LORDS AMENDMENTS (Hansard, 24 July 1978)

§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH
My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendments Nos. 29 to 32, to which the Commons have disagreed for the Reason numbered 33. The views of the Government on these Amendments have been made clear, both in this House and in another place. I am sure your Lordships will not wish me to rehearse our arguments again in full, since they are well known and have now been accepted by the other place, which, after a long debate, rejected these proposals by a majority, not of one vote but of 24 votes.
However, I should remind the House of the main reasons why we oppose these Amendments. In our view, they would upset the carefully balanced structure of the Bill. On the one hand, most subject committees responsible for the exercise of powers relating to devolved functions will be politically balanced and will allow wide participation by members in the work of the Assembly and act as a check on the subject committee leader, who will of course be a member of the executive committee. On the other hand, a strong executive committee which can be reasonably decisive and generally capable of carrying out its responsibilities is essential for the good government of Wales. To impose a requirement for Party balance would be a recipe for confusion and indecision within the executive committee and could lead to weak and ineffective Government. Clearly, that would be in nobody's interest.
As I have indicated, the other place have had the opportunity to consider this matter and, in view of the full discussion which they had and of the decisive vote against these Amendments, I trust that your Lordships will not seek to pursue this matter further.

§ Lord ELTON
My Lords, this matter was discussed in another place for exactly one hour. For the first five minutes or so, the principle was attacked by the Under-Secretary of State for Wales in resistance to it. For the remaining 55 minutes no word was spoken in defence of the position of Her Majesty's Government. The Under-Secretary of State argued that the insistence on Party balance in the executive committee could result in delay and indecision—indecision at the best—and could put the entire structure at risk.
That view appears at column 643, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, has just quoted the first half of it. Yet, in the very next breath, the Secretary of State went on to repeat what he had said before—that the principle of Party balance is the essence of the Government's plans for the subject Committees. His resistance to the idea of Party balance in the executive is entrenched and extreme. The committee that drew up the list of Commons Reasons summarised their rejection of it as being, Because the proposed arrangements for the executive committee are unworkable", and one cannot go much further than that!
An executive committee—that is to say, a committee that takes executive decisions—will, in the view of the noble Lord, be either handicapped or stultified, if the principle of Party balance is admitted. That of course is not his view only but is the view of Her Majesty's Government. But we are given to understand that the same principle applied to the subject committees is very far from stultifying; rather, it is wholly beneficial and is illustrative of a fundamentally democratic philosophy upon which this whole wretched Bill is alleged to be founded. How very odd. How very odd indeed! Was it not made crystal clear to us at both Committee and Report stages that the functions of the subject committees are also executive? Is it not clear from the drafting of the Bill that this is intended to be so? What magic or alchemy or antidote removes from the principle of Party balance when it is introduced to subject committees the stultifying 681 poison which would numb the minds and wills of the executive if they were to partake of it?
However, that is not the only mystery as regards the position of Her Majesty's Government on this. They see another vision that is hidden from the rest of us but in which I hope we shall be invited to share before too long. What baffles us on this side of the House is this—and it was well put in another place by both my honourable friend Mr. Leon Brittan and my right honourable and learned friend Sir David Renton, though answer had they none—since up to a third of the executive can in any case, by specific provision of the Bill, be drawn from non-majority Parties, by what extraordinary contortions of logic can Her Majesty's Government argue that that third will, if it is used to reflect the Party balance in the Assembly itself, suddenly be changed from a beneficial and healthy addition, wisely provided by a generous Government draftsman, into a viperish and stultifying poison spitefully introduced by a malevolent Opposition?
Once PR has been abandoned, one-third of the membership of the Committee will very likely be ample to provide the reflection of the Party balance in the Assembly. The effect of our Amendment is merely to say that it "shall" rather than it "may" be so used. Yet at the very sight of the Amendment, which merely requires the Assembly to do what the Government themselves are quite happy to invite them to do, the Government fling themselves into postures of outraged defence and say that we are striking at the fabric of the Bill. This can mean only one thing: that the ability not to appoint a third of the membership from non-majority Parties is very precious to them. They have revealed as much by their over-reaction when it was threatened.
Why should this be? The only possible explanation for the absurdly illogical position in which Her Majesty's Government have put themselves on this question is that here they are not thinking, as a Government should, of securing the constitutional good of the people; they are thinking as Parties do. They are seeking to secure the political good of their membership, and that is only secured at the expense of others. They 682 would not be so vigilant and active in defence of a right—the right of the majority Party to exclude all other Parties from the executive—if they did not expect that right to be used, and of course the majority Party will be their own. Your Lordships will recall that they speak very loftily and as though it was sacred of preserving the Cabinet principle, but what they are in fact preserving—and all of us recognise this—is the principle of the closed shop. They say that committees with executive functions cannot function if they are drawn from more than one Party, yet they provide for this to be done at will in the executive committee itself and by statute in the other committees and, what is more, wherever they look they can see committees composed in this manner working very satisfactorily and executively in local authorities throughout England and Wales.
Therefore, I am quite clear that, for all the trappings of democracy flapping around the ankles of the new creature, it is intended by the Party opposite to remain faithful to itself and to itself alone. If the executive committee of the Welsh Assembly, in which by far the greatest part of the power will lie, in fact turns out to be composed entirely of Members of one Party and if it does decide, as I very much fear it will, to meet behind locked doors, then the Welsh people and the Welsh Press had better have their ears tight to the keyhole if they want to know anything at all about their own affairs.
However, the noble Lord has already said that a decision has been taken in another place. The Whips have been applied, the feet have tramped and the numbers have been dutifully recorded. To ask for that to be done again would, I fear, merely be casting wisdom upon the desert wind. We shall therefore not press the matter further.

§ Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH
My Lords, I could not possibly match the quality of the noble Lord's rhetoric. I was wondering when he was going to come to the last sentence of his address and give some advice to his noble friends. I imagined for a moment that he was going to suggest that there should be a Division on this. However, I understand that that is not the position.