Listening to the last debate, I was reminded that in 1998 the original Government of Wales Bill did not include a provision for dual membership of both the House of Commons and the Welsh Assembly. I was leading on Welsh matters and I acceded to a request from the then Secretary of State to have my party support the inclusion of an amendment that permitted the Secretary of State and others to belong to both bodies. The argument then was that it was necessary to have some Members of Parliament who had the experience to assist in the setting-up of the new Welsh Assembly, using their experience to good ends, so it is interesting that we have come to the point where the Government wish to reverse that decision.
What is also interesting is that in Clause 3 a Member of Parliament who is returned at an election as an Assembly Member has a period of eight days beginning with the date of his being returned to resign as a Member of Parliament to avoid disqualification for being an Assembly Member. That is pertinent to Amendments 9 and 10, which I am moving and speaking to on behalf of myself and my noble friends Lady Humphreys, Lord German and Lady Walmsley. It is unfair and unduly restrictive that a person should be required to give up a public position, or even paid employment, simply to stand as a candidate in an election. That is the basic principle.
There is a conflict between the provisions of the Government of Wales Act 2006, which deals with disqualification, and the National Assembly for Wales (Representation of the People) Order 2007, dealing with aspects of electoral law. That conflict needs to be resolved. It led to problems that I outlined in Committee. In the last elections to the Welsh Assembly, two Liberal Democrats were disqualified as a result of being members of public bodies that appeared in the list of disqualified bodies in the 2007 order. Arising out of that controversy, the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee of the Assembly, at the invitation of the First Minister, considered the issue under the chairmanship of the Deputy Presiding Officer. It took evidence and obtained a legal opinion from the Counsel General. Its report, published in the middle of last July, made a number of recommendations which my amendments reflect. In particular, the committee felt that the disqualifications should be spelt out without reference to the legislation dealing with Westminster elections.
The noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, referred to the fact that in paragraph (2) of my Amendment 10 there is reference to a person being disqualified because he is,
“a member of the legislature of any country or territory outside the Commonwealth (other than Ireland)”.
It seems rather unlikely, but that is the current position because the previous Act simply incorporated the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975 and the disqualifications that were contained in that schedule. Accordingly, when the committee of the Welsh Assembly said that these disqualifications should be spelt out in Welsh legislation rather than in a reference to the 1975 Act, I followed that recommendation. The amendments are quite simply as the committee suggested.
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The nub is in subsection (5) of the proposed new clause:
“A person shall not be disqualified from standing as a candidate for the position of Assembly member by reason of his holding any office designated by an Order in Council under subsection (1)(f)”.
The material word is “candidate”. However, if he wins the election, he should be given the same period of grace that a Member of Parliament is given elsewhere in the Act—namely, eight days—within which to resign the position that disqualifies him as an Assembly Member. It is really a reflection of what already appears in Clause 3 of the Bill.
There is nothing party-political about this, even though it was Liberal Democrats who fell foul of the provisions. There are upward of 60 or 70 bodies for which disqualification exists under the 2007 order and I understand that other candidates who were not successful at the last election would have fallen foul of the same provisions, because those provisions are so widespread and not very clear. I am endeavouring, through this amendment, to clarify the position completely. I hope that the Minister will be sympathetic to my aim. I beg to move.