Adam Price’s Blog

The Blog of Adam Price AS/MP, Carmarthen East and Dinefwr

Adam Price MP / AS - Carmarthen East and Dinefwr

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14th January 2009

Conventional fallacies…

The All-Wales Convention, claim the No campaign today on the day of its first public meeting, is a yes-campaign in all but name.  I think a cursory reading of its latest paper, “Getting Things Done in Wales” , would soon put paid to that idea.  If anything, the paper is something of a ’status quo’ supporter’s manifesto.   Much of the paper is an introductory lesson to the history of Welsh governance that reminds me of my first year politics’ tutorials.  There may be curry on the agenda tonight - but you will have to bring your own poetry and passion with you.  That’s fair enough, of course, since we’re dealing with an impartial body that is meant to assess the evidence objectively.

The problem lies with the final section of the paper where the Convention presents what I suppose might be considered as its interim conclusions.  These are presumably intended to generate debate.  They do that by making a series of statements seemingly calculated to give those of us in favour of Wales’taking the next step” a coronary embolism:     

 i.  The paper’s author questions whether legislative powers are necessary at all:

“..a great deal was achieved by thye National Assembly for Wales through the powers granted by the Government of WAles Act 1998.  During the Assembly’s first four years, it seems that the most popular policy decisions were introduced by statutory instrument and not primary legislation”

Well, that may be true of free bus passes or free prescriptions but what about the smoking ban which the paper refers to elsewhere.  What it omits to mention is the fact the National Assembly for Wales was the first legislature in the United KIngdom to vote in favour of a ban (on the 22nd January 2003, a full three years before the House of Commons) but lacked the power to implement it.   Two attempts by Julie Morgan MP to legislate through a Westminster private Member’s Bill were frustrated through the usual parliamentary filibusters and it wasn’t until Westminster legislated in favour that Wales was allowed a ban.   The paper refers approvingly to the Assembly being acknowledged by Westminster as a “major stakeholder” in this process:

While the principle of having a ban rested with Westminster primary legislation, the Assembly determined the date as April 2007 and defined what constituted a public space through a statutory instrument (The Smoke-free Premises etc (Wales) Regulations 2007.”

So Wales got to introduce the ban three months before England - but if we had had the power we could have introdcued it three years previously.  Since the whole case for the ban rested on it saving lives, that three year delay has actually cost Welsh lives.  That may be emotive, but it also happens to be true.    

ii.  The paper praises the efficacy of the current legislative arrangements:

It is clear that the process brought about by the provisions of the Government of Wales Act 2006 has succeeded in producing measures, distinctive laws for Wales. 

and where it expresses criticism it does so provisionally and only in quoting the views of others:

The time it takes to acquire new legislative competence fort the Assembly seems excessive to some…”

Well, I think the facts speak for themselves that we have the slowest, most complicated and inefficient systems of law-making in the world.  The Scottish Parliament has over the course of the nine full legislative years since the year 2000 produced an average of 15 Scottish Acts a year .  In the eighteent months of the Third Assembly term the Assembly has passed just two Assembly measures (the closest comparator) and three Legislative Competence Orders (which are merely the first stage in passing a Measure).  One LCO - the environmental protection and waste management draft order - has been in constitutional limbo for almost this entire time, scrutinised in draft form by an Assembly Commitee but not referred by the Secretary of State for parliamentary scrutiny. And no-one seems to know why.  Perhaps this is why Jane Davidson, the Environment Minister, has decided to turn her back on politics….out of sheer despait, and who can blame her when politics and policy in Wales moves at glacial speed, and, sometimes, as in the case, appears to sink without a trace.    

It then goes on to suggest that a referendum would make little difference as the fundamental consitiutional position would remain unchanged:

it would remain the case following an affirmative referendum vote in favour of the Assembly Act provisions coming into force that such provisions would not affect the power of Parliament of the United Kingdom tyo make laws for Wales”. 

This really is a straw man of an argument.  Under our admittedly flawed and frustratingly unwritten constitution the Westminster Parliament always remains sovereign.  This remains true even in the case of the Scottish Parliament so this point has no reaL relevance.

Most misleadingly of all the Convention appears to cast doubt on the appettite in Wales for primary law-making powers:

 ”it remains unclear how robust the legislative aspirations of Welsh civic society are over and above what can be delivered through subordinate legislation or Assembly measures.”

In other words there is nothing that the Assembly cannot do now that people would like it to be able to do.  The first point to make is that this is demonstrably wrong.  Take, for example, the united front by children and young people’s charities behind in the campaign to ban smacking.   Cross-party support in the Assembly would have ensured that Wales could have been social innovators again but this was frustrated, as with the smoking ban, by Westminster. 

There is no lack of ideas for Welsh legislation: seven LCOs have been proposed by the Welsh Assembly Government to date, seven by Assembly Members and one by an Assembly Committee following a petition.   That’s nearer the Scottish level of legislative activity. 

The issue for the referendum is not whether the Assembly should have primary law-making powers: it already has them, albeit in tightly prescribed areas.  The issue is whether it should acquire them piecemeal through a tortuously slow process at the behest of a Westminster parliament consisting of one chamber that is entirely unelected and another , 95% of which is entirely unelected by the people of Wales, or whether it should be given them wholesale based on the democratic mandate of the Welsh people.

The case for a Yes vote is that it will give us a system of democracy in Wales that is cheaper, quicker, more streamlined, more effective and, most crucially, of all, more democratic.  As has been pointed out already, the present arrangements are an exact copy of the hated Poyning’s law introduced in Ireland to subjugate the Irish.  Perhaps the Convention might care to add that to its historical introduction.  As for the interim conclusions I find it difficult to believe that Aled Edwards (who I know and respect and whose earlier paper on which this is based was written in defence of devolution) was the author of this seeming defence of the Case for Procrastination.  They surely don’t reflect his own personal views. So who or what has propelled the Convention so early on in this direction?  All the more reason for Welsh democrats to turn out in force - with or without the promise of poppadoms.

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