6. Statement by the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution: Interim Report of the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:11 pm on 31 January 2023.

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Photo of Alun Davies Alun Davies Labour 5:11, 31 January 2023

There we are. I'm very grateful to you, Presiding Officer, and so is the Chamber. [Laughter.] Home rule, of course, was one of the founding principles of the modern Labour Party, and those people who haven't read 'In Place of Fear' will chart Aneurin Bevan's search for democracy and search for power from the miners' lodge in Pochin colliery, through Tredegar town council and Monmouthshire County Council to the Palace of Westminster. And power is what socialism is about, and the use of power and the democratic control of power, which is what Waldorf and Statler don't actually like about this debate, because this is about the democratisation of political power. What I want to see from this commission, Counsel General, is the establishment of a recognition that parliamentary democracy is equal here as to that which exists in Westminster. 

I've read through the statutes of Westminster in 1931, and that might well provide a building block for the shared sovereignty of parliamentary democracy throughout these islands, because until we lose the concept of parliamentary democracy residing in Westminster and Westminster alone, we will never be able to protect the powers that the people of Wales want to be held here. So, we need to be able to do that. 

And the other point that I will just make, if the Presiding Officer will allow me, is that about the democratisation of money. All too often, decisions that are taken by the UK Treasury are taken to benefit London and the south-east of England, and one place where Liz Truss was absolutely right was that Treasury orthodoxy has failed the United Kingdom. Treasury orthodoxy has failed Wales. Treasury orthodoxy has impoverished the United Kingdom, and what I would like to see is a model based, perhaps, even on the Australian model, where you have the independent allocation of funds and redistribution of wealth across these islands to ensure that all parts of these islands benefit from the wealth created in these islands.