The contributions already made make it perfectly clear how fragile and in many respects how insubstantial is the basis of devolution as we know it. The sovereign Parliament of Westminster has created a sub-Parliament in respect of Scotland and Wales. The sovereign authority that created that Parliament can undo that Parliament any day that it wishes to do so. If it did so I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, would agree with me that it would be the best recruiting sergeant that Plaid Cymru ever had. Be that as it may, the power is there to do exactly that. It is, of course, utterly understandable that nobody expects that power to be used. In fact, in Clause 1 of both the Scotland Act and the Wales Act of last year there is written in what is intended to guarantee the permanence of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly. In terms of law, it has no restriction whatever; it is purely cosmetic but well
intentioned. I do not think that, in so far as any legal interpretation is concerned, there is a different view held, but I will be corrected on that point.
Nevertheless, those two Parliaments exist at the mercy, as it were, of this sovereign Parliament. I do not know whether one can change the situation, because the concept of sovereignty means that it can be withdrawn at any time. Unless, of course, one has some self-abnegative discipline—for example, to say that there is a convention. In the Miller case that came before the Supreme Court some time ago, the argument was raised that there was a basic authority that related to each of the Parliaments. No, said the Supreme Court, it is a convention. However, nobody had defined a convention. If Parliament went out of its way to define a convention and said, “In this context a convention means a, b, c and d”, that might get us somewhere. It is a suggestion.