Wales Act 1978 (Repeal)

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 26 June 1979.

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Photo of Mr Leo Abse Mr Leo Abse , Pontypool 12:00, 26 June 1979

Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Mr. Jones) I, too, do not want to linger long at the graveside. Perhaps necromancers enjoy funerals, but I do not. Although the corpse was originally misconceived, and, when half alive, was seen to be misshapen, still I do not say my few words, I assure the hon. Member for Caernarvon (Mr. Wigley), in order to relish these obsequies.

It is true—I acknowledge it—that I participated in the ending of the life of this poor creature. I acknowledge also that I and five other Labour Members gave the opportunity to the people of Wales to put an end to this wretch. After all, it was the people of Wales who, having heard the accusations we made, having heard the often eloquent defences made by members of the Liberal Party and Plaid Cymru who believed in the Act, and having heard other defences advanced by people with unbelievable cynicism, condemned this poor thing to death.

I note today that few of its once-ardent friends are even present. They have slunk away. Those who are present are diffident in coming forward to give their encomiums above the coffin. It is not because I feel guilt at the slaying that I am saying this, and certainly not because I wish to compose a threnody at the graveside, but because, whenever a death takes place, even of evil beings, wise men do not rush from the cemetery but rather try, even if for a brief moment, to gain a new perspective, to make appraisals of their lifestyles and their philosophies. They do not merely look back in anger, as the hon. Member for Caernarvon has.

Apart from the hon. Member no one here—such are false friends—appears to be in heavy mourning. But not even those who caused its death should be celebrants, for that would be unseemly. For the dynamic behind the devolution Act, sick though I believed it to be, was a response, although an inauthentic response, to some of the bewilderments, the especial anomie, the estrangements of our contemporary Wales. It was a response to an emptiness that was marvellously and curiously lacking in other days, in the days of adversity in Wales, not in these days of comparative prosperity. I refer to the days when community flourished and egoism withered. Sick though I believe the response to these problems to have been, the Act nevertheless was in some ways less purulent, less toxic a response than that given by those in Wales who helped to give us this Tory Government which, by shabby philosophy, mocks at the humane radicalism which so far in this century has been the unique contribution of Welshmen to British politics.

The new Secretary of State and his acolytes may feel triumphant that by teasing out all the avarice in the Principality—by offering income tax cuts and houses at discounts—by their huckster's approach, have pulled out more support in Wales than ever before to embrace the worst, the emptiest, the most banal values of South-East England suburbia.

The debate conducted in Wales over devolution was largely worthy of Wales. It was a battle of ideas, personally polemicised, as becomes Wales, but it was a search for a worthy identity. Although opportunists infiltrated both camps it was a genuine and passionate argument with ideational content, and a content that was in some ways spiritual.

There was and there is more common ground between those who were genuinely committed to devolution and those who, for idealistic reasons, opposed it than exists or will ever exist between, on the one hand, radicals in the Labour Party, the Liberal Party and in Plaid Cymru and, on the other hand, the Welsh Tories who would iron out all the elan, all the distinctiveness and all the humanity which history, geography and, indeed, biology, have endowed upon Wales.

I come to bury the devolution Act, not to praise it. But I close the cemetery gates knowing that there is more, and that there must be still more understanding between the genuine mourners, of whom there may have been a few, and the genuine anti-devolutionists than can or should exist between them on the one hand and the Secretary of State on the other. The right hon. Gentleman has this afternoon danced—admittedly a little lightly—on the Act's grave, chanting, not quite audibly, the pagan songs of avarice that, if acted upon, would debauch the Principality.

Burying this Act does not mean that we have solved the problems of Wales. It should be understood by those in Wales that we radicals inside the Labour Party know that it does not mean that we have filled the vacuum within which too much of the life of our country is lived. It does not mean that we have arrested by one iota the corrosiveness of a self-interested, narcissistic form of capitalism which is spreading in Wales and which could totally destroy our especial pride of community and leave us as petty suburbanites in a provincial Britain.

Therefore, today is not a moment for lamentations, for looking backwards and for trying to stir up old hostilities. It is the time for all radicals in Wales to reunite, for if we do not do so we shall indeed have betrayed our heritage and be without identity, distinction, distinctiveness or reforming zeal. We shall then deserve the fate of petty anonymity that so evidently threatens Wales and its people.

What, then, is the response we now have before us for attempting to deal with these massive problems? It is a Select Committee. Let me make my position clear. If it were a genuine Select Committee, adequately backed, manned by people who wanted to use the inquisi- torial powers with which it was endowed, it could be a valuable instrument.

If it remains in the present form it will however become a guard and a shield for the Department and for the Secretary of State for Wales. As has already been pointed out, the numbers on that Select Committee will be small and the majority will be Tory Members of Parliament—those left without office but who are still panting for it.

The power of patronage will remain with the Secretary of State for Wales. He will have a pliant Select Committee which will do what he wants it to do. The majority of its members—Welsh Tory MPs—would be bound to collude with the Secretary of State, not to open, up or reveal the great gaps that may exist within the Administration but rather to seal them. I cannot see the hon. Member for Barry (Sir R. Gower) acting as the battering ram for the people of Wales and coming down heavily on the bureaucrats and the Ministers who will come before the Committee. It is farcical even to imagine such a concept. What we are creating is an instrument which, because it will have a Tory majority if it remains with its present numbers, can shy off any really complex problem which is bothering Wales, and in particular bothering the Secretary of State for Wales.

What the Secretary of State has done—even though perhaps he has not done it in a Machiavellian manner—is, since he lacks innovatory spirit, slavishly to follow the idea of the general Select Committees. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda has pointed out that they are inappropriate, and ineffective, in dealing with the multiple facets of administration which exist in the Welsh Office. Of course we need more people on the Select Committee but we need something else. I give this to the Secretary of State. Why should these people be appointed for the whole Parliament?

Members of other Select Committees have been appointed for a whole Parliament due to the need for continuity. For instance, in dealing with energy a Committee needs the people who know the subject and who build up a source of information on it. But the very nature of a Select Committee for Wales, if it has any meaning, is that it should be dealing with subject after subject. The very nature of a Select Committee for Wales is that it ought to have Sub-Committees which would have powers of surveillance. We need a larger Select Committee and that Committee ought not to be elected for the lifetime of a whole Parliament.

If we concede that this is not a Machiavellian device to protect the Minister, and if the Committee is not going to be a creature—as I believe it will be—of the Secretary of State, what is necessary above everything else to make it effective is that people should be appointed for only one Session. That would enable a change of personnel and would allow the Committee, perchance, to grow a little and make some little contribution, which it cannot do at present, to resolving the vast and yawning problems of Wales. The Government, far from being able to meet those problems, will, as we know from their record and from their threats, be likely only to exacerbate them.