Publication of Proceedings

Part of Orders of the Day — Wales Bill – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 25 April 1978.

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Photo of Mr Ioan Evans Mr Ioan Evans , Aberdare 12:00, 25 April 1978

It will be for the Assemblymen to determine the length of their speeches. It is a question of our making a definite block grant to the Assembly. There is no provision for the publication of a bilingual verbatim report of all the proceedings. I believe that reason will prevail in the Assembly and that the view will be taken, "There is a need for a verbatim report of certain proceedings, but it will be unnecessarily expensive to publish all the proceedings verbatim."

Obviously the Opposition are envisaging an Assembly that will be similar to the House of Commons, but I believe that it will be a different type of Assembly, especially if it is intended to undertake its work on a committee basis in determining the various allocations on social services and other items of expenditure.

The Assembly will not be a fund-raising Assembly. Its main function will be to act as a spending authority in allocating funds. It will be a question of how the Assembly allocates the main block grant to the various committees and how those committees allocate the funds to different parts of Wales. I believe that in the Assembly one will not have the same type of decisions that are arrived at in, say, the Committee system in this House. Indeed, the type of committee in the Assembly will be very different. Therefore, I do not think a verbatim report of the committee proceedings will be necessary.

There has also been mention of a daily report. Do we envisage the work of the Assembly as a daily occurrence? Surely that is a presumption which we should leave to the Assembly.

I hope that the Government will resist this clause. It will involve massive public expenditure. If there is to be no additional grant, that expenditure must be at the expense of other forms of public expenditure which are greatly needed in Wales at the present time.