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6.30 pm
Mr. Denzil Davies: I was not going to speak until I heard the speech of the hon. Member for Ynys Mon (Mr. Jones). In so far as we debated the matter during the referendum campaign, neither the representatives of some of the farming unions nor Plaid Cymru thought that there was a problem. People who raised the issue were said to be trying to spoil things. Since then, we have discovered that there is a problem.
When the hon. Member for Ynys Mon said that he wanted the Welsh assembly to be part of UKREP--the United Kingdom permanent representation--he laid bare the illogicality of his argument.
Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones:
Will the right hon. Gentleman take care to read the Hansard report of the debate on Second Reading? The Minister said:
"Assembly staff will be able to be part of UKREP".--[Official Report, 9 December 1997; Vol. 302, c. 892.]
Mr. Davies:
If that is a fact, I do not see why it needs to be specified in the Bill. There is a real problem, as the hon. Gentleman knows. There was the perfectly understandable desire--many of us have been round this course during the past 20 years--to decentralise government in Wales and devolve power from the Welsh Office. That was the basis of the whole argument for devolution. The hon. Gentleman, it seems, is no longer happy with that, and wants to turn the assembly into a Government Department.
Usually, the United Kingdom is represented on the Council of Ministers by Ministers with Departments. The hon. Gentleman is worried that, under the Bill, the Secretary of State for Wales will no longer have a Department, which will create problems when Ministers
negotiate in the Council of Ministers and other European institutions. I understand the hon. Gentleman's dilemma. He wants to fill the void by sending Members of the Assembly to sit on the Council of Ministers.
That is cloud cuckoo land, as is so often the case in the arguments of such people as the hon. Gentleman who want to move further and further down the road of devolution. The hon. Gentleman's proposal would create problems. For example, will the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry represent the whole of the United Kingdom or just England, given that her departmental responsibilities will be for England and not for Wales? Similar problems will arise in relation to agriculture, and those problems are created by devolution itself. I do not see how they can be solved, but perhaps the Minister can tell us.
Devolution brings benefits and liabilities. One of the minuses is that we shall lose a Government Department headed by the Secretary of State for Wales. The advantage of that is that we can democratically debate the allocation of resources in the assembly, although Plaid Cymru does not want a democratic debate--it wants a Cabinet to determine the allocation of resources in secret, as the right hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) said.
A nation state's representation in the European Union is based on the Council of Ministers and, within the Council of Ministers, on Ministers who have Departments. The fact that Wales will have a Secretary of State without a Department will cause considerable problems. The amendment would make very little difference to the situation, which is a minus that Wales will have to accept.
Mr. Ancram:
I broadly agree with the right hon. Member for Llanelli (Mr. Davies). As he said, this is not a new problem. When a number of us raised it during the referendum campaign, we were accused of scaremongering--that was the word I heard most often.
I am reminded that, in the foreword to the White Paper, the Secretary of State said:
Paragraph 3.46 of the White Paper states:
When we look for details of that in the Bill, however, we find that it is silent. The Secretary of State may be able to be the voice of Wales in the Council of Ministers, but, as the right hon. Member for Llanelli said, his voice will be weaker, as he will not have a Department behind him. Moreover, there are no arrangements to formalise how officials will advise him.
Those who have held ministerial office in Wales and Scotland recognise that an enormous amount of preparation work is done by officials. They prepare for the deliberations of Ministers in the Cabinet Sub-Committee on European policy or work in the Commission on papers for the Council of Ministers. They can do that because, whether they are from the Welsh Office or the Scottish Office, they are officials of the United Kingdom Government. Yet nearly all those officials in Wales will be transferred to the assembly. How will they be brought back into that system of consultation? To whom will they owe their loyalty: to the assembly, which will be their master, or to the United Kingdom Government, on whose behalf they will appear to act?
Mr. Rowlands:
I am closely following the right hon. Gentleman's argument. He mentions a point on which we have not been able to engineer a debate in Committee--the concept of the concordat. I assume that the answer to some of his questions will be covered by the concordat, but we have not heard about it yet.
Mr. Ancram:
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. As I was about to say, all the Government tell us is, "Don't worry; it will all be in a concordat." That, at least, is what we are told in relation to Scotland; I am not sure that we have been told it in relation to Wales.
I know what a concordat means between Governments, but I do not know what it will mean in the framework of devolution. If it means an agreement between friends, it will not be worth the paper on which it is written when the friendships cease.
How complicated will the concordat be? Will it deal with the problems of loyalty and allegiance among civil servants if they are used in that way? We are dealing with a highly complex matter that has not been thought through properly. The White Paper was pretty weak, but the Bill is totally silent. Even if there is a concordat, what will happen not if there is a political difference between London and Cardiff--as the hon. Member for Ynys Mon (Mr. Jones) suggested--but if there is a conflict of interest?
We know that there may be a conflict of interest in the Scottish context between Scottish and Cornish fishermen, for example. Whose view would the United Kingdom representative advocate in that situation? If the interests of Welsh hill farmers conflicted with those of farmers elsewhere in the United Kingdom on the important topic of agriculture, where would the loyalty of the Secretary of State or the Minister who goes to the Council of Ministers lie? What concordat will bind him to neglect, if necessary, the interests of his area in order to represent the interests of another area where he has not been elected and has no democratic representative interest? The White Paper was pretty silent about those problems, but the Bill is completely silent.
That is a major flaw in the legislation, which we warned the Government about during the referendum campaign and which has still not been addressed. It could lead to enormous resentment in the future, when the people of Wales find that, far from achieving the stronger voice that they were promised, their voice is much weaker.
At present, the Secretary of State can attend meetings of the Council of Ministers. He can participate in deliberations, vote and, if necessary, lead--I think that a Welsh Minister led on one occasion. If those responsibilities are transferred to the assembly, what will happen if there is a conflict of interest?
Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones:
How many times did the Secretary of State for Wales deliver the United Kingdom votes during 18 years of Conservative government?
Mr. Ancram:
According to the only figures that I have, that has occurred once since 1992. I do not have a complete answer, but the important point is that the Secretary of State had the right to do so. That right will be severely diminished--if it can be exercised at all--in the future. Not one element of that right will be transferred to the assembly.
I find amendments Nos. 272 and 273, in the name of Plaid Cymru, highly unacceptable and difficult to understand in terms of the rules of Europe. Amendment No. 272 states:
The Liberal Democrat new clauses seek mandatory participation by saying that a member of the Welsh assembly "shall" participate. The new clauses go further and say that there should be United Kingdom representation of Welsh interests by a Secretary of the Welsh Assembly. Those issues raise enormous constitutional questions. The one point that is common to the proposed new clauses is that the Minister or the Secretary--whatever he will be called--who goes from the Welsh assembly to the Council of Ministers will also represent the United Kingdom.
However, such people will not have a mandate from the United Kingdom; they will not be elected by the United Kingdom electorate. They will be elected according to the electoral mandate of the people of Wales. They cannot answer to the United Kingdom Parliament and they cannot be held to account by that Parliament. It would be constitutional nonsense to allow such a provision to prevail.
"An elected Assembly will give Wales a voice--in Britain and in Europe--after years of neglect."
He said not that he, as Secretary of State, would give Wales a voice in Europe after years of neglect--that is a strange phrase to use in a non-political document, but I shall let that pass--but that the elected assembly would. We were entitled, therefore, to see whether the Bill would establish a new way in which to create that stronger voice.
"Wales needs a strong voice in Europe."
It says that the Secretary of State will continue to represent Wales in the Council of Ministers. As I said when we debated the White Paper, there is nothing new in that. The only new factor in the White Paper is that there will be arrangements to allow close liaison and consultation with the assembly.
"the Assembly First Secretary shall be treated as being an office of ministerial level for the purposes of Article 203 of The Treaty of Amsterdam".
In terms of the treaty, it means that the First Minister could not only represent the United Kingdom but commit the United Kingdom within the European Union. Article 203 of the treaty of Amsterdam says:
"The Council shall consist of a representative of each Member State at ministerial level, authorised to commit the government of that Member State".
I shall refer to the difficulties involved with that in a moment.
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