Wales Bill — House of Commons, 2016-07-11
Topic: Energy
Hywel Williams (Plaid Cymru, Centre-left to left): I want to speak to amendments 74 to 80, 81 and 82, 151 and 154, which I tabled along with my hon. Friends I welcome clauses 22, 23 and 24, which confer competence on Welsh Ministers in relation to onshore petroleum licensing, including hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, about which the Welsh people care a great deal. If the people of Wales do not want fracking, our Government should be able to ensure that it does not happen. Given that the Welsh Government and the National Assembly as a whole voted unanimously against fracking in Wales, I hope that the Secretary of State will work with his Cabinet colleagues to ensure that until the Bill is passed, the United Kingdom Government honour that unanimous opposition in Wales and no new licences are issued there. I hope that, at the end of the debate, either the Secretary of State or the Under-Secretary will give some indication that that will be the case I also welcome clause 26. Some time ago, I had a meeting with the traffic commissioner for Wales, who was based in Birmingham at the time. He was very unhappy about being traffic commissioner for Wales, and pointed out that not only did he work from Birmingham, but he lived in Derby, which is a considerable distance from Wales. Many years ago, the Welsh Affairs Committee called for the commissioner to be moved to Cardiff, and I am glad that the clause achieves a great deal more than that Amendments 74 and 75, and consequential amendments 76 to 80, would remove the 350 MW limit on the Welsh Government’s legislative competence in the field of energy. I would happily put a fiver on what is on the Under-Secretary of State’s notepad: my guess is that he intends to say that the limit was recommended by the Silk commission. I wish I had put that fiver down, because I see that the Under-Secretary is smiling Of course I accept that the Silk commission recommended the limit, but let us return for a moment to the purpose and the terms of the commission. It was set up by the coalition Government, with a Conservative Secretary of State for Wales. It consisted of one nominee from each of the four main parties at the time, including the Secretary of State’s and mine, along with various academic and other experts. It consulted widely and extensively with the political parties, civic society, academia and industry experts, as well as the public. Its two reports represented a consensus, reflecting not only the views of the political parties but, crucially, those of the public and of experts—that is, the views of civic society in general With that purpose in mind, the players in all four political parties had to compromise, and all four—including the Secretary of State’s party and mine—did so, in order to achieve a national consensus. That was a contrast with the St David’s day process, in which I played a minor part. At the time, the Secretary of State appeared to hand a veto to each party in respect of what it wished to reject. Labour used its veto to the full, which reflected the stance of the then shadow Secretary of State, as a self-confessed "proud Unionist". It seemed to me that the veto extended to Whitehall Departments, in terms of which matters they wanted to reserve As was clear from my earlier intervention on the Secretary of State, I am still slightly unconvinced about this process—