his Committee’s very important report.

Mrs. Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con): I wonder if you could advise me on something, Mr. Jones. The Secretary of State has moved the motion to discuss the report produced by the Welsh Affairs Committee. We have received a copy of a letter, dated 5 October, that was written to the Chairman of that Committee from the Secretary of State. It states that the Welsh language competence order, which was the subject of scrutiny, has been changed. Furthermore, we have received a written statement from the Welsh Assembly Government, which also changes the subject matter of that order. Paragraph 12 of the Select Committee’s ninth report, which we are debating, states:

From the two documents, it is clear that substantial changes have been made to the order. I presume that the Secretary of State is not going to quarrel with the recommendation of the Select Committee. I understand that the Select Committee met yesterday, but we still do not know the outcome of that meeting. We do not have an order to look at, and the report has been superseded by what has passed on through formal documentation, although what legal status it has I do not know. May I ask you for a ruling, Mr. Jones, as to whether it would be more sensible, in the interests of Wales, the Welsh people and doing proper justice for the Welsh language that we delay this sitting of the Welsh Grand Committee until possibly next week. It is not a question of delaying proceedings; it is just so that we can have the right documentation in front of the Committee.

Mr. Hain: Further to that point of order, Mr. Jones. Can I just say to the Committee and remind the hon. Lady that further to that point of order—[Interruption.]

Mrs. Gillan: It was not a point of order.

Mr. Hain: I do not know what it was if it was not a point of order. This Committee has been convened to consider the motion on the report. In addition, I circulated, as the hon. Lady has fairly pointed out, my response to the report to every member of the Committee, including her, in an e-mail sent on 6 October at 9.24 last week. It may also be helpful to point out to the hon. Lady that Standing Order No. 102 does not allow the Committee to consider delegated legislation on a formal motion, unlike the position for the Northern Ireland and Scotland Grand Committees, where the relevant Standing Orders do permit such consideration. What we are doing is considering the report. It is a very important report and I think we should get on with it.

Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op) rose—

Dr. Hywel Francis (Aberavon) (Lab) rose—

Mrs. Gillan rose—

The Chairman: May I tell the hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham that that was a point of order, and I took it as such? I am now going to move on because, as she will see from the Question that has just been put to the Committee, the report, as issued by the Committee, is the one that is being considered by this Committee today. I therefore intend to move on and that is my ruling.

Dr. Francis: Bore da. Diolch yn fawr.

May I begin, Mr. Jones, by thanking you and Mr. Caton for agreeing to this new format? Through you, may I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales, for proposing that format following discussions with me on behalf of the Welsh Affairs Committee? I bring the report from my Committee on the Welsh language legislative competence order to the Welsh Grand Committee with pride, because it enjoyed unanimous support. However, it is challenging, too, because it poses alternative solutions. We arrived at our approach because we were impressed by the remarkable enthusiasm and good will towards the Welsh language. At the outset, I urged my Committee to recognise the contributions to the protection and enhancement of the Welsh language of all four main parties in Westminster that represent the Welsh people, both English and Welsh-speaking. We started from that agreed position of mutual respect and support. I believe that we all desire to see the Welsh language prosper and flourish, and to do so in a particular enabling and democratic context. Professor Colin Williams, a leading academic in Wales, characterised that spirit when he spoke of a

There is, however, concern in some quarters that new Welsh language legislation might harm the economy. For that reason, I reflect on our recent history to seek to harmonise and unify work around the language and the economy.

It does not take much of an imaginative leap from that approach to the powerful slogan, “Heb gwaith, dim iaith”—without work there is no language—which was used in the 1980s to defend Welsh rural and industrial communities. It was attributed to two very different—what I would call “quasi-revolutionary”—organisations: the Welsh Language Society and the south Wales area branch of the National Union of Mineworkers, which worked closely together during the miners’ strike of 1984-85 and used the slogan effectively. In reality, it appears to owe its origins, as I have said many times in the House, to the slate-quarrying communities of north Wales in the 1940s and 1950s, and it was popularised by the late Goronwy Roberts, a Labour MP for Caernarvon, and probably also by the late Lord Cledwyn. On reflection, it could also have been used by Liberals such as Lloyd George or Lord Geraint; Conservatives—notably Lord Roberts of Conwy; Labour authorities such as Flintshire and Glamorganshire, early promoters of bilingual education; and even today’s CBI Wales leaders. The late Gwynfor Evans most certainly endorsed such campaigning throughout his political life in calling for the survival of rural and industrial communities all over Wales.

In our lifetimes, tens of thousands of people have become convinced that Welsh is not a dying language, as I heard it was too frequently in the Cardiff of my youth. Many of the thousands who have been convinced over the past 50 years were practical visionaries, such as the late Norah Isaac of Trinity college, Carmarthen, who told us to take pride not only in our language but in our many indigenous dialects, and my late father who would scold us children if he heard English on the hearth: “Beth yw’r Saesneg mawr hyn?”

Building on that sea change, the challenge before us as a people is to ensure that the Welsh language is part of the wider world, both culturally and economically as Professor Colin Williams has suggested, and that it exists within a thriving economy, recognising the potentially positive and benign interrelationship between work and both our languages. The evidence from the two seemingly contrasting bodies, Cymdeithas yr Iaith and CBI Wales, was complementary. They were united in their recognition of that powerful axiom: “heb gwaith, dim iaith”. Our starting point, therefore, was to find common ground between us all, built on a genuine cross-party approach.

Could I just say a little about the process? The role of the Welsh Affairs Committee in the pre-legislative scrutiny of legislative competence orders has often been misunderstood. We are responsible for taking a proposed order and testing it against the evidence we receive from interested parties, including businesses, industry, charities, the voluntary sector, campaign groups and Ministers from both the Wales Office and the Welsh Assembly Government. It is not our role to rewrite proposed orders nor do we attempt to do so in our reports. Nor do we speculate on measures. I have firmly stopped members of my Committee trying to introduce discussion on such measures. I see a number of members of the Committee nodding assent from a sedentary position.

Our inquiries take a proposed order that has been given to us for scrutiny and check whether it is likely to fulfil the aim for which it has been designed or whether there are problems with the drafting that might lead to unintended consequences or difficulties further down the line. After we have published a report at the end of our inquiry, the Wales Office and the Welsh Assembly Government will consider whether they want to redraft the order before submitting it to Parliament for approval. We hope that they will listen to our recommendations and improve the order. I must say on behalf of the Committee that we are delighted that that has happened in this case. After all, it is the purpose of pre-legislative scrutiny to highlight any potential problems so that they can be resolved at an early stage. Pre-legislative scrutiny of these LCOs helps to ensure that the people of Wales have a robust legislative framework within which the Assembly can go on and make measures.

In the case of the Welsh language LCO, I thought that it was important to hear the widest possible range of views from all parts of Welsh society. I arranged to hear evidence through the medium of Welsh for this inquiry and the Committee took oral evidence from Welsh language groups, including Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, Mudiadau Dathlu’r Gymraeg, the Welsh Language Board, the CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses, telecommunications and utilities industries. We also heard evidence from the Catalan Government about their experience of language law. We received a substantial amount of written evidence, including many individual submissions from members of the public. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to contact us, including those still writing to the Secretary of State for Wales and copying their messages to me demanding that we hurry up with our report. I was delighted to inform them that we published our report more than three months ago. I am proud to say that a number of organisations gave evidence in Welsh and a significant majority of members of my Committee asked questions in Welsh. I am also proud of the work that they devoted to this important inquiry. A number of people who contacted us asked us to complete our work as quickly as possible. As Chairman, my objective is to ensure that the Committee does a proper job of scrutiny as effectively and as expeditiously as possible. I believe that we achieved that aim. I gave a personal undertaking to the Welsh Assembly Government’s Culture Minister, Mr. Alun Ffred Jones, that we would deliver our report before the summer recess and he has thanked us for that several times.

Our scrutiny of the Welsh language order ran in parallel with that of an Assembly Committee which was looking at the same order. Members of my Committee held a very productive meeting with members of that Committee towards the end of our evidence-gathering process at which we exchanged views about the order and discussed the main issues which came up in evidence. In my view, the Assembly Committee produced an excellent report and many of our recommendations build on the suggestions that it made. I would like to place on record my personal thanks to its Chair, Mr. Mark Isherwood AM, for the close working relationship we managed to develop during that period.

Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab): It is important to put on record, when considering timetabling and indeed the workload of the Welsh Affairs Committee in the pre-legislative scrutiny process, that not only did we do that LCO but some important work on other LCOs—namely, environment and mental health—and gave all three equal consideration and, as my hon. Friend said, did a proper job.