LORDS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 27 July 1978)

§ The LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I beg to move that this House doth not insist on their Amendment No. 1, to which the Commons have disagreed for the reason numbered 2. This relates to Clause 12, with its requirement upon the Assembly to review the structure of local government in Wales. It has been debated on several occasions. If I may say so, the factor which perhaps influenced your Lordships' House in deciding that it should be considered again in another place was the fact that the Government's proposal to retain the provisions of Clause 12 was only sustained in another place by one vote. Since then the matter has again been considered and the other place has rejected the Lords Amendment by a margin of 21 votes. I hope that in these circumstances your Lordships may not think it necessary to recapitulate the matters which were so eloquently and fully debated on the previous occasion and will now bow to the view of the other place upon this matter.

§ Lord ELTON
My Lords, I admire the succinctness of the approach of the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor to this question. I did take care to read in Hansard the account of the debate on this Amendment in another place, which was a matter of some difficulty because it was nowhere in print. There are only two photostat copies of the stenographers' 970 transcripts available in another place. I noticed that in that debate it was suggested that this House had sought to mutilate this Bill and that the other place had wisely restored most of the Amendments. I do not wish to try to tread again the ground which my noble friend Lord Ferrers trod so extremely effectively perhaps half an hour ago. This is the first time that we have considered stages of the Wales and Scotland Bills on the same day with a proportion of the same audiences, and I should not wish to be compared with him, although I endorse everything which he has said. However, I think that one must say something in the context of this Bill to debunk that myth and I shall satisfy myself by saying that, in fact, more than half of the 197 Amendments sent by the Lords to the Commons were Government Amendments, and had they all been excluded from the Bill it would have been unworkable. That seems to me a very cogent and completely nonpolitical argument in favour of our two Chamber system.
As to the Amendment itself, it relates to Clause 12 of the Bill which your Lordships will recall lays upon the Assembly the duty to review the organisation of local government and report on it to the Secretary of State, with the implication that it should be altered-—that is, the organisation should be altered—and that that alteration should be upon the lines set out by the Assembly. That may seem a pretty straightforward proposition and the clause may seem a pretty dull thing. In fact, it proves upon inspection to be something of a collector's specimen.
If it is to become part of the Bill it is important that I should spend three minutes explaining why that is so. First, we must note that there was never any intention under the White Paper or under the Scotland and Wales Bill to lay such a duty on the Assembly. Secondly, we must note that the power to carry out a review of local government already exists in the Bill without the inclusion of Clause 12. All that Clause 12 does is to convert that power to a duty. Thirdly, we must note that the power already exists under the Bill, without the inclusion again of Clause 12, to review a great many other areas of administrative organisation as well as that of local government. Yet it is only in this one 971 area that the Government will go to such great lengths to tell the Assembly not only what it may do, but what it must do.
Those three observations lead us to ask three obvious questions. First, if the need for local government review and reorganisation is so obvious and urgent, as Her Majesty's Government have incessantly told us that it is, why was it not recognised in the White Paper and incorporated in the Scotland and Wales Bill? Secondly, why, if it is not so obvious and urgent, do the Government not lay a similar duty on the Assembly to review all the other areas which it might review? Thirdly, if, as they assure us on the contrary, it is urgent and obvious, why do the Government not trust the Welsh Assembly to recognise it and get on with the job of its own accord instead of giving it a peremptory and some would say an insulting order to do so?
The answers are profoundly significant as an illustration of the kind of exercise in which the Party opposite is really indulging. What happened was as follows: As they were climbing out of the wreckage of the Scotland and Wales Bill and considering how best they might replace it with something else, they discovered that the very principle of devolution for Wales was itself the subject of a profound distrust and a natural dislike among a great many of the Welsh people. At about the same time, they also discovered that a sharp and recent rise in the level of rates, largely resulting from their own policies, had acted as a catalyst to the doubt and discontent about the recent reorganisation of local government in England and Wales. That was a pretty general phenomenon, and especially marked in Wales for local considerations at which we need not look.
Clause 12 is a clever device to harness one discontent to overcome the other. Mark my words, they will go to the Welsh in the referendum and say: "Are you fed up with your local government? Do you want it reorganised into something much better? In that case vote for the Welsh Assembly, because that is the only way that you will get it." That is what they will say, but what they will not say is that the Welsh could have had their local government review together with the English by another means, without devolution; 972 and what they will certainly not say is that the bill for local government reform by devolution is not just £12½ million once, but £12½ million and more, every year that the Assembly exists from now until the end of time or when it collapses. We shall not return this Amendment to the Commons but we are telling the Welsh that we have rumbled what the Government are up to. They are trying to get the Welsh people to buy devolution on a false prospectus and in my experience Welsh men and Welsh women are not so easily hoodwinked as the Government seem to hope.

§ Lord LLOYD of KILGERRAN
My Lords, may I presume to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on foregoing confrontation on this matter in the twilight of the discussions on the Wales Bill His speech was brief and it was not so rhetorical as his other admirable speeches during the course of these debates. However, I congratulate him on the speech which he has made today because it is one of the best speeches on behalf of devolution and on behalf of the Welsh Assembly that I have heard from the Conservative Benches.
I also took the precaution of reading the speech of the Conservative spokesman in the other place yesterday. I did so because the Conservative spokesman is, at present—perhaps not for long—the Member of Parliament for Pembrokeshire in which county my father was born in the village of Kilgerran. I was surprised that when he talked about local government he did not remember that a vast number of his own constituents are anxious to preserve the name "Pembrokeshire". He dismissed that movement which is both liberal, with a small "I" and which takes the view, generally held in his constituency, that the name "Pembrokeshire" somehow should be kept going. That, in itself, does not matter. A name does not matter. But it shows that even in parts of Wales there is still great unhappiness about the local government structure which was forced upon it by the Conservative Government, before Kilbrandon, and against the wishes of many Welsh Members of the other place. I end as I began by saying how pleased I am that at this stage there is no confrontation and that I believe by the vote in the other place 973 last night, which I heard about on the news on the radio this morning, the other House has brought some more sanity and balance into Welsh affairs.

§ The LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I, like the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, am grateful to be assured that there is no intention of confrontation in considering these last stages of the Wales Bill. However, there was certainly verbal confrontation of which the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has become a most distinguished exponent. If his speech was an example of foregoing confrontation, I do not think that I should like very much to meet him when he is undergoing confrontation.
The whole debate and discussion of the Wales Bill has been dealt with seriously and conscientiously by noble Lords. Although we have permitted cheerfulness to break in from time to time—as is indeed right for any civilised assembly of men and women—nevertheless I am second to none in acknowledging the great and notable part that your Lordships' House has played in this important piece of (I shall use the neutral phrase) "constitutional change". This is an important piece of constitutional change with inevitable consequences, I think, for local government.
It was inevitable that two factors should go in harness: consideration of the Assembly itself and a review of the consequences for local government. If I may say so, the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has misrepresented the motivation of the Government in linking those two factors together. I also—being myself again a "foregoer" of confrontation—believe that he has caricatured the attitude of the people of Wales to this Bill and whether he is right or I am right we shall learn when the referendum takes place. In the meantime, I am grateful for the forbearance of the noble Lord in not pressing further the opposition on this matter which has hitherto been sustained.