My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, for his amendment and for the flexibility that he has just expressed. As he says, we have now achieved critical consensus in support of a reserved powers model, which is a result of the growing esteem in which the reputation of the Welsh Assembly is held and the maturing of time.
I think that it now strikes almost everybody—I hope that it strikes the coalition Front Bench—that it is a matter of simple equity between Wales and Northern Ireland and Scotland that devolution should be reconfigured for Wales so that it is on a reserved powers basis. That must make pragmatic sense because it is highly undesirable that questions of policy jurisdiction should have to be resolved in the courts. This is a policy for which the time is ripe. Whether it will be precisely ripe in six or nine months’ time is something that we can consider, but the noble Lord is drawing attention to a matter upon which we should now seek to precipitate universal agreement.
I was fascinated by the historical excursion of my noble and learned friend Lord Morris of Aberavon and I would demur in only one respect. It is presumptuous for me to do so, given his vast experience of these matters, but I am apprehensive about his proposal for the scope and make-up of a constitutional convention. It has suddenly become very fashionable to favour a constitutional convention, since the dramatic and very difficult events that occurred in Scotland—indeed, in the United Kingdom—only a few weeks ago.
I am not against a constitutional convention, and I think it would be a good idea to have senior politicians as members of such a convention along with academics who are deeply expert in these matters, constitutional lawyers, appropriate representatives of civil society and so forth. However, I think it would be a very bad idea for party leaders to be members of such a convention. They would be prudent to keep their distance from the convention, because the problem for a convention is that, toil as it will and wise as its members may be, almost certainly they will get it wrong. As my noble friend acknowledged, the Kilbrandon royal commission was inconclusive. I think he even said of himself and his colleagues and partisans in that Labour Cabinet, “In the event we were proved wrong”.
The complexity and scale of potential constitutional change is such that even the wisest are most unlikely to hit upon a blueprint for the future of our constitution that will prove as universally beneficial as they hope and stand the test of time. Even the preternatural wisdom of those who met at Philadelphia seems now to be tested by events. Many people consider that the constitution of the United States of America has become pretty dysfunctional. Well, it has served its purpose very well for a very long time. But there are many other instances of constitutional conventions that have started off in a blaze of optimism and ended in a blaze of political destruction, so we should be very cautious about this. Constitutional change occurs most benignly when it is incremental and incrementalism has been the approach for constitutional change in Wales.
The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, proposes one more phase of incrementalism. It invites us all to acknowledge that the moment has
come for devolution to be reconstituted on a reserved-powers model. Let us be content with that as we think further and feel our way forward on some of the more difficult aspects of all of this.