I thank noble Lords for that lovely welcome. The amendments in this group explore the impacts of the Bill on the devolved Administrations of the United Kingdom. Noble Lords will know that we live in a country which has four distinct legislatures: bodies that are responsible for legislating and administrating in distinct parts of the United Kingdom. The devolved structures and powers of the Administrations in Scotland, England, Wales
and Northern Ireland are very different. The one thing common to them is that many public services, including health, education, local government and fire services, are devolved. Many of the services referred to in the Bill relate to public services. Should the Government of the UK be able to legislate in this area, despite the fact that public services are devolved? It is unclear. I warn the Minister that there is a real danger that if the Bill goes through in its current form, it will release a constitutional firestorm which will be much more powerful than anything we have seen today from Storm Imogen.
I am going to concentrate my comments on the issues affecting Wales and I will allow colleagues to pick up on issues relating to the other devolved nations.
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To understand this, we need to look at different models of governance in the United Kingdom. Scotland has a reserved powers model of governance. That means that the Scottish Government are responsible for all issues apart from those reserved for the UK Government such as defence and foreign affairs. In Wales we have a different model called a conferred model of governance. It is more sophisticated and more complicated, and the lines of responsibility are not as clearly demarcated as those of Scotland.
The assumption in the Bill is that employment and employment law are reserved matters across the whole of the United Kingdom. It is right that employment law should continue to rest with the UK Government. If we start to unravel that, we will have a race to the bottom in terms of the minimum wage and health and safety, and that would not be of benefit to the workers of the UK.
In the case of Wales, it is unclear whether measures on public services should be legislated for by Wales or the UK. It follows, therefore, that the Bill and the measures in it should not be unilaterally imposed on public services in Wales. Conventions developed since 1999 in Wales have made it clear that Westminster should not intervene in matters that have been devolved. The Government at this very moment are discussing and developing a new Bill for Wales. The draft Bill, penned by this Conservative Government, states categorically in part 1, article 2 that the Parliaments of the United Kingdom will not normally legislate on devolved matters without the consent of the Assembly. The Conservative Government of the United Kingdom are saying that they will not impose issues on Wales.
The UK Government would be acting with high-handed arrogance if they continued to pursue this path of imposing the Trade Union Bill on public service provision in Wales. It is highly likely that they would be acting unconstitutionally. So let us be clear that the Welsh Government and the Assembly will not give this Bill consent. There was a vote on 26 January in which Members from across the political spectrum—apart from the Conservatives, obviously—sent a clear message to the UK Government that the Welsh Government would not give legislative consent to the Bill being imposed on Wales. So in practice the UK Government are on a collision course with the Welsh Government regarding whether they have competence to legislate in this area.
If the Government go ahead and introduce the Bill, the Welsh Government will introduce their own legislation to overturn the measures relating to public services in Wales, especially on the 40% threshold, facility time and banning check-off arrangements. If the UK Government object to the Assembly’s laws, they will have to take the Welsh Government to the Supreme Court to ask for a judgment as to which Government should have power to legislate in this area. So let us be clear: if the Government come forward with this Bill and the Welsh Assembly says, “No, we don’t want this to happen. We will bring in our own law, which overturns this”, the UK Government would have to take the Welsh Government to court. What would happen next? They would go to the Supreme Court. It is not right for us to be writing laws in this place that we know will end up in the Supreme Court. It is for legislatures to decide where power should lie, not courts. I kindly ask the Minister to consider removing the parts of the Bill that relate to public services in the devolved Administration, because that would avoid an expensive and time-consuming constitutional clash.
The Government should note that there is precedence for such a situation—a clash between the UK and Welsh Governments. In the agricultural wages Bill judgment, it was absolutely clear that the Supreme Court came down in favour of the Welsh Government. In that instance, the Welsh Government were keen to introduce a law which would protect the wages of agricultural workers. That was challenged by the UK Government, who claimed that Wales had gone beyond its constitutional brief by acting in an area of employment law, which is not devolved. The Welsh Government argued that this issue related not to employment but to agriculture, which is a devolved area, and the court came down firmly on their side.
The Wales TUC has sought legal guidance on this matter, and its advice suggests that the provisions of this Bill relate to subject matters that are devolved—public services—as well as those that are not: industrial relations and employment. By ignoring the possibility that under the devolution arrangements for Wales, a legislative provision may relate to both devolved and non-devolved subject matter, the UK Government—we should remember that this is legal guidance—have mistakenly concluded that the Bill’s provisions are not within the legislative competence of the Assembly. That is the legal advice they have been given.
Let me be clear that, if the Government continue to impose this measure on public services in Wales, they will get caught up in a constitutional wrangle and spend thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money pushing something which is not wanted or accepted by politicians and people in Wales, and they are likely to lose in the Supreme Court, if it follows the precedent set by the agricultural wages Bill judgment.
I want to ask the Minister one question tonight. Have the Government received any legal advice on the Bill’s impact on Wales? If so, would she be kind enough to share it with the House tonight? I am hoping that legal advice may give us some hope that the Government might be prepared to listen.
In May this year there will be elections for the devolved legislatures. The Conservative Government have now accepted the reality of the devolution settlement in this country; it should now be respected. It is no secret that the political complexion of the Government of Wales is different from that of the Government of the United Kingdom. The Labour Government in Wales work extremely well with trade unions; they have avoided the strikes that are happening under the UK Government at this moment. We do not have a junior doctors’ strike in Wales; we have made sure that every person in the health service in Wales is paid the living wage—that is a good thing. The Public Service Minister Mr Leighton Andrews has concerns that these proposals will ultimately undermine rather than support the delivery of public services and the economy in Wales. The bodies that run public services in Wales object to this Bill; the chief executive of the Cardiff and Vale University Health Board trust has said that this could lead to unnecessarily challenging industrial relations in future. But, in principle, if the people of Wales want to support measures such as those proposed by the UK Government, and if they want them to affect public services in Wales, they should be allowed to have a vote on that. We have an election in May where that can be put to the people of Wales—if they want that to happen, put it in the Conservative manifesto in Wales, and let us see what happens.
It does not make practical sense to impose this Bill on Wales. Does it make sense for one legislature to impose detailed rules and conditions on another, when it has no idea of the models and the conditions of the existing services? We have been pulling in different directions since 1999. It is time to respect devolution and to understand that it is happening.
Let me give you an example. It is true that for a time, the Government gave additional money to social services in Wales to relieve bed blocking in hospitals. That gave the impression to some that Wales was taking its foot off the pedal in relation to health. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bed blocking is now a much lesser problem in Wales than it is in England, where they are desperately trying to emulate the Welsh approach. But the fact that the Tory Government are constantly attacking the Welsh Government on this issue demonstrates that they have no interest in or understanding of that different approach. Does it make sense for England to be telling Wales how to run its public services when it has no idea about those different structures of delivery?
There will be ample time over the next few days in Committee to discuss the substance of the Bill, and I have tried to avoid that temptation tonight. This debate is about underlining the need to respect the devolution settlement of this country. It is about respecting the democratic institutions of our country and the democratic mandate given by the people at a devolved level who are responsible for the delivery of public services. I hope the Minister will listen to our case and consider carefully whether she is ready and willing to start along a path which will inevitably lead to a constitutional stand-off and the sad and expensive situation in which the courts determine our fate, rather than the elected representatives of the people.