Devolution:

Devolution is the process of handing over power from central government to local or regional bodies. Devolution in the UK is often described as ‘asymetrical’ because the powers of devolved bodies in the UK (the National Assembly for Wales, the Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the London Assembly) do not all stand on an equal footing.

National Assembly for Wales

The National Assembly for Wales was created through the Government of Wales Act 1998, which passed executive and some legislative powers from the UK Parliament and Government Ministers in Westminster to the Assembly. The Welsh Assembly held its first elections in 1999. As the 1998 Act stands, both legislative and executive powers have been delegated to the National Assembly as a whole, creating what is known as a single corporate body. In practice though, this doesn’t really happen and despite the constraints of the legislation, a separation of powers is observed so that only the Welsh Assembly Government (i.e. the executive) can be held responsible for its actions and it is accountable to the National Assembly for Wales (i.e. the legislature), which scrutinises its decisions.

Unlike the arrangements for the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly does not have the power to pass primary legislation. Parliamentary Acts passed in Westminster therefore still form the basis of all legislation that impacts on Wales. However there are a number of devolved areas in which the Welsh Assembly can pass secondary legislation. It is able to do so because some primary legislation, passed in Westminster, allows a certain amount of flexibility as to its implementation and the Welsh Assembly can decide how best to make the legislation work in the interest of Welsh people.

The Welsh Assembly can only legislate for devolved areas which include: agriculture and fisheries, culture, economic development, education and training, environment, health, highways, housing, industry, local government, social services, sport, tourism, town and country planning, local transport, water and the Welsh language.

This leaves a limited but important range of subjects which are the reserve of Westminster only: constitutional matters, foreign policy, defence and EU matters, taxation, macro-economic policy, immigration and asylum, benefits, employment legislation, social security and broadcasting and policing.

Funding and Expenditure

The National Assembly for Wales is funded by the UK Government and its budget is calculated by the controversial Barnett formula, which was devised in the late 1970s as a short term measure and is widely thought to be out of date. Because the decline of traditional industries has caused serious economic and social problems in parts of Wales, many people have therefore argued that Wales should be funded on need rather than per capita, as is the case with the Barnett formula.

The Welsh Assembly Government, like Westminster, does not deliver most services directly but it decides how to spend the money for the areas over which it has responsibility within Wales (i.e. on devolved matters only such as education or health). The Assembly Government produces a budget which the National Assembly as a whole then votes on. Non-devolved matters, such as prisons or magistrates courts, remain funded directly from central Government. However, who funds what is not always as clear cut as it should be and the example of police funding illustrates just how complex the arrangement can be! Dyfed Powys Police Station gets part of its funding from Westminster (because the police force comes under the remit of Home Affairs, which is a non-devolved issue) but it also gets part of its funding from the Welsh Assembly Government and another part from the public purse via council tax, (because the police authority comes under the auspices of local government, which is a devolved matter).

Elections

The National Assembly for Wales is made up of 60 Assembly Members (AMs) elected from Welsh constituencies and regions. The electoral system is a mixture between the First-Past-The-Post system (represented by 40 constituency AMs) and Proportional Representation (represented by 20 regional AMs).

During the mid Nineties, New Labour made a commitment to electoral reform as a result of growing discontent with the First-Past-The-Post voting system. Although First-Past-The-Post often produces a clear result (the system tends to produce ‘one party’ Governments rather than coalitions), it is also very unfair as of all the electors who turn out to vote, only those who voted for the winning candidate will see their votes registered in Parliament, in this ‘winner-takes-all’ scenario.

When Labour was elected in 1997, they had to honour their pre-electoral promise and an Independent Commission on the Voting System, entitled the Jenkins Commission, was set up to look into electoral reform for the House of Commons. However, the composition of the Welsh Assembly predates the Jenkins Commission and instead owes its arrangement to the findings of the Labour-Liberal Democrat Joint Committee on Constitutional Reform. The committee report, also known as the Cook/Maclennan Agreement (1996) after its co-chairs, former shadow foreign secretary Robin Cook and former Liberal Democrat President Robert Maclennan (now Lord Maclennan), concluded that the new devolved assemblies in Scotland and Wales should use the ‘Additional Member System’, effectively casting 2 votes on two separate ballot papers:

• CONSTITUENCY ELECTIONS ensure that there is a degree of continuity with the Westminster model and retains a one-to-one link between the directly elected Member of the Assembly and the constituency that voted for them. Boundaries for Assembly constituency elections are identical to those for Westminster. When electors vote for a constituency AM, they vote for an individual.
  
  
• REGIONAL LIST ELECTIONS make sure that the composition of the Assembly more closely resembles the voting intentions of the Welsh electorate as a whole, using proportional representation. When parties attract a substantial amount of support but the number of their candidates elected for constituency seats is low, they are very often compensated in the Assembly through the regional list elections. Regional Assembly Members are equal in every respect in the Assembly to those elected from the constituency. When electors vote for a regional AM, they vote for a political party.

The Richards Commission

The statutory arrangements of the Welsh Assembly (confined to devolved matters and with no powers of primary legislation) are such that it operates in a very restricted remit, which often causes frustration. Because of this, its powers were subject to review in March 2004 by the Richard Commission, chaired by Lord Richard, a former Labour Cabinet Minister and UK Ambassador to the UN. The Commission, made up of members from all four main political parties in Wales, along with independent experts, came to the conclusion that the current form of devolution was unsustainable in the long-run and recommended that it be given fully-fledged primary legislative powers in the areas for which it presently has limited secondary powers.

In order to accommodate the extra work generated by increased powers, the Commission suggested that the number of AMs be increased to 80 and recommended that a clearer separation of powers between the legislative and the executive in the Welsh Assembly be laid down in statute. It also recommended the introduction of the Single Transferable Vote (STV) in Assembly elections, which would allow electors to express their preferences by ranking candidates. This would replace the Additional Member System (AMS), where electors get one vote for a party- via regional AMs- and one for an individual - via constituency AMs. STV would still produce a proportional result, like the AMS, but it would mean that all Assembly Members were elected in the same way and it would allow voters to choose between members of the same party, rather than just the one choice offered by each party.

Problem Solving

Kirsty Williams is the Assembly Member for Brecon and Radnorshire. Kirsty and I share the same constituency offices in Brecon and Llandrindod Wells and work very closely on all constituency matters.

As Kirsty and I are both Welsh Liberal Democrats, it makes working together a lot easier as we share views on how to go about solving problems and follow the same party policies. Knowing what falls within the exact remit of the MP or the AM is sometimes difficult to pin down, so we have an agreement that we deal with whatever comes our way respectively. For those matters which are non-devolved, and where Kirsty doesn’t have a formal say, she will hand the case over to me so that I can take the appropriate steps in Westminster.

Kirsty also shares her time between the constituency and the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff, in very much the same way as I do between Brecon and Radnorshire and London.

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