Welsh Grand Committee (Scrutiny)

Debate between Owen Smith and Albert Owen

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Owen Smith]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One thing that is clear from the debate and from the history of the Welsh Grand Committee is that Labour Secretaries of State and, indeed, previous Conservative Secretaries of State have a starkly different attitude from the present Government to listening to those who represent Welsh constituencies and to calling the Welsh Grand Committee when we need to discuss matters of importance for Wales. The Committee met 21 times at the discretion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), but it has met once in the past six months. We still do not know whether it will meet to consider the CSR, but it must.

I want to start my substantive remarks with a challenge to the Minister. I want him to defy my assertion that the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill is having a far greater impact on Wales than on any other area of the United Kingdom. Wales is losing 25% of its constituencies versus just 6 or 7% in the rest of the UK. That impact is out of proportion. The Minister will argue that that is happening because Wales has historically smaller constituencies, but can he, unlike his hon. Friends on the Front Bench, not accept that a specific case can be made for Wales? We are not the west midlands, but a separate, distinct nation with a different set of priorities. That is what needs to be considered alongside the legitimate questions about equalisation.

[Albert Owen]

Had the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Jonathan Evans), who claimed to be a democrat, given way, I would have asked him whether it was not more democratic that there was a referendum in Wales as part of the devolution settlement. That settlement said that we would retain the same number of Welsh representatives in Parliament. We are now having another referendum. Would it not have been sensible to wait until after the people of Wales had spoken in that referendum and we had seen the outcome before gerrymandering seats in Wales?

[Owen Smith]

Again, I completely agree. It is an absolutely telling indictment of the Government that they did not even think about the implications of the referendum because they are hellbent on railroading the proposed changes through in an attempt to rig not only the next election, but successive elections. This is about trying to secure Tory power in perpetuity, and we need to defend against that.

As various Members have said, the Welsh Affairs Committee is a Tory-chaired Committee with a Tory majority. It concluded unanimously that the proposed changes would have an impact on not only Wales, but the UK—on our constitution and the union between Wales and England.