Baroness Coffey (Con)

My Lords, we have covered quite a range of issues. I had intended for this to be about the decision-making process. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, referred to Groundhog Day; it has not been Groundhog Day as far as I am concerned. On the very first day, there was an opportunity for the Government to set out a bit more. People have talked about how it would have been better if this was a government Bill. Actually, if the Government had answered a lot more questions, and had not blocked freedom of information requests to understand what is going on between the sponsor of the Bill and some of these devolution issues, we could have had more progress. I was grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who agreed on the first day that we would not cover every single issue about Wales. This was done very deliberately, so that we could have a proper, detailed debate about the governance structure applying in this case. I have already set out that I would be inclined to support many of the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, to transfer some of that decision-making. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, pointed out, on the issue of smacking, that has already happened. I did not think that it would be that different or that radical for the issue of assisted dying also to be considered a competence to be passed across to the Welsh Senedd and Welsh Government. The suggestion has been that I am just trying to disrupt this happening in Wales. It is more about the governance, and that is why we have returned to it at this point. I remind people that, on day one, there was an opportunity for the Government to set out matters and also to consider some of the cross-border issues that were referred to. I also point out to the Committee that it was decided last week that we would finish the debate early. Nobody had spoken to me about moving the group to today. I feel that we could have covered quite a lot of the issues before 6 pm last week, but that was a decision made by the Government Front Bench without consultation. That is why we have ended up where we are and probably the debate has been a bit longer. However, this is still, frankly, an unsettled issue, an uncomfortable issue. I still strongly support that we should consider transferring this to the Welsh Senedd for the future. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.