National Assembly for Wales

Wayne David Excerpts

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

It is a shame there is no one from Ukraine present to speak up for themselves—no disrespect to Ukraine, but that matter could be taken up in another place, namely Ukraine.

On double candidacy, the proposition was put in a manifesto which was voted for in an election. There was a White Paper and it went through a proper system. Of course, it is possible to disagree with something that has been properly considered and passed in a democratic way—I respect that and I am sure that we all share that view—but we are complaining about proposals that were put through in a one-sided and seemingly political way without proper collaboration with the institution that would then have to run the situation, namely the National Assembly for Wales.

Could the Minister confirm whether the boundary changes are now dead and buried in the aftermath of the vote here, particularly in the light of a Wales Office spokesperson saying that it is now not in anyone’s interests to change the boundaries as proposed by the Green Paper?

[Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)]

The proposed parliamentary boundary changes have been abandoned, which means that £1.5 million has been wasted by this Government. Does my hon. Friend agree that, should the Minister confirm, as is likely, that the review of the Assembly boundaries is dead and buried, they will have wasted even more money?

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[Wayne David]

My hon. Friend has used the word “gerrymander” a couple of times and he is right to use that term. Does he agree that the bottom line is that the proposed boundary changes for Wales were all about preventing the election of another Labour Administration in Wales? That was the motivation and it has been stopped.

[Geraint Davies]

The evidence certainly points in that direction. Thankfully, there are different institutions in the United Kingdom that can take forward different policies and ideas. For example, in Wales people can go to university for £3,000 a year or about £10,000 across three years, rather than pay £30,000. In this place, the Conservatives say, “It is impossible to have lower fees. Where would the money come from?” That idea and many others show that there are different ways of doing things. That is healthy for democracy.

The attempt to use the power that this place has had historically to blunt the blade of innovation in Wales is quite wrong. Unfortunately, all the evidence suggests that these changes are being proposed for party political gain.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Stephen Crabb)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on securing this Adjournment debate on the Green Paper on future electoral arrangements for the Assembly.

Hon. Members will recall that we debated the Green Paper in Westminster Hall on 3 July last year. I was not in Westminster Hall for that debate and I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman was. I have watched the video and read it in Hansard and neither makes for a particularly edifying experience. It was not a particularly good debate, so it is worth revisiting some of the issues this evening.

Some hon. Members from Wales participated in the consultation and are keen to know where we have reached, particularly, as the hon. Member for Swansea West said, in the light of the vote last week on the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill—I will come to that in a moment. I was going to say that this debate is timely given that vote, but I will not congratulate the hon. Gentleman on that because, as the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) has reminded us, it is keeping us all from the football. We are, however, grateful to him for keeping us updated with scores. That might prove to be one of the more interesting points of the debate this evening.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales has made it clear that following last week’s vote in the House the Government will not now take forward the Green Paper proposals on Assembly constituency boundaries. I hope that answers one of the questions raised by the hon. Member for Swansea West. Indeed, the Government have been clear all along that the changes to the make-up of Assembly constituencies proposed in the Green Paper—either reinstating the link between Assembly and parliamentary constituencies, or retaining 40 Assembly constituencies but making them a more equal size—would be predicated on Parliament approving the proposals of the four UK boundary commissions for new parliamentary constituencies.

The hon. Gentleman opened his remarks by stating his delight that the proposals for revised parliamentary constituency boundaries were defeated, but I thought he gave the game away as to his agenda this evening. I think he is throwing up a smokescreen for the vote that he and his colleagues took that evening, which was not only a vote against fairer-sized parliamentary constituencies across Wales and the UK, but a vote against cutting the cost of politics.

[Wayne David]

The Minister says the motivation was cutting costs but will he explain why his Government are in the process of creating 50 extra peers for the other place?

[Stephen Crabb]

We will not take any lessons from the Labour party on spending money. The hon. Gentleman was a distinguished Minister in the previous Government and perhaps bears more responsibility than most, in terms of collective responsibility, for some of the decisions taken by that Government with such disastrous financial consequences for this country. We will take no lessons from the Labour party on the good use of resources.

I think that the hon. Member for Swansea West and his colleagues will come to regret the vote that they took last week, which was, as I have said, against fairer-sized parliamentary constituencies and cutting the cost of politics. Voters want more out of democratic system; they want more value for money and to know that their votes count. The hon. Gentleman’s constituency has an electorate of 60,000 or 61,000, but some of his colleagues have 94,000, 95,000 or 96,000 constituents. He should be able to see as well as anyone the inbuilt unfairness in the current system of parliamentary boundaries.

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[Stephen Crabb]

I have been clear about the consequences of the vote taken in the House last Tuesday—I was disappointed with the outcome—and that we will not proceed with the aspect of the Green Paper that deals with changes to Assembly constituency boundaries.

Of the three questions I have highlighted, the most pressing is on the length of Assembly terms. Hon. Members will be aware that, as a result of concerns expressed by the Welsh Government during the passage of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011, the Assembly election scheduled for May 2015 was deferred by one year until 2016 to avoid a clash with the next general election. That is a good example of the UK Government listening to the concerns raised by the Welsh Government and, to address another point the hon. Gentleman raised, collaborating with them. That is a one-off change. The two elections are set to coincide again in 2020 unless provision is made to prevent it.

A majority of respondents to our consultation favoured a move to five-year terms to reduce the likelihood of elections coinciding in future. The decision is a finely balanced one—good arguments have been made in support of both options—but however we decide to proceed, we are mindful that electors in Wales should be clear on how long they are electing their representatives for. Importantly, all four political parties in the Assembly favoured a move to five-year terms. It is worth putting that on the record.

In the Green Paper, the Government set out our intention to repeal the prohibition on a candidate at an Assembly election standing in both a constituency and a region. All three Opposition parties in the Assembly favoured removing the ban, but I acknowledge that, overall, a small majority favoured retaining the prohibition in their responses to the consultation. A significant majority of respondents agreed with our proposal to prevent Assembly Members from sitting in Westminster.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned competency—that issue was discussed at length during the debate of 3 July 2012. I should point out that the Government are simply operating within the framework that the previous Government set out in the Government of Wales Act 2006. As he knows, the Act states that competency and responsibility for electoral arrangements for the Welsh Assembly resides at Westminster. There is a Silk process—part 2 was launched recently, which provides a great opportunity for people who have concerns and other ideas to contribute. The Government have made it clear that we will listen and read very carefully all submissions to Silk part 2. We will announce our response in due course. The hon. Gentleman was not in the House at the time, but other hon. Members in the Chamber were, and I remind him that they supported the previous Government’s legislation and the framework that retains competency and responsibility for Welsh Assembly elections at UK level.

[Wayne David]

The Minister indicates that a large part of the Green Paper is redundant because of last week’s events in the House. Will he issue another Green Paper? If not, the consultation was on a largely flawed document.

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[Stephen Crabb]

The hon. Gentleman is an experienced parliamentarian and I think he is trying to tempt me to say more than I am able to at this stage. The Green Paper presented a package of changes and proposals. As hon. Members recognise, one significant part of the package is not being proceeded with, so we now have to look at the other elements on their own terms and decide how we can proceed with them, and, if we proceed with them, what would be the best legislative vehicle for them. I am not, therefore, in a position to give him all the information he is looking for this evening, but I am sure we will come back to it.

[Wayne David]

The Minister mentioned that £3,000 had been wasted because a large chunk of his document is now totally irrelevant. Does that £3,000 include the time civil servants spent on the element that has been ditched?

[Stephen Crabb]

If ever there was a false premise to an intervention, that was one. It was not wasted at all. We had extremely valuable responses to the consultation that will feed into our deliberations about the other parts of the Green Paper package. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman laughs. If we were not consulting, he would be the very first Member to stand up and complain about a lack of consultation. We can never win with the Opposition: there is either too much consultation or not enough consultation, or we are going too fast or going too slow. Actually, we think we have the balance right. We are taking the time to do this properly. We know that the most timely part of the changes will be, as I said earlier, the need to make a decision about the length of the Assembly term—whether we move from four years to five years—and we will proceed on that in a timely manner.