Wouldn’t it be great if we were all cheering for this legislative motion today taking us forward to getting the Wales Bill on the statute? Sadly, we are not in that position today, and I think that is largely because the Secretary of State for Wales has failed to convince his Cabinet colleagues and the Whitehall departments of the need for Wales to be treated in a similar way to Scotland and to Northern Ireland. I do very strongly feel that Wales has been treated with disrespect. And what is the reason for Wales to be treated differently than the other devolved nations? After the vote in 2011, which many people have referred to today, two thirds of the Welsh people voted for us to have primary law-making powers. There was a clear message from the people of Wales that they wanted us to make the laws, and that is a very changed situation, because I was in Westminster in 1997 when we passed the first Government of Wales Bill, and I can tell you that there wasn’t much enthusiasm for that from anywhere. The situation in Wales, I do think, has been transformed, and I do think that those feelings are being ignored by the Westminster Government and by the Whitehall departments.

I will be voting for this legislation today. It will be with gritted teeth, because I don’t think it does us justice, but I’ll be voting for it because of the reserved-powers model—I think that’s very important, that we do have that there, enshrined in law—because of the Sewel convention—again, I think that is vitally important—and because of the financial settlement. I do feel that we have, for many years, struggled to ensure that the Barnett formula is addressed. In setting up the fiscal framework that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government has discussed earlier in this Chamber today, I think, overall, it would be wrong of us to reject that framework. It would be wrong to reject the progress that has actually been made. For those reasons, I will be voting for this legislation today. But, as I said, it is with gritted teeth.

The unwillingness of many Government departments at Westminster to concede significant requests for amendments, I think, is an indictment of perhaps how low the prestige of the Wales Office under the current Secretary of State has sunk and how the current Secretary of State for Wales has not been batting for Wales. And, you know, if you just—