Wales Bill — House of Commons, 2016-06-14
Topic: Government Operations
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): No doubt that is something that we will debate. I relish the opportunity to discuss the reservations and hear the Secretary of State or his colleagues justify them. The explanatory notes include a description or explanation of the reservations but, as far as I can see, there is very little justification for them. I therefore look forward to hearing about that in subsequent debates The report by the Wales Governance Centre and University College London on the draft Bill described the list of reservations and said: "Complexity is piled on complexity...the potential for legal challenge casts a long shadow." I see little evidence that the revised list is much clearer. It remains, alas, a lawyer’s playground. As I have said, the shift to a reserved powers model was supposed to be made in tandem with a shift in mentality—that is extremely important—to determine what needed to be reserved, rather than what should be devolved. It is clear that the Secretary of State has instead facilitated a Whitehall trawl of the powers—a pick and mix of what the Sir Humphreys fancy bagging for themselves—sometimes based on principles no deeper than the chance to shout "Mine!" If the Secretary of State is serious about creating a lasting devolution settlement, he cannot simply flip the current settlement from the conferred powers model to the reserved powers model, then allow Whitehall to pick and choose which tasty bits of power they want to hang on to. The process must be built on principles. I agree with the principles that he identified—clarity and coherence—but I would add proper subsidiarity Some time ago I had an entertaining lunch with the Irish Minister responsible for a new Irish language Act. He was quite candid, loquacious and hilarious. He had been to Canada and Quebec and had thieved—his words—a little bit of their language law. He had been to Wales and has snaffled bits of ours. He had been here and there in the rest of Europe, and hey presto, here was their language bill. We do not need to roam two vast continents, stitching together a bit of this and a bit of that. A model is already there for the borrowing and—perhaps Plaid people will forgive me for saying this—it is a home-grown British model called the Scotland Act The Silk commission hoped that moving to a reserved powers model would be a chance to rewrite the settlement to remove some of the defects of haste and inconsistency that have so far marred legislative devolution in Wales. The list of reservations does not reflect that hope. The director of the Wales Governance Centre has described the Bill as being underpinned by a "patronising attitude" and as continuing to regard Wales as "enjoying a lower status" than the other devolved nations. In practical terms it will undoubtedly lead to more blame shifting between Cardiff and London. That is the last thing that people in Wales want and the last thing that the governance of the people of Wales requires Both the Welsh Affairs Committee, which has a Tory majority, and the National Assembly’s Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee, which was also chaired by a Tory, recommended that each reservation should be individually justified. That recommendation has been ignored and, as I said, I look forward to hearing the Secretary of State or his colleagues making up for that as we go into Committee The Wales Governance Centre has offered a list of considerations for identifying functions that should be devolved: is it necessary to retain function X for the functioning of the UK as a state? Does retention of Y make the governance of the UK less clear or comprehensible? Does retention of Z undermine the workability, stability or durability of the devolution settlement? These are the questions that the Secretary of State should be asking himself for each and every one of the reservations in the Bill and I hope we will have time to hear him go through those steps. Simply making hundreds of reservations for no given reason is not acceptable, particularly when the real rationale seems to be a deeply suspect power grab by Departments of Government that have failed Wales so spectacularly over the past few years.