Wales Bill — House of Commons, 2016-09-12
Topic: International Affairs
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): Let me begin by thanking our Bill team and our support staff for their excellent help in formulating our position. I thank Heledd Brooks-Jones, Ben O’Keefe, Rhian Medi Roberts and Osian Lewis. I also thank the large number of people in Wales, and not only Plaid members but people who are entirely impartial, who have been very generous with their advice and time. I also thank the Clerks, who have been unfailing in their courtesy and expert advice, and right hon. and hon. Member on both sides of the House. We have had a good debate and most of the time it has been extremely courteous and respectful, not least from myself of course. Lastly, I thank you, Mr Speaker, and your colleagues for expertly steering us through our discussions When the Wales Bill was reannounced in the Queen’s Speech, it was described as being intended as a strong and lasting devolution settlement for Wales. As it stands, the settlement presented to the House today in the Wales Bill is neither strong nor, I am afraid, likely to be lasting. My colleagues and I tabled carefully considered amendments in Committee and on Report, which would have substantially strengthened the Bill and have secured a fairer and more robust devolution package. Some of those amendments were compromises on our part for the sake of progressing the devolution agenda. Quite logically, we have always argued that the cross-party Silk recommendations need to be realised as a bare minimum. I am afraid the Government have not succeeded in doing that and have been open to accusations of cherry-picking its recommendations as and when it suits them I say "bare minimum" because Silk is rapidly becoming out of date anyway. The powers devolved to Scotland in the Scotland Act 2016 have to a large extent superseded Silk, and while the Government are granting incentivising powers to Holyrood, Wales is left lacking in accountability and without the necessary levers over our economy. The biggest external impact on Wales is the constitutional settlement. However, there will of course be Brexit. I would argue that this Wales Bill was almost redundant from the day the people of the UK were persuaded by the chimera of absolute sovereignty, a massive diversion of Government spending and above all drastic cuts to immigration. When the people decided to leave the EU, they largely voted to gain control. That is what we heard—"Give us our country back. We want control." It is only logical to demand that this appetite for increased accountability and transparency is replicated in the debates surrounding devolution to Wales As the Department for Exiting the European Union struggles and starts to untangle the mountain of legislation tied to EU laws and directives, decisions will have to be made about the repatriation of powers. The Government must not use Brexit as a power-grabbing exercise. Powers repatriated to the UK must be devolved to Wales and the Barnett formula must be revised to reflect adequately the changing nature of devolution. We are in a period of great economic uncertainty and Wales needs to renew its fiscal levers to be able to grasp the problem, to close the prosperity gap which already exists and to ensure that the instability of Brexit does not impact on the jobs and livelihoods of people in Wales Announcements on the boundary review are imminent —some of us will have had a sneak preview today—and the number of MPs from Wales is likely to be significantly reduced. This also must surely lead to greater responsibility and power being transferred to the National Assembly. This Wales Bill does not sufficiently address the democratic deficit we are likely to face This Bill has been rushed—perhaps "rushed" is too strong a word, but it has been brought through Parliament, in the end, rather quickly. It appears from our side at least to be something of a pig’s ear—unsatisfactory. It has been criticised by others as well. The leading academic Richard Wyn Jones from the Wales Governance Centre used, in that wonderful academic way, the damning word "patronising", which holds a wealth of meaning It seems to have become an established pattern for successive Secretaries of State to claim to be legislating for a generation, only to see their handiwork substantially revised within four or five years. It looks as if this Bill will most definitely be revised, and possibly much sooner than in four or five years. Circumstances have changed. The main Opposition—with concerns of their own internal strife, unfortunately—have at times been absent during the scrutiny of the Bill. The exception of course is the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), and I pay warm tribute to his efforts to ensure that the Bill received the proper scrutiny. However, half-hearted and confused calls from the Welsh Labour Government for further powers have fallen largely on deaf ears here in London. It has been Plaid Cymru’s fate to try to defend our best interests and to demand a truly robust devolution settlement that will determine our course for decades to come, but I am afraid that we are still waiting for that final settlement The hon. Member for Newport West quoted "Alun Mabon", the heroic poem by John Ceiriog Hughes, the superstar of Welsh poetry in the Victorian era. It repays close study by those of us who speak Welsh. I am not trying to trump the hon. Gentleman, but I would like to add to the point he was making about the Welsh language by expressing the passionate feelings that I have about it. I thought I would quote the French writer, Alphonse Daudet, who also lived in the 19th century. He wrote a short story not long after the Franco-Prussian war, when Alsace had been invaded and its culture had been changed. The only translation I have is the Welsh one: "Pan syrth pobl yn gaethion, cyhyd ag y cadwant eu hiaith y mae fel pe dalient allwedd eu carchar." This translates as "When the people fall into captivity, so long as they keep their language it is as if they hold the key to their prison."