Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)

My Lords, there must be some book which gives 1,001 reasons for disagreeing with a particular proposal. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, must have read it and reproduced much of its powerful message: “Yes, it is important, but now is not the time”. No doubt, there are many other reasons and excuses as well. I believe that now is the time. I follow my noble friend Lord Murphy and, dare I say it, my noble friend Lord Wigley, whom I have always considered a friend and a major contributor to debates in this House on a range of issues, not just devolution. I have long been an admirer of his. It is possible that this may be one of his valedictory speeches and I commend him for all he has done in his time here. He and I go back a long way. I think it was about 1966 or 1967 when he first came with a group of colleagues from Plaid Cymru to talk to me about Europe. We have been in touch ever since and I have long admired his contribution. I will be very brief, because I adopt wholeheartedly what my noble friend Lord Murphy has said. Like him, I have made a progression. In the late 1970s, I was one of the so-called gang of six Labour MPs who opposed devolution. I thought that it had not been thought through adequately and used arguments such as “slippery slope” and so on. Some of them may still be partially true, but it was mainly the policies of Mrs Thatcher, ignoring Welsh interests in the 1980s, that largely convinced me. She was a recruiting sergeant for many of those who changed their views over the 1980s. In 1997, I went around Wales giving a different message from that which I had given in the 1970s. As my noble friend Lord Murphy said, the Senedd is now firmly established in Wales. There will be debates about powers and so on but there is no going back. Although there have been teething problems, it is now accepted and there is much power behind it. I see no reason in principle why we should not follow the precedent of Scotland, though the problems around timing and adjustment were put forward powerfully by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. I commend my noble friend Lord Wigley for his initiative on this and wholeheartedly support him.