The Chairman: Before I call the Minister, I inform the Committee that if there is a Division in the House on the programme motion being debated, I will suspend the Committee for 15 minutes.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Wayne David): I beg to move,

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Caton.

The order has already been approved by the National Assembly for Wales. It is wide-ranging, embracing many aspects of environmental policy and touching on a large number of other policy areas including energy, transport and defence. It has benefited from pre-legislative scrutiny by the Welsh Affairs Committee, the Constitution Committee in the other place and a Committee of the National Assembly for Wales. The draft order is better for that scrutiny, and I am grateful to the Committees for the work they have undertaken. I shall return to the changes that were made following the scrutiny in a moment.

Environmental challenges such as air pollution, waste management and litter affect us all. Welsh Ministers currently have a broad range of Executive powers relating to the environment, but they are piecemeal, and gaps prevent the Assembly Government from delivering particular policies or restricting reforms to specific areas of environmental regulation.

In waste management, for example, Welsh Ministers do not have the power to ensure that certain high-priority waste materials are prioritised for collection, or to prevent key recyclable materials from being sent to landfill. This legislative competence order will give the National Assembly the power to make its own laws to protect and improve the environment, legislating to help the Assembly Government implement their environmental strategies and create a more sustainable Wales. It will also enhance the democratic process by enabling the Assembly to decide on legislation on the environment, an area where only Welsh Ministers currently have powers.

The LCO will provide competence to legislate to protect and improve the environment in three main areas: waste, pollution and nuisances that affect the quality of the local environment. It includes four matters: matter 6.1, which deals with preventing, reducing, collecting, managing, treating or disposing of waste; matter 6.2, which deals with the disposal of waste in the sea if the waste has been collected, managed or treated on land; matter 6.3, which deals with protecting or improving the environment in relation to pollution; and matter 6.4, which deals with protecting or improving the environment in relation to nuisances, which are further defined in the LCO.

The LCO includes several fixed exceptions to each of the matters and general, or floating, exceptions that apply to all matters in schedule 5 to the Government of Wales Act 2006. They reflect the need to specify the often complex boundary between devolved and non-devolved areas of policy on the environment.

The Committees that scrutinised the proposed LCO made several recommendations. They were largely concerned with making the LCO easier to understand, providing clarity about what is within and outside the Assembly’s competence and avoiding unnecessary duplication. The UK and Welsh Assembly Governments considered the recommendations carefully and made several changes to the LCO which are reflected in the draft before us today.

The first change has been to create two matters dealing with waste, rather than the single waste matter contained in the proposed LCO. Matter 6.1 now deals primarily with waste on land, and matter 6.2 deals with waste on land that is disposed of in the sea. This change has been made to help clarify the scope of the Assembly’s competence in respect of waste. It has also enabled the definition of “Wales” to be rationalised, so it is the same as that which has applied in other LCOs. Scrutiny of the proposals in this House and in Cardiff bay had highlighted that as an area of concern.

Secondly, several key exceptions and definitions have been removed from the LCO, and others have been clarified to sharpen their meaning. This reflects the concern of the scrutiny Committees that the order should not be so technical and complex as to become unintelligible and inaccessible to the lay reader. I am sure that all hon. Members share that sentiment, and I assure all those present that the LCO now includes only those exceptions and definitions that we consider absolutely necessary to ensure that the legislative competence being conferred is accurately described and that the boundaries between devolved and non-devolved areas of competence are clear.

The Welsh Affairs Committee and the Constitution Committee in the other place also recommended that easily readable guidance be prepared to enable the lay reader better to understand the LCO. I am pleased that the Welsh Assembly Government have recently published a short guide to the LCO, which is available on their website.

Concerns were expressed during scrutiny about the general or floating exceptions that are being inserted into schedule 5 by the LCO. The Government and the Welsh Assembly Government believe that it is necessary to include those exceptions in the order. They would apply to all matters in schedule 5 to the Government of Wales Act 2006, but have a particularly strong relationship to environment policy, especially pollution. Measures that may be passed using the powers conferred by the LCO may have a direct bearing on electricity generation, nuclear power, road transport, shipping, aviation and water policy. Including those general exceptions clearly delineates the respective roles of the Government and the Welsh Assembly Government in policy areas that impact on the environment. That will enable us to work together in a co-operative and co-ordinated way as we take work forward.

The majority of exceptions fall within three areas of national UK policy interest: energy, transport and defence. The exceptions in a fourth policy area—the marine environment—reflect the fact that the legislative regime for managing the waters around the United Kingdom, including important new roles for Welsh Ministers, have been set out clearly in the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009.

Hon. Members will be aware that the LCO remains relatively complex, but the changes simplify it, and make it easier to understand.

Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op): My hon. Friend has outlined how the Welsh Assembly Government and the Wales Office have responded to the comments by the Welsh Affairs Committee and the Committee in the Welsh Assembly. He referred to our concern that the explanatory memorandum, as with explanatory memorandums in this place, is rather more complex than what it seeks to explain. He also said that our comments about the need for a simple guide have been responded to and that there is something on the Assembly’s website. Is that simple guide available to members of this Committee?

Mr. David: I am sure that it could be made available to the Committee. I do not have copies to hand, but the Clerks will doubtless ensure that immediately after our sitting copies are sent or e-mailed to hon. Members.

Importantly, none of the changes significantly affect the scope of the proposed competence being conferred on the National Assembly. The explanatory memorandum accompanying the LCO provides further detail on the rationale for and the effect of each exception.

It is wholly appropriate for the National Assembly to be able to legislate on waste management and environmental protection and improvement. Pre-legislative scrutiny has helped to refine and improve the draft LCO before us, and I commend it to the Committee.

Mr. David Jones (Clwyd, West) (Con): It is a pleasure, Mr. Caton, to serve under your chairmanship today. We heard from the Minister that the purpose of the proposed LCO is to confer on the Welsh Assembly competence to make primary legislation, known as Assembly measures, on the environment. As the Minister said, this is an area where Welsh Ministers already possess significant and extensive powers under existing legislation. Much of the legislative framework applicable to the environment derives from European directives. Notwithstanding what the Minister says, it is difficult at first sight to see what added value will be introduced with the addition of legislative competence.

The Assembly Government say that the grant of competence will enable them to pursue variously more strategic, coherent and holistic approaches to environmental issues. Those terms are frequently used by politicians, but equally frequently with little understanding of their real meaning.

While no regulatory impact assessment has been carried out prior to this LCO on the grounds, as always, that that is a matter that will precede the measure itself rather than the LCO, it is acknowledged that there will inevitably be some impact on business as a consequence of any measures that are brought through. The Welsh Assembly Government have been characteristically coy in giving any indication of the sort of measures that will flow from the LCO, but the Welsh Minister, in giving evidence to the Committee, gave the following examples: placing a duty on local authorities to collect recyclable material from businesses; banning certain materials or restricting them from landfill sites; introducing a charging scheme for site waste management plans in relation to the construction and demolition sector; and requiring that construction projects should use a percentage of recyclable material.

All those proposals would most certainly have an impact upon business—just at the time when, of course, most businesses are suffering the impact of the deepest and most prolonged recession since the 1930s. The concern that the Assembly Government must do their best to dispel is that, in the context of the powers granted by the LCO, they will impose unreasonable additional burdens on individuals, local authorities and businesses.

Hywel Williams (Caernarfon) (PC): It is a fundamental matter of trust, is it not? Do we trust the Assembly to carry out its functions? The hon. Gentleman has a great deal of scepticism, which he has expressed at other meetings. I certainly do not—I trust them.

Mr. Jones: I have already said that I sincerely hope that the Assembly Government are worthy of that trust. Business people across Wales will be looking at the Assembly Government to see the way in which they utilise the powers granted by this LCO. Unreasonable burdens that are imposed upon business will, of course, make Wales increasingly uncompetitive. Indeed, that is a concern that I and many other Members have expressed in the past.

Turning to the issue of draftsmanship which the Minister has touched upon, it is right that the LCO is wide-ranging. It is remarkable for its complexity. It is probably the most complex such order yet to be proposed or considered by the Select Committee. Of course, it has been subject to significant scrutiny, not only in the Assembly but by the Welsh Affairs Committee and the House of Lords Constitution Committee. As the Minister says, all three Committees made recommendations for the improvement of the draft LCO and the reduction of its complexity. Certainly, those recommendations have been responded to through some simplification of the definitions used in the draft order. Nevertheless, it remains an exceptionally complicated document, with fixed exceptions, floating exceptions and carve-outs from both sorts of exceptions, and it is said that these have been applied in order to clarify the extent of the powers devolved.

It is a piece of work that is difficult for both parliamentarians and lawyers to understand, and it would undoubtedly be almost completely incomprehensible to the average layman. As the Minister has said, the Select Committee expressed the plaintive hope that the final form of the draft order should be accompanied not just by an explanatory memorandum, but by

Unfortunately, as we have heard, that simple note has not yet been provided to the Committee. I, for one, would very much have liked to have seen it.