Government of Wales Bill

I am continuing in a perfectly orderly manner, Mrs. Heal. I am pointing out that the Secretary of State for Wales is on the record as saying he had information that Sir John Arbuthnott would have taken a different view if he had known of the malpractices that were taking place in Wales. He has yet to tell us—no doubt he will do so when he sums up—how he came to that conclusion. Had he spoken to Sir John Arbuthnott? The Arbuthnott commission quotes extensively from the evidence given on Wales, all of it against the Secretary of State’s position, in coming to its conclusion that to rule out dual candidacy would be ““undemocratic”” and a protection of the hegemony of one political party. I hear a Front Bencher suggesting, from a sedentary position—you obviously did not hear it, Mrs. Heal—that that is not true. In what aspect is it not true that that is what the Arbuthnott commission concluded—