Speeches
Glyn Davies

 The momentum for this transformation derives from a combination of two distinct but linked developments. Firstly, next May the new Government of Wales Act comes into effect and Labour’s blatant attempt to ‘fix’ things for the ‘Government of the Day’ after May 2007, makes it so vital that a non-Labour Government in Wales is seen by the electorate as a credible option.

 Discussion is currently taking place about how the National Assembly will be run after next May.  We have already seen the utterly unacceptable, Welsh Labour inspired, ban on ‘party list’ candidates from standing as ‘constituency candidates’ in next year’s election.  This was condemned by every independent commentator, including the Government’s official advisors, the Electoral Commission. Labour just forced it through anyway.  And Labour is doing all it can to carry this deeply partisan approach into the discussions about how things are to be arranged after May.  They are working under the assumption that Labour will always be the lead player in the government of Wales. Wales needs this to be changed.

 If our Assembly is going to have the capacity to hold the ‘Government of the day’ to account it must become a totally different institution from the ineffectual talking shop that it is at present.  The Assembly must meet for longer hours, probably for three days per week, including some morning sessions.  One day should be reserved for Government business, one day should be reserved for ‘opposition’ inspired business and a third day to debate committee reports, housekeeping issues, etc. Various committees, constituted as special ‘measures’ committees, standing committees or scrutiny committees should be meeting at the same time as the Assembly is in session. All voting should be done at the end of each session to dispense with the utter waste of AM’s time sitting in the chamber during debates where they are not participating, just in case a surprise vote takes place.  Our job should be to work and not just sit in the Chamber to make up the numbers.

 There must be one weekly ‘opposition day’ which will end the present utterly ridiculous argument and posturing about future business. The opposition could do what it wanted in its own time and let the Government get on with the business it wants.  At present the Assembly looks petty and stupid to the watching public as we argue about what to discuss in the future.  I do not think many of us yet realise the full implications of ‘separation’ of the National Assembly from the National Assembly Government.  In future the Government will be able to largely ignore the Assembly if it really wants to. We must all hope that we can create precedent and custom that prevents the Assembly being sidelined - which brings me to the need to ensure all parties have an interest in creating a balanced constitution rather than an elected one-party dictatorship – the present position.

LIBERAL DEMOCRAT MINORITY DEBATE – ACCESS TO NEW DRUGS - 7th FEB 06

Today’s National Assembly debate concerns access to new drugs by people suffering from serious illness.  I have some personal knowledge of this matter.

 Members who served during the First Assembly may remember that in 2002 I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer and underwent major surgery (an Abdomino Perineal Excision of the rectum) which saved my life.  As an aside I should add that a few days ago I received the all clear following my 3-years-on colonoscopy and can now reasonably claim to be fully recovered.

 Today is the first occasion I have referred to my personal experience in the National Assembly because I find talking about it difficult and do not want to be categorised as ‘a cancer sufferer’ by my political colleagues.  However, I cannot allow this debate to pass without making a contribution about three important matters relating to how we deal with colorectal cancer, including the sensitive issue of access to new drugs.

 Firstly, I want to make reference to the importance of screening for bowel cancer. 

The reason that this matter is so important is that early diagnosis delivers such a very good chance of a full recovery.  Every year over 30,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with colon cancer.  Every year over 16,000 people die of the disease.  It is the second most common cause of death from cancer after lung cancer.

 Many of these people would not die if there was an effective screening programme.  It seems incredible to me that there isn’t more urgency in the drive for more effective screening.  I had hoped that real progress was being made last year when a home test kit programme was announced for England, which it was reasonable to anticipate would eventually be extended to Wales.  But even this limited programme is not progressing as we had hoped.  I ask the Health Minister in our new Senedd today, to take screening for bowel cancer much more seriously.   Action on this issue would save thousands of lives every year.

 Secondly, I want to make a brief reference to the ‘Review of Arrangements for the Provision of Stoma Appliances’ that is currently underway as part of a wider review. 

For those of us who have had a lower bowel re-section and for many others who have undergone gut operations a colostomy is permanent.  This in itself can be a traumatic experience.  It has been a blessing to me, as it has been for every other ostomate that the supply of stoma appliances is currently being handled with a wonderful efficiency. 

Now the system may be completely changed.  There is a great deal of concern amongst ostomates and those who care for them.

 I ask the Minister to be careful about this change.  There is a real danger that the wonderful system now in place, widely trusted and applauded, is threatened by the Government’s obsession with change.

 The third point I want to make is about access to new drugs.  For many years there has been a standard drug (5FU) used in the treatment of colon cancer.  Now suddenly there are, in existence, several new drugs of huge promise.  These drugs have the capacity to save lives.

 Last summer I was involved in huge publicity about a new drug named ‘Zeloda’.  This drug had been approved for use in Scotland but not in England and Wales. 

Today we have a similar position with other drugs for other diseases such as ‘Herceptin’ which has been referred to so often in this debate.  Another example of this sort of unfairness is the situation that exists for a friend of mine who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis.  She has been advised, by her consultant, that Beta Interferon is the best treatment, but because she lives in Powys she cannot have it.

 My message today to the Minister    -    is simple and clear.  Give real priority to completing the testing and approval of these new drugs.  I fully accept that this is a difficult and sensitive issue.  I fully accept that the Minister can often be in a no win position.  And I fully accept realise that the Minister cannot say ‘Yes’ to everything.

 I close by making my final point.  It is painful to watch someone you love, or someone you know well dying as the result of disease.  But it is much, much worse when you know that there are drugs available that could help them to recover.

'FUTURE OF THE WELSH LANGUAGE BOARD' - 19 OCT 2005

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I wish to speak in favour of the motion before us. I would go further than the motion, because I wish to see the Welsh Language Board continue without the conditions attached to it by Plaid Cymru. The Conservative Government established the Welsh Language Board, and, over the past few years, I have been disappointed with Plaid Cymru’s policy of calling for its abolition. I was even more disappointed when I heard that the Government was to accept Plaid Cymru’s advice and abolish the Language Board completely in 2007. However, I welcome Plaid Cymru’s changed attitude today, and I am pleased to see it defending the Board and in effect calling for it to be retained.

I have limited time but I wish to make three points. First, on the role of the Dyfarnydd, several Members have already referred to the post’s lack of independence; I would like to refer to its lack of effectiveness. When I asked the Language Board this week how often the Dyfarnydd would have taken action during the past 12 years, had it been in existence, the answer was: ‘None’. In reality, the Dyfarnydd will not be able to do the regulatory job that the Welsh Language Board currently does, and will not replace the Board in any effective way.

 Secondly, the mover of the motion referred to the fact that the Government has refused to accept the recommendations of the Welsh Language Board’s report on an education report. What concerns me is that, without the Board, there will not even be any report in the future.  There will be no-one to put forward a report on the future of the language, apart from the Minister himself, and we have already witnessed his consistently negative attitude. Without the Board, no-one will be promoting the language in future.

Thirdly, I wish to refer to the Forwm Iaith, the language forum. The creation of a language forum is important, but the way in which it is to be organised, as announced by the Minister, is a joke. There are to be two meetings a year, with the Minister chairing. If that is really what is to happen, the Forwm Iaith will be a complete waste of time. There will not be any independence whatsoever - just an opportunity for the Minister and the Government to issue press releases pretending that they are doing that which they are not doing.

'AVIAN FLU PREPAREDNESS' -11 OCT 2005

The effect of the Order before us today will be to add avian flu and Newcastle disease to the list of notifiable diseases under section 14A of the Animal Health Act 1981. We support the Order, but this debate gives us an opportunity to highlight the enormity of the threat that the current outbreak of the avian flu virus H5N1 represents. I have been raising concerns about the threat from virus H5N1 for several months but, over recent days, comments made by experts in the field have provided a startling wake-up call for us all. For example, the Chief Medical Officer for England, Liam Donaldson, has recently said that an outbreak of avian flu in Britain is ‘inevitable’.

It may seem that virus H5N1 is a low risk and a long way away. I have even heard what seems to me to be the totally bizarre suggestion that we are being alarmist, but it is always easy to underrate silent killers. The virus began in China in 1997 and has spread to various countries in Asia and Eastern Europe. It has reached migrating birds in Siberia, which will be migrating to and over Britain—including Wales—in their millions over the next few weeks. I was pleased to hear a report this morning that there will be testing of any widgeon and teal found dead at the Llanelli wetlands centre. At least this issue is being taken seriously there.

We know that virus H5N1 has spread from birds to humans, and has killed around 60 people, but that it has not yet been proven to spread from human to human. However, experts are telling us that there is a real possibility of this virus mutating or combining with a more usual human influenza virus resulting in easy and rapid spread from human to human. If this were to happen, David Nabarro, the United Nation’s co-ordinator of international responses, has predicted that up to 150 million could die. A UK contingency plan, which was prepared only six months ago, estimated that 50,000 people in Britain might die. Since then, the civil contingencies group in the Cabinet Office has raised that figure to 600,000.  These are all frighteningly large numbers.

I accept that there is not a great deal that the Assembly Government can do about the progress of the virus, but we have to be satisfied that it is doing everything possible to prepare for a pandemic. Experts tell us that it may be possible to control an outbreak, but this depends on the highest possible level of surveillance, and a thoroughly worked-through contingency plan. That is not what we are led to believe is happening at present.

I read this week that Dr Roland Salmon, from the Wales communicable diseases surveillance centre believes that Wales is not properly prepared to deal with pandemic flu. Even worse, I read this week that global preparations against the pandemic are being compromised by British delays in funding critical anti-viral drug research. This research is vital. We know that at present far too large a dose of anti viral drug is needed to counteract the virus. There will not be enough available. There is so much work to do to ensure that there is.

I accept that none of us knows the exact status of these various claims, and my aim today is not to criticise the Assembly Government. I expect the Minister and the Assembly Government to do everything possible to maximise pandemic preparedness. In 1918, the so-called ‘Spanish flu’—a virus believed to have mutated from an avian influenza virus—killed up to 40 million people, more than were killed in the first world war. That is the scale of the tragedy that could be creeping over the horizon.

I can think of nothing that should have a higher priority in the Assembly Government’s programme. I have been disappointed that the Minister has not kept us up to date on the progress of this virus; it gives the impression that the Government is not taking the matter seriously. The reality is that a devastating virus is moving inexorably towards our shores. We demand that the Government makes certain that we, in Wales, are as ready as we can be to confront it.

'FUTURE GOVERNANCE OF WALES'  - 21 SEP 2005

I, too, would like to associate myself with the comments of others congratulating the committee on its report. It raises a large number of questions, but in the short time I have I want to concentrate on just three points - all concerning the principle of holding the Executive to account.  I should also add that although I am the Chair of the Legislation Committee, I am speaking in an entirely personal capacity.

The first question that I must face is whether a Legislation Committee is necessary. It seems to me that there will be the same job to be done, as is being currently done and the Legislation Committee seems to be as good a way of doing it as any. What concerns me much more is a job that, in my view, is not currently being done.  Rather than simply consider corrections to the grammar and translation of all Statutory Instruments.

We should be dealing with the much more important need to establish some sort of mechanism in the Assembly to decide what constitutes a significant Statutory Instrument worthy of detailed scrutiny.

There is already some limited opportunity for the process of considering SI’s in that they are presented to committees and those committees can decide what they want to look at in detail. However, this process seems to me to be rather too random to be effective. The need to identify significant SI’s has already focused minds at Westminster, and the House of Lords has established a Select Committee on the Merits of Statutory Instruments. The purpose of that committee is to look thoroughly at all the statutory instruments that come before the House of Lords and to decide which ones are significant. It then prepares reports and publishes them. Those reports are quite often perused by Members of their Lordships House, who would not otherwise have been aware of their importance.

I do not believe that our current arrangements are acceptable.  They are simply not doing the job of ensuring thorough examination of Statutory Instruments.  I am pleased that the Legislation Committee has agreed to visit the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee at the House of Lords, and that we can build on that visit by proposing similar arrangements that might apply in this National assembly.

The second matter that I want to raise is much more fundamental and it relates to paragraph 64 of the report, which lifts from the White Paper the statement that ‘the Government intends immediately, in drafting primary legislation relating to Wales, to delegate to the National Assembly maximum discretion in making its own provisions, using its secondary legislative powers’.

This does not happen at present.  In the 18 Bills that have an impact on Wales in the last Queens speech,  maximum devolution under Government legislation simply will not happen - and if it did, it would lead to such a dramatic change to the way in which we function that we would not be able to cope with the additional workload.  This level of maximising devolution does not happen in Scotland either, because under the ‘Sewel’ principle, some decision making is referred back to Westminster. That is a sensible mechanism and something similar will have to apply in Wales.

There should be some form of non-governmental, genuinely independent mechanism to establish what maximum devolution using framework powers actually is.  Leaving that to the Government, either here or in Westminster is just not acceptable.  All we will have is the position most convenient to the Government of the day.  It has to be done by some sort of independent body, which would probably involve the Parliamentary Service in the National Assembly, the Members’ Research Service and our legal team in preparing the judgment. That judgment should be placed alongside what is currently presented to committees and it should be made public.  It is important that we all know where the Government is limiting devolved power in defiance of what it has promised under the White Paper.

Much of this legislative activity would, of necessity, have to be referred back to Westminster because of difficulties related to sheer workload. This would be sensible but where such reference back is proposed, the decision should not be made by a Minister, in conjunction with Westminster, without any input from the National Assembly as a whole. When a Minister decides that he or she wants to refer back to Westminster powers that should fall to us under framework legislation, it should be made public and it should be reported to and approved by the Assembly. If the Government is able to carry its proposal to refer secondary legislation back to Westminster that would be fine, but there should be an opportunity in the Chamber for the Assembly as a whole to vote it down.

Thirdly, on the matter of Deputy Ministers, I disagree with the report.  I disagree fundamentally with the suggestion that the payroll vote should be any bigger than it is now. If any institution is to function properly, it has to be held to account and it has to be held to account in part by its own side. If a majority of Members of the Government side are effectively on the payroll of the First Minister and the Government, there will be too much power in the First Ministers hands. There will be more of the bulldozing that we see too much of already and it will bring the whole devolution process into disrepute. I have no objection to Deputy Ministers if the number of Ministers is reduced. There may be scope for increasing the total number if, at some stage in the future; there were to be an extra 20 Assembly Members. I could accept that.  There is no case at present for formalising the status of Deputy Ministers, in the way the Report recommends. On that point, and that point alone, I disagree with the recommendations of the report.

'IAITH PAWB SPEECH' - 15th JULY 2005

Even without the Welsh language, Wales is a very special place—a distinct nation within the United Kingdom. However, I believe that it is the Welsh language more than anything else that defines the Welsh nation. Although I do not believe that it is necessary to speak Welsh in order to be truly Welsh, I believe that the Welsh language is as fundamental to Welsh nationhood and identity as human blood is to human life. It is this stark reality relating to Welsh language issues that sometimes makes them so contentious.

There has been a great deal of progress over the past quarter of a century. We have seen the birth and development of a Welsh language television channel, the passage of the Welsh Language Act 1993, the creation of a Welsh Language Board, and, most important of all, the development of Welsh as part of the core curriculum; all delivered by Conservative Governments. In passing, I want to say how pleased I am that Lord Crickhowell is, at long last, beginning to receive the recognition that he deserves for the crucial role that he has played, alongside Lord Roberts of Conwy, in transforming the prospects for our language. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the increase in the percentage of the population that can speak Welsh, reported in the last census and reversing a century of decline, is attributable to actions by Conservative Governments, albeit with cross-party support.

I would have expected the National Assembly for Wales to have built on this success, but I do not believe that it has done so. There was a good start. The Culture Committee, of which I was then a member, spent a year laying out the groundwork, with only the rare intrusion of partisan politics. ‘Iaith Pawb’, the Government’s national action plan, followed and promised much, but it has not delivered where it matters. Of course, some good things have happened. It could hardly be otherwise, bearing in mind the massive increase in tax and spend that we have seen over recent years. However, the key test is whether anything has happened that would not have happened had there not been a National Assembly.

It is great that 20,000 people are learning to speak Welsh. It is great for morale and for understanding how important the issue is across the nation. However, this will have little impact on the long-term sustainability of the language. Of course it is right and proper that passports—whether for horses or humans—and various communications should be bilingual. That matters for the status of the language, but it will not increase the actual use of Welsh or the number of Welsh speakers. I am deeply disappointed that the Welsh Language Board is being abolished. It is a hugely damaging setback. It sacrifices political consensus on language issues at the altar of ideology. Bringing the delivery of language policy back into the front line of politics will inject new bitterness into debates about the language, particularly when we are all agreed that from 2007 the politics of the National Assembly should become unambiguously adversarial.

The decision raises important questions that others have touched on. How are we going to develop new ideas on how to progress language policy? The Minister’s idea of a language forum meeting just twice a year changes from being of little value to almost no value at all when we discover that he intends to chair it. Abolition of the language board will leave a void in policy planning that his fforwm iaith is not going to fill. We have no idea what form regulation will take in future, but it would be true to form if it turns out to be some tame and toothless tiger run by a party hack. There must be a strong and independent regulator. Practically the only way to transform Wales into a bilingual nation and achieve the linguistic shift that some Members have referred to in the debate is through Welsh-medium education at nursery and infant level, concentrating resources and effort on enabling children to become confidently bilingual at the earliest possible age. Education policy is crucial. We have not seen the necessary degree of progress in this area. If we are serious about a genuinely bilingual Wales, achieving what the Minister says that he wants to achieve, we must ensure that the future of the language, as well as financial considerations, features in every decision made about closing primary schools.

'LEAVE THE CCW ALONE DEBATE' - 28 JUNE 2005

I propose that the National Assembly for Wales instructs the Welsh Assembly Government to drop its plans to transfer the staff responsible for delivering agri-environment schemes, particularly Tir Gofal, from the Countryside Council for Wales into the direct employment of the National Assembly for Wales . (NDM2494)

I would like to begin by emphasising what the motion is not about. It is not a challenge to the general principle of incorporation of quangos into the civil service, even if we strongly disagree with the First Minister’s approach in handling discussion about this matter. Assembly Members should have been much more involved in such an important debate. The First Minister and, indeed, other Ministers talk often about the importance of having an evidence base for decisions, but completely ignore any recourse to evidence or discussion when it suits them. However, thist is not the issue that we are raising in the debate today. The purpose of our motion is to stop the Assembly Government wielding its incorporation agenda as an ideological sledgehammer to inflict seriously damaging consequences on a genuinely successful Welsh story, which over the past 10 years has greatly benefited the Welsh environment.

I will comment briefly on the amendments. I have some sympathy with the Plaid Cymru amendment in that it calls for evidence-based consideration, which should have taken place before any decision was made. However, it prejudges the outcome of such research by effectively calling for the incorporation of the Countryside Council for Wales and the Environment Agency into the civil service, (or at least large parts of their responsibilities) before even considering this evidence. Therefore, we cannot support this amendment. We will support the Liberal Democrat amendments, although their link to the motion is somewhat tenuous.  However both amendments are important in their own right.

It is important to set out the historical context in which this issue should be considered. Throughout the 30 years between its inception in the 1960s and the early 1990s, the common agricultural policy was focused almost wholly on production, with almost no environmental considerations. By the early 1990s, there was a widely held view, with which I strongly agreed, that there would have to be change. At the time, the Welsh Office’s new advisory body on countryside issues, the Countryside Council for Wales , was becoming increasingly concerned about the negative impact of the CAP on the Welsh environment. I vividly recall a meeting in 1992 with the then CCW chair, Mr Michael Griffiths, at the Royal Welsh Show, when he floated with me his ideas for a new innovation, an agri-environment scheme that would seek to change the nature of farming in Wales , making the industry much more sympathetic to the environment, through rewarding good environmental management. I thoroughly approved of, and encouraged the CCW to develop, this highly innovative proposal, as did many others. There was a two-year gestation period, the Welsh Office approved it, and Tir Cymen, a pilot scheme, which was to operate in three discrete areas of Wales , was born in 1994. The scheme proved a brilliant success, and, in the late 1990s, the Labour Government extended it, with all-party support, to the whole of Wales , under the name of Tir Gofal.

The crucial point is that this agenda was formulated, developed and implemented by the Countryside Council for Wales ; it was not, as some would have us believe today, a Welsh Office proposal that the CCW was asked to deliver. It transformed the way in which public investment is used to structure land management policies. Not only did this new principle underpin the distribution of public money within the Common Agricultural Policy in return for environmental benefit, it has also fundamentally changed the culture within the Countryside Council for Wales and its relationship with its customers, the farmers and land managers. It transformed the role of the Countryside Council for Wales from being one of ‘regulation’ to one of ‘positive engagement’ with farmers and other land managers, who deliver countryside management. It changed farmers’ and other land managers’ perception of the Countryside Council for Wales from being negative, that of a regulator, to being much more positive, that of being a partner that people welcomed working with.

I was deeply disappointed to hear the Minister tell us, in a committee meeting last week, that he wanted the CCW to return to its former, limited, regulatory role. Tir Gofal has been a brilliant success story, which Wales can be truly proud of. It is widely described as the best agri-environment scheme in Europe , and probably in the world, and it has exceptionally low administration costs. The only restraint on its success has been the amount of money that the Government has been able to make available for the scheme. Tir Gofal is at the heart of the Government’s plans for the future of land management, and all parties in the Assembly support this strategy.

I was shocked when I first heard that the Government intended to put all this at risk by taking responsibility for delivering Tir Gofal away from the Countryside Council for Wales . About 60 project officers work within CCW, delivering this scheme, transforming the way in which the countryside is farmed and underpinning the partnership relationship that the CCW now enjoys with individuals and businesses that manage the land of Wales . The Government wants to transfer these 60 officers into the civil service. That is all that we are talking about: 60 project officers. This is utterly incomprehensible. It is driven by a misguided, misplaced ideology. We see a willingness to sacrifice a world-renowned, made-in-Wales agri-environment scheme on the altar of ideology.

The Minister seems to have two reasons for this castration of the CCW as we know it. He has looked entirely unconvincing when advancing these reasons, and I strongly suspect that the First Minister has a firm grip on the Minister’s arm—halfway up his back; or perhaps it might be his officials. First, he claims that it is a tidying-up exercise, because, in future, all other agri-environment schemes will be run by the civil service, and therefore it must follow that Tir Gofal should also be run in-house. That does not follow. I am not even sure that his reasoning is strictly true, because I understand that the management of the Tir Cymen pilot scheme still has three years to run and is not being taken in.

 The Minister’s case is further undermined by the great success of Tir Gofal, at a time when other agri-environment schemes were being managed and run by the civil service, incidentally with massively higher administration costs. There is no reason why the sort of arrangements that have proved so successful over the last seven years should not continue. This theoretical tidying-up argument is being used by the Minister to cloak the total absence of any reason that stands up to detailed inspection.

Secondly, the Minister has conveniently found a proposal, emanating from within the European Union, that says that there should be only one paying agency in Wales . I have to accept that if the EU insisted that there must only be one agency, the Government’s arm would be strengthened. However, my understanding is that the EU is saying that there should be one agency. It would be interesting to know how the Minister is going to arrange Forestry Commission grants in Wales if he puts this forward as an argument. I strongly suspect that the Minister has been searching for some fig leaf to cover his inadequacy and to justify the unjustifiable.

 Along with many other Members and people who truly care for the Welsh countryside and want to see the land of Wales managed in the interests of the environment, I believe that the Government is making a huge mistake in incorporating the responsibility for Tir Gofal into the civil service. I hope, even at this late stage, that the Government will think again.

'ASSEMBLY DEBATE ON THE WHITE PAPER ON THE FUTURE OF DEVOLUTION TO WALES' - 21 JUNE 2005

The recent Queen's Speech was very long-too long, in my personal view. I was disappointed to see in that speech a Bill to introduce the deeply illiberal measure of identity cards. However, like other speakers here, I want to comment on the proposal to enhance the powers of the National Assembly, which led to the White Paper and was the subject of a statement by the Secretary of State for Wales earlier this afternoon.

There are three essential proposals in the White Paper, the first of which has much support across the board. My political colleague, Lord Griffiths, has described it as the original idea of the body as it was constituted, as a triumph of hope over reason. That is how it has turned out. The accountability of the Government will be greatly enhanced here by the new arrangements.

The second issue is the method of election. I do not want to dwell on this, but I disagree with the Labour Government's proposal on this. The Secretary of State has defended the indefensible today with great skill and humour, but I believe that he will grow to be ashamed of the stance that he has taken. He reminded us today of his days as an early Liberal, and in those days, I greatly admired his stand and the way in which he became associated, in my mind, with the pursuit of democracy. I think that he is sacrificing that reputation by pursuing this proposal.

The most significant part is the roadmap to the exercise of law-making powers. This is an interesting proposal, especially for those of us who advocated that the Government will not become truly accountable to the people of Wales until full law-making powers are devolved to the National Assembly in those areas. That is the view that I have taken; it is not a view that everyone in my party agrees on, nor is it a view that everyone in the Labour Party agrees on. There has been much debate about it in both parties.

This week, I read comments from Ed Balls, who has been quoted in the newspapers as agreeing absolutely with that view. The position of Mr Balls is important, because it is likely that his mentor, Gordon Brown, will eventually assume the leadership of the Government. That is, of course, unless the current Secretary of State's ambitions are more successful than Mr Balls's-we cannot be sure of that. Mr Balls may well become a significant player, and it may be that Welsh Labour MPs will prevail upon him to change his views, but I very much hope not. My point is that it is a view that, in terms of making devolution work, is shared by many people in his party, in mine and other parties too.

I am not going to dismiss the Government's proposal out of hand, although I agree with Helen Mary Jones that it has largely been framed by the interests of the Labour Party rather than any desire to promote devolution in Wales. The strategy behind it has been deeply flawed, but it is a proposal that we must take seriously. When the Presiding Officer here describes this as:

'law-making powers in all but name'

those of us who want to see the sort of arrangements that I want to see must take serious note of what has been put before us.

Had my party won the general election, we would have put forward a referendum, which would have offered the Welsh people full law-making powers. I have heard other people, including the Secretary of State earlier today, point out one of the other options, which would have been the abolition of the National Assembly. I believe that more and more people within the Conservative Party and right across the board in Wales want to see us given law-making powers. If that option had been put-and my view is different to the Secretary of State's-I think that the majority of people might well have chosen that option. However, we are where we are.

I wish that Jeff would listen to what has been said before he makes his interventions. I made it absolutely clear that there are many in my party who seek that option, who include the shadow secretary of state and others whom I could name. I have also made it clear how I would be arguing if there were a referendum. I am repeating what I said before, Dirprwy Lywydd, and I am sorry about that, but when you have interventions from people who have simply not listened to what you have said and have some preordained position, then that is what is going to happen.

There is an element of seeing how this works. I will say this in the Chamber, because the Secretary of State is here and may well have some influence on these things, that, if it turns out to be successful, I hope that they will move towards the sort of law-making powers that Richard proposed rather more quickly that the 2015 date that I have heard mentioned. As is almost certainly going to happen in four or five years' time, when the Conservative Party becomes the Government of the United Kingdom, it is entirely possible that the Conservative Party will take that view up, because of its logical nature. The Labour Party also thinks that, because that can be the only possible reason why it has put in the blocking mechanism of this two-thirds majority vote in favour. I hope that, during the passage of this Bill, the dual mandate proposal and the particular proposal about the two-thirds amendment will both be withdrawn, so that all parties can support it.

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