Thank you, Sir Alan, for calling me to speak on this hugely important Bill. The work leading up to it has played a significant part in my time in politics.
I pay tribute to the shadow Secretary of State for Wales, the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). I have a special reason for welcoming him to his position: of all the other Welsh Members of Parliament, I am probably the nearest to being an octogenarian, and his wonderful example gives me promise and ambition for the future. If he can do it, there is no reason why I cannot, either. I thank him for that, as well as for the great wit with which he has entertained me over many years.
The Bill is wide-ranging. Inevitably, opinions on it will differ and there will be an element of compromise. In his response to earlier amendments, the shadow Secretary of State said that we need to be pragmatic. We all have different opinions, including in my own party. We all, I think, want this Bill to go through, but we need to accept that we are going to have to compromise.
The big compromise that I have to make relates to the fact that the Bill transfers energy powers to the Welsh Government, the idea of which fills me with horror. I would find it difficult to support the Bill, except that the Welsh Government have, disgracefully, already taken unto themselves those powers through their local government responsibilities. That makes the Bill’s transfer of energy powers much less damaging to mid-Wales and much less of an attack on the people of mid-Wales than it would otherwise have been.
The intention behind the Bill is to provide a much more stable, long-lasting and permanent settlement for Wales and to provide clarity on it. I am not sure about the word “permanent”. I do not think it is wise to have a Wales Bill every five years, which is pretty much what we have been doing. This is not permanent: I think we will come back to developing devolution at a pace at which we can bring the people of Wales with us. Plaid Cymru Members spoke earlier about the judicial position.
When the body of Welsh law is no longer tiny and grows to be substantial, we may have to revisit the issue in the future, and the same may be true of other issues that we have not entirely foreseen.
3.45 pm
Today, I want to make specific reference to clause 16, because it is absolutely fundamental. It deals with the power to vary income tax levels in Wales, which is hugely important, providing financial accountability to the Welsh Government. Like the Chairman of the Welsh Affairs Committee, I was opposed to devolution but came to terms with it almost immediately, which is what we should do when there is a referendum. It was a very close result but, as I was driving home from the count, I accepted that we would have a Welsh Assembly, and I am in total support of it. Not only that, but I think that we should accept the decision of the people and make a success of it. We are doing our best to do that.
When I became a Member of the Welsh Assembly, I was asked to be the Conservative financial spokesman. Clearly, one came upon the annual budget debate. As I was preparing to speak in that debate in the Assembly, I thought to myself, “This isn’t a budget; what we are dealing with here is just a spending plan”. When I was chairman of the finance committee on Montgomeryshire District Council, the biggest meeting of the year, by a long way, was the meeting at which we set the rates. We set aside a whole day to debate whether or not to put a penny on the rate. Every budget I have ever seen has on one side what will be spent and on the other how it will be raised.
I know from talking to people at election time that that is what is on their minds. It engages people to know that, if money will be spent on something, it will be taken from them in some way to pay for it. That is what elections should be about—but not in Wales. In Wales, if the Government are spending money, generally on something that the people might approve of because it is popular, they say, “This is what we are doing, aren’t we great?”. However, occasionally in politics we find that Governments have to support a law that is not so popular and is difficult to argue for in public because people are not altogether convinced. It is not acceptable just to say, “We can’t do that because we don’t have enough money from the Westminster Government”. The Government have to be financially accountable to people; that is what makes a parliament.
In this Bill, we intend to change the position and call the National Assembly for Wales the Welsh Parliament. I fully support that. However, if it is going to be called the Welsh Parliament, it has to have the powers and responsibilities, and particularly the financial accountability, that we would expect a Parliament to have. That is why that is so important in this Bill.
There is a division of opinion on this issue. Some of my colleagues do not agree with me, and we have had this debate previously. This is not an occasion on which I want to be political, but what I am about to say could be interpreted as being politically against the Labour party. It is not intended to be, but rather it is an attempt to demonstrate the position that we are in. A lot of people are opposed to granting the ability to vary income tax to the Welsh Government because they will always be led by Labour. I do not know why people are quite so pessimistic; the day will come when the Welsh
Government will not be led by Labour. In fact, we are not so far from that day now. We had a Welsh Assembly election in which the total Labour vote was about 30% or 31%, and an EU referendum in which the advice of the First Minister, who was leading the campaign, was virtually ignored in Labour strongholds. It was not ignored by people who do not support Labour, but the very people who support Labour just dismissed the First Minister’s leadership of the campaign. The First Minister must wake up in the night thinking, “My position is looking a bit dodgy, a little weak. I’ve got 30% support and that may well have been halved in the EU referendum among Labour voters.”
I genuinely believe that we are on the verge of creating a proper democracy in Wales, one in which not everyone assumes that Labour will rule, but we have competition instead. People will be much more engaged and interested. My comments might be perceived as being against Labour, but they are not meant to be. I am saying that I am in favour of a genuine political debate whenever we have an election in Wales. I think we are not too far away from that.
One issue that has caused some controversy, on the Conservative Benches in particular, has been the need for a referendum on whether income tax powers should be devolved. I think we have had enough of referendums. As a general principle I am not in favour of them, and on this particular issue I do not think one is necessary. That has been my view for a long time. The referendum is suggested, and supported, as a blocking mechanism to make sure that the Welsh Government never become financially accountable. That is not the right way to go.
That is now the Government’s view—they have moved on from previous positions. The Silk Commission’s recommendations may be the bible of the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams), but the commission was wrong to recommend a referendum. It was a weak recommendation. The commission should simply have recommended that the only way to financial accountability is to allow income tax to be varied by the Welsh Government, so that they become responsible. A referendum has been proposed in the past but is not what we should do now.
The Bill is broad-ranging and hugely important. It is the next step forward in making the Welsh Assembly into a Parliament. It will settle the constitution for some years to come—I would not like to predict how long it will be until we are back here talking about another Wales Bill; I might be an octogenarian by then. The Bill is an important step forward and I very much hope that it passes through here and the other place unhindered.