My Lords, I have the privilege of being a member of the Constitution Committee, but I speak on my own behalf. I do not have the privilege of being a Welshman but I have the privilege of looking at a statute; I have the privilege of remembering what a baleful influence Henry VIII was on the history of Wales, and his baleful influence looks as though it will continue. The 1536 Act was intended to crush the Welsh nation and the Welsh language. The devolution process was intended to row back hundreds of years of history.
We are being invited to give Henry VIII powers to a Minister, by secondary legislation, to amend, modify, repeal or get rid of—whatever language we care to use—primary legislation. I have a very strong view on this, and shall address the House interminably about the besmirching effect on our constitutional arrangements of such clauses. However. I do not have to stop there in this instance. If Parliament chooses to give Henry VIII powers to the Minister, that is Parliament’s choice, but here it is giving Henry VIII powers to a Minister to reject, modify, get rid of or dispose of the legislation of the National Assembly—in other words, to eradicate, nullify or replace a statutory provision, enacted by a democratically elected legislature of our United Kingdom, on which the people living in Wales will have acted while the particular legislation has been enforced, and all without any consent from the Assembly. That seems an astonishing insult to the democratic process. The affirmative procedure that will undoubtedly be suggested as the solution does not—I say this with great respect—address the democratic deficit.
The solution to the problem involves having another look at Clause 2 and transposing it into Clause 53. I do not need to spell this out. It is perfectly obvious that the consent of the Welsh Assembly is needed. I reject in Clause 2 that weasel word “normally”, which has all sorts of connotations that are not helpful to the analysis. There is another word beginning with “n” which should take its place: never.