SECTION 8 ORDERS (Hansard, 25 May 2000)

§ Ms Hewitt
I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

§ Madam Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments Nos. 18 to 21.

§ Ms Hewitt
This group of amendments is designed to ensure that the National Assembly for Wales can exercise the order-making power in clause 8 to authorise or facilitate electronic communications for functions that are exercisable by the Assembly.
Clause 9(7) already gives powers to Scottish Ministers. I trust that hon. Members on both sides of the House will want consistency in the application of devolution. The amendments would give effect to that principle. Therefore, I commend them to the House.

§ Mr. Allan
Again, we welcome the amendments. On a small note of concern, however, let me say that the Minister will know that we are fully in favour of the devolution process that has taken place and see an important role for the National Assembly for Wales, but the trend seems to be for Welsh provisions to be tacked on to legislation late on. A similar process happened with the Learning and Skills Bill when systems that would put in place a comparable system to those in the Bill for England were added on later.
We are concerned that we did not see the comparable provisions for Wales in this Bill until this week, late in its passage through another place. I understand that that may be because of the time required to consult with Members of the Welsh Assembly and we certainly want consultation to take place in that way. Members of the Welsh Assembly should have a good look at the proposals before they are put on the amendment paper here. However, I should be interested to know if there are particular reasons why the Minister could not produce the amendments when the Bill was passing through its major stages in this House. Why did we have to wait until the Bill went to another place to see the Welsh provisions? It should have been fairly obvious at an early stage that they were necessary.