20 Years of Devolution

Debate between Pete Wishart and David T C Davies

Thursday 11th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

We have recommended that the Government look at the JMC having its own secretariat, and the UK Government have now said they are prepared to explore that. However, I want to come back to the Government’s response to our report, and I think that what the Government are prepared to do will delight the hon. Gentleman.

[David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Pete Wishart]

Yes, of course; I give way to the Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee.

[David T. C. Davies]

Under the suggestion the hon. Gentleman is making about everyone having an equal say, presumably the First Minister of Northern Ireland, when that Assembly is set up again, would have a veto over what was happening in the rest of the United Kingdom.

[Pete Wishart]

With all great respect, I think that the hon. Gentleman misunderstands and possibly does not really appreciate what we are saying. We suggest in our report that parity of esteem be established. It is not right that the UK Government should chair all proceedings and set the agenda; that should be the responsibility of all Governments and the chairing should be rotated—just the chairing, so not having a veto but just ensuring that that sense of equality exists between the four Governments in a setting and a forum that is supposed to be able to accommodate that.

What we said about the Scotland Office and the Secretary of State’s role probably got most of the headlines and caught most of the attention when our report came out just a few short weeks ago. When we looked at the Scotland Office and the Secretary of State’s role, we found a Department that has more or less been bypassed in two very important functions. One of them is at the highest level of inter-Government relations such as the bilateral meetings between First Minister and Prime Minister. That now seems to be conducted by the de facto Deputy Prime Minister; he does all that and there does not seem to be much of a role for the Scotland Office in those proceedings. The second thing we found, which is probably more important, is that bilateral arrangements between Ministers from Scotland and Whitehall were being conducted by themselves and they were not going through the Scotland Office. If a Minister in Scotland wanted to deal with an issue that was of importance to the UK so it was something that needed to be done together, that would go straight to the relevant Whitehall Department down here with no role for the Scotland Office. So we asked what the Scotland Office therefore really does, and why it is in place, with all the paraphernalia of a civil service and so on.

Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Pete Wishart and David T C Davies

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I congratulate you on your appointment, Mr Deputy Speaker. I can already sense you melting into that Chair, and I wish you many years in the role. I can also see the other Mr Deputy Speaker bursting to get on to that Chair, dressed in what can only be described as the best of Deputy Speaker finery.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on a fine maiden speech. He had some remarkable predecessors and he paid a fitting tribute to Rudi Vis, who was very much respected and liked across the Chamber. We have heard some other fantastic maiden speeches, including a fine and passionate one from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). He brings vast experience to the Chamber and I look forward to hearing many more robust and meaningful contributions from him as this Parliament progresses. The hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) gave a passionate defence of the Welsh language, and my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil) and I are similarly passionate about the Gaelic language. We hope to hear many more speeches on that theme as she makes her contributions in Parliament.

I enjoy the maiden speech season. It is great because we hear all these fine tributes to former colleagues and are given an encyclopaedic tour of the UK’s constituencies. We have several more maiden speeches to hear and I must say that I could hear one every day for the next Parliament if so many are as fine as the ones that we have heard in the past few days; all the speeches have been excellent, and I look forward to hearing some more this afternoon.

I congratulate the coalition Government because they have been as good as their word. The Con Dems have condemned Labour’s hated identity cards to the scrap bin of history and I say well done to the coalition Government. Is it not bizarre, even in these days of political cross-dressing, that it has taken a right-wing Conservative Home Secretary to scrap perhaps the most anti-civil libertarian measure of recent times, which was proposed and introduced by a Labour Government?

[David T. C. Davies]

I hate to give the hon. Gentleman a politics lesson, but he ought to know that right-wing Members of Parliament have always been supporters of liberty and that we have had to defend our liberties from the authoritarians on the left.

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that. I observed with great interest the Conservatives’ new interest in civil liberties when they were in opposition. We must hope that they maintain it in government and do not go back to form, because the Conservatives have not got a great track record on these issues.