Michelle Matheron describes a project to help engagement with devolution in Wales:

Sir Emyr Jones Parry, Chair of the All Wales Convention, has already described the current devolution settlement as a “fog.” Last week the Convention held the last of its public events, which have been taking place across Wales, as they work to assess our attitudes towards the powers that Wales currently has and our appetite for more. We will have to wait until November, when the convention publishes its report, to see if Sir Emyr and his colleagues recommend that the best way out of the fog is a referendum on further law making powers or whether we should hold tight and hope that the mists clear.

The WCVA Voices for Change Cymru project has been up and running for just over a year. Sticking with Sir Emyr’s analogy we aim to act as beacon in the fog by guiding voluntary sector organisations of all sizes through the devolution settlement. The project aims to connect Wales’ diverse third sector with local and national decision making. With training courses ranging from the basics of Welsh Politics to detailed courses about Legislative Competence Orders and Assembly Measures as well as events, information sheets and a comprehensive website our lottery funded project aims to help the third sector engage in policy and legislation making. We have found that there is a huge desire to know more about how to engage and influence even in small voluntary groups who have no staff member to do that work. The will is there and the evidence base is certainly there – what may not be there is a map, compass and torchlight to get through the fog! So that’s what we hope to provide.

Since the metaphorical change in the weather in 2007 the Presiding Officer has asked organisations to come forward with ideas for legislation and petitions. Sir Emyr and his team have also been keen to ask people what they would do with more powers and what laws they would want to see made. And the voluntary sector has responded with petitions and ideas and numerous contributions to consultations on LCOs and Measures. We have adapted to this new way of working, of looking for legislative solutions to problems and speaking the language of the latest phase of devolution that likes us to answers questions about “whether it is appropriate for Wales to have these powers” and “whether this is in the spirit of the devolution settlement.” Organisations have worked long and hard to campaign for the power to do something before they can get started on what it is they want to do. But it has not been plain sailing and the system is not working in as simple and transparent way as we would like it to. In a plenary debate this week about the Carers’ LCO Helen Mary Jones referred to the amount of effort required for voluntary organisations to use the current legislative process:

“We must bear in mind the pressure on voluntary organisations as a result of this process. To achieve the change that they want for carers, they have to lobby here, at the assembly’s legislative competence committee, and then at Westminster’s Welsh Affairs Committee; after that, when Measures are proposed, they need to lobby again. That is an awful lot of effort.”

This echoes WCVA’s response to the All Wales Convention and while we would not suggest that it is a wasted effort it poses big capacity and resource issues for even the largest of charities let alone smaller community groups who may have valuable contributions to make to the process. Add to this LCOs being held up or rejected at Westminster and committees being told that the Government could not support them bringing forward legislation because it would “divert resources away from the Assembly’s legislative programme” (as happened with Sustrans’ LCO proposal) and organisations who are trying to engage are finding it far from simple. All of these things are disincentives to engagement that make it hard for us to encourage people to step outside and take a walk through the fog.

Michelle Matheron is a Senior Policy Officer working on WCVA’s Voices for Change Cymru project.
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A new analysis of the UK 2009 Budget shows that for the first time since the founding of the National Assembly in 1999, there will be real terms cuts in public expenditure in Wales.

The analysis, carried out by fiscal expert Dr Eurfyl ap Gwilym, and published on the IWA’s website, predicts that between 2011-12 and 2013-14 there could be a cumulative loss in real terms of £2.2 billion compared with the position if funding remained at the 2010-11 level for each of the following three years. Of this reduction £0.7 billion is in current expenditure and £1.5 billion in capital expenditure.

What will happen to the Wales devolved budget in the three years 2011-12 to 2013-14 will be covered in the Spending Review now expected to take place after the next UK General Election. Whilst the 2009 Budget does not spell out the forecasts for Wales there is sufficient information in the Budget Red Book to come to an informed estimate based on two key statements by the Chancellor:

• UK current expenditure will grow at 0.7 cent per year in real terms from 2011-12 onwards.
• Public sector net investment will ‘move to’ 1.25 per cent of GDP by 2013-14. Moving to 1.25 per cent represents an average real cut of 17.2 per cent per year compared with current levels of 2.2 per cent of GDP.

Using this information allows an estimate to be made of the Departmental Expendiure Limit or the devolved budget for Wales up to 2013-14 and is set out in the following table. All estimates are in real terms, that is before allowing for inflation.


Download the full analysis here.

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Iain Macwhirter assesses the importance of the recent Calaman report into the funding the Scottish Parliament:

The report of the Calman Commission on Scottish devolution will almost certainly never be implemented, yet it remains a landmark document - arguably as important as the 1988 Claim of Right and the 1997 Devolution white paper. By making the intellectual case for a degree of fiscal autonomy so cogently, it has set Scotland on a new course which should lead, at the very least, to a new federal United Kingdom within 10 years.

The original Claim of Right, produced by the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1988, established the sovereign right of the Scottish people to have a parliament of their choice; Donald Dewar's sensational white paper Scotland's Parliament a decade later confirmed the Scottish parliament's right to legislate on all areas of government except those specifically reserved to Westminster. Now, finally, the Calman Commission's report has made the case for giving the parliament proper economic powers to reflect its political competence. Constitutional, legislative and now economic - the home rule project is nearing completion.

The most astonishing thing about the Calman Report, though, for anyone who has followed Scottish politics for the last 30 years, is that its findings were unanimous. Even the Scottish Conservatives, who bitterly opposed devolution 10 years ago, have now put their names to the most radical home rule document in a decade. I had to pinch myself, and so did the former Tory Scottish secretary, Lord Forsyth, who came out of political retirement to condemn it. He knows what Calman means even if Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Conservative leader, doesn't.

Meanwhile, the Scottish National Party, true to form, disowned it. It is an ironic footnote to modern Scottish history that the SNP has boycotted all three of devolution's landmark reports, while also being the beneficiary of their intellectual groundwork. The Nationalists will also, I suspect, ensure that the Calman proposals aren't introduced, at least in the form set out last week.

So why, if it won't be implemented, is Calman so important? Well, firstly because of its intellectual authority. This is not only a serious and scholarly piece of work, it is also a model of clarity - hopefully the last word on the endless debate about the Barnett Formula. It eschews fiscal metaphysics and argues in plain language why, after 10 years, it is necessary for Holyrood to move from being a pocket-money parliament dependent on handouts from London to a grown-up legislature responsible for raising money as well as spending it. Barnett is toast, even though its crumbs may still be around a while yet.

Calman argues that any new fiscal regime must meet the requirements of equity, autonomy and accountability. It must be fair to all regions, redistributing from wealthier to poorer; it must give the Scottish parliament freedom in matters of taxation, spending and borrowing; and it should make the parliament responsible by raising the funds to implement its policies, from free prescriptions to road bridges. Sir Kenneth refers to another criterion which is equally important: transparency. The new fiscal regime should make much clearer to Scottish voters how much is spent in Scotland and how much is raised in taxation from all sources, including revenues from North Sea oil. These principles transform the Scottish parliament into a genuine national legislature - like a child riding a bike, this is the moment when the stabilisers are taken off.

The concrete proposals are more controversial. Calman said the Scottish Parliament should have the power to levy a "Scottish rate" of income tax of up to 10p in the pound; that Holyrood should have its own standalone taxes such as stamp duty; that it should have the power to create its own taxes, subject to Treasury approval; and that it should be able to borrow, like local authorities, on an annual basis. It also asserts the right of the Scottish parliament to introduce new local taxes, such as local income tax, without any financial penalty from Westminster.

There are numerous questions here: why only half of income tax if the principle is accountability? Why should borrowing powers be constrained annually? Why are oil revenues not devolved if stamp duty is? Calman's basic argument is that it is in Scotland's economic self-interest to remain in a reformed "social union" with the UK. Oil revenues for example can fluctuate from £1bn to £12bn in a few years, wreaking havoc on the Scottish budget. Better, according to Calman, for revenues to be "pooled" and handed back to Scotland on an annual basis through a son of Barnett.

Now, critics argue that it should really be down to the Scottish parliament to decide whether or not it can cope with fluctuations in revenues. The SNP say that by denying Scotland autonomy in this important area, Calman contradicts its own principles. Actually, the report makes clear that while it doesn't think oil revenues should be devolved "at this stage", it does not rule out the creation of an oil fund in future. These and other issues, like corporation tax, will provide a decade of debate, but conducted on the basis of the intellectual framework established by this report.

So if it's so good, why won't it be implemented right away? Well, for one reason, because the economic and financial climate has changed beyond all recognition. Calman was conceived during the boom years of devolution, when money was pouring into the Scottish government faster than it could spend it. The idea of setting up a form of tax-sharing, with a new apparatus to administer it, seemed a perfectly reasonable proposition when public spending was rising year on year, but it becomes a nightmare when it is falling off a cliff. Gordon Brown may talk about introducing the new system before the next election, but that is surely wishful thinking. A reform of this complexity would require the active support of the Scottish government, and if the SNP are still in charge, that support will not be forthcoming. The SNP will demand an oil fund before they enter the room.

More likely Calman will be the starting point for negotiations between Alex Salmond and an incoming Conservative government under David Cameron. Eager to address the West Lothian question and under pressure from English Tories to curb spending in Scotland, Cameron might well consider full tax autonomy for Holyrood in exchange for the abolition of Barnett and a reduction in the number of Scottish MPs. And he can use the arguments supplied by a Labour-inspired committee. So, as well as making an honest person of the Scottish parliament, Calman could be the spark that leads to a constitutional transformation in Westminster.

Iain Macwhirter is a Scottish journalist. This report first appeared in the Sunday Herald on 21 June. Read more...

The Assembly would be obliged to welcome tax powers, if Scotland's are extended, says Professor James Foreman-Peck:

Devolved tax and borrowing powers for Wales inched closer last week. Gordon Brown smiled upon the Calman Commission’s proposals for Scotland to raise perhaps 16 percent of its current budget within Scotland. This must increase the chances of a similar settlement for Wales. And the Assembly would be obliged to welcome greater powers over Welsh affairs.

Peter Hain, the new Welsh Secretary, has suggested that the Assembly Government should piggyback on UK legislation for Scotland that might result from Calman's proposals. A copycat approach for Wales would empower the Assembly to vary income tax rates by 10p in the pound in each tax band. In return the block grant (at present the Assembly’s only funding) would be cut by an equivalent amount. In addition perhaps some low yield taxes, such as those on landfill, aggregates and air passenger duty, might be devolved to Wales. Borrowing powers must accompany tax devolution, for in the present and future recessions tax revenue falls while spending requirements increase. The deficit would need to be financed.

Would tax devolution address Wales’ weak economic performance, recently discussed by Dylan Jones-Evans and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development?

Measured by output per head Wales is now one of the poorer nations of Europe. The gap between Wales and the rest of the UK has widened under the independent economic development policies of the Assembly Government. Professor Jones-Evans contends the root problem is Assembly Government neglect of the private sector. He instances the concentration on public sector projects of the Objective One European Funding in Wales and claims that private sector business participation is being squeezed out by bureaucratic delay. If the Assembly Government were responsible for raising some of its income in taxes, would this focus them more closely on economic development or more effective public spending?

Not necessarily. One possibility is that, if their tax base does not grow strongly enough to support planned expenditure, the Assembly Government with tax powers will simply raise income tax rates above English levels. The only currently available example of Welsh tax independence, local authority council tax, offers supporting evidence. Council tax revenues increased by a greater percentage than all UK central government tax revenues between 2001 and 2007 (58 percent compared with 40 percent). Such an increase might be expected if local authorities just decided on their spending, without worrying about the amount of tax it was reasonable to extract.

From the viewpoint of raising revenue the council tax is nearly ideal. If one area imposes a higher tax than another, this immediately lowers property prices. Property owners in the higher tax area incur a capital loss, but they cannot avoid it. People will not be deterred from buying into the areas. House prices or rents will simply fall to cover the greater tax, while remaining comparable with prices inclusive of taxes elsewhere. It is a hard tax to escape.

Income tax differences between regions on the other hand are more avoidable. If working in Wales required that we pay a higher income tax than in England, some would demand higher before-tax wages in compensation or they would seek work across the border. Firms faced with demands for higher before-tax wages would consider whether Wales was a convenient place in which to stay.

The converse is also true, as Republic of Ireland demonstrated with its low corporation tax. A lower tax rate can draw in taxpayers and increase revenue, especially for a small country close to a much larger one.

So a tax cutting policy would be the obvious one for a development-oriented Assembly government with tax powers. But, for the moment leaving aside the domestic difficulties of deciding what spending policies to cut, Whitehall would not be enthusiastic. Not least, reservations in London would stem from the financing they provide with the Welsh block grant implicitly being used to compete with England for jobs and tax revenue. A less generous block grant would make it more difficult for a Welsh Assembly Government to cut income tax. London therefore would be obliged to consider what they have resolutely avoided for decades; whether the size of the Welsh grant was appropriate to Welsh ‘needs’.

Spending departments and ministers would probably fight tax reductions on the grounds that cuts would signal that the Welsh grant is too large for Welsh ‘needs’. Whitehall would be expected to reduce the grant if taxes were cut and so the pain of spending reductions would go unrewarded. Scotland’s behaviour is consistent with this position. Scotland has not used its 3p income tax varying powers – partly because raising it has been unnecessary. They have been able to extract more money from England than the Barnett formula indicated, starting from a high base relative to England or Wales. Cutting income tax was also impossible, for it would have undermined the justification for claiming more public money from England. Devolution of tax powers at most will affect policy makers’ thinking, but is unlikely to trigger substantially divergent income tax rates within the United Kingdom.

Would Welsh policy makers woo the private sector more vigorously with tax devolution? Doing so with Objective One funding would have required a willingness to reduce the costs to business of participation, fewer committees, less scrutiny, and perhaps greater risk of falling foul of auditors. The political appeal of such a policy must be limited whereas the payoff to public sector projects for elected representatives is immediate; they can be identified with the benefits. At first sight tax devolution offers more incentive to expand the tax base but actually the incentive was always there with the desire to generate new jobs.

Across Europe it is not clear that EU Structural Funds are an effective way of catching up. In principle the Assembly Government Business Advice Week initiative starting July 13 to provide advice to individual SMEs in 12 regional locations in Wales seems more promising. This does not depend on tax devolution. But if and when they come tax powers for the Assembly will be a fascinating experiment in devolution.

Professor James Foreman-Peck is Director of the Welsh Institute for Research in Economics and Development. Read more...

John Osmond provides a commentary on the outcome of the European elections in Wales

It is perilous to interpret any trends in last week’s extraordinary European Parliament election results in Wales. The low turn-out (30.4 per cent) and the fact that, because they are not about electing a government, Euro-elections invite the electorate to experiment, both mean that is dangerous to extrapolate the results in terms of future voting behaviour, whether for the next Westminster or Assembly elections.
. However, some key themes are indisputable. First, multi-party politics in Wales – already affirmed by successive Assembly elections - are here to stay. The long 20th Century, from 1880, in which Welsh politics were overwhelmingly dominated by just one party, first the Liberals and then Labour, is history.

Secondly, Welsh politics are destined to become even more pluralistic. Although any extrapolations from European votes needs to come with a health warning, the message of last Thursday’s results are plain to see in a swathe of marginal constituencies across Wales. Welsh Labour has a two-fold problem. At Westminster (as in the National Assembly) Labour still remains the dominant incumbent, so it is the party with seats to lose. This is then exacerbated because it faces different opponents in different parts of Wales.

The most obvious beneficiary is the Welsh Conservatives. Most attention has been given to the fact that they overtook Labour for the first time ever in a democratic all-Wales election (winning 21.21 per cent of the vote to Labour’s 20.2 per cent, Plaid Cymru’s 18.5 per cent, UKIP’s 12.8 per cent, and the Lib Dems’ 10.6 per cent). But, more significantly for the outcome of the forthcoming Westminster election, on the evidence of European constituency results Welsh Conservatives look very likely, if not certain, to win Cardiff North, the Vale of Glamorgan, Carmarthen West, and probably the Vale of Clwyd. In all of these they were well ahead of Labour. Other Labour seats where they scored smaller majorities were Cardiff South and Penarth, Newport West, Wrexham, Alyn and Deeside, Delyn, Clwyd South, Bridgend, and Gower.

Down the western seaboard Plaid Cymru significantly out-performed Labour in its target seats – Ynys Mon, and Llanelli. Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats threaten Labour in Newport East and Swansea West.

Unless the turmoil in the party persists so that some kind of melt-down occurs, Labour is still likely to emerge from the next Westminster election as the largest Welsh political force. However, it looks inevitable that it will drop from 29 to around 20 seats. The Conservatives are likely to increase their representation from their present three to around ten or even twelve. Plaid Cymru, currently three, will have five or six seats, and the Liberal Democrats, currently four, between one and three seats (on last week’s showing Plaid are likely to beat them them in Ceredigion, and the Conservatives threaten both their Montgomery and Brecon and Radnor seats).

How are we to interpret the Conservative advance for the future of Welsh politics and the reality of Welsh society in the coming decades? The last time they were near their current level of strength was in the early 1980s. In the 1983 Westminster election, which was also disastrous for Labour, they won 32 per cent of the Welsh vote and took 14 seats. At first glance the historian Gwyn Alf Williams’ commentary soon afterwards, seems wholly applicable to present circumstances. Writing in 1985, in his celebrated book When Was Wales, he declared:

“It is clear now that over the past dozen years and more, Wales has become a right wing country which is moving relentlessly to the right in its politics. No doubt the roots lie in the profound and swift social changes which have accompanied the major adjustments of an increasingly capitalist economy in its British theatre. These began to operate in the mid-sixties but did not fully register in public awareness until the late seventies. The old basic industries have virtually collapsed, miners and steelworkers between them are now hardly 6 per cent of the working population. Pit closures on the grand scale without doubt powered much of the sixties rebellion. The intense class and community consciousness of the former mining valleys can resurface in a striking manner during crises which evoke memories, but by and large has dissolved. Women have entered the working population en masse and now constitute 45 per cent of it; most of them employed as an under-class of low-paid, under organised labour subject to a gender discrimination rooted not least in the very cultural formation of the historic Welsh working class itself. Families and regions struggle to maintain their hold on the prosperity of the last two decades which, in spite of mounting unemployment and mounting pressure on the poor, persists among those with jobs. The massive extension of consumer capitalism, its imagery and its values, its sweeping advances in technology, the explosion in the information industries and the intensifying privatisation of existence around the television screen and the computer have generated attitudes and values remote from any of the recent traditions in Wales. There are whole new ranges of professional and technical people for whom some far horizons widen even as human society in Wales itself loses coherence. The radical changes in the family, the growth and subsequent dislocation of a specific youth culture, the rise of feminism, have broken many patterns. Overall, there was increasing frustration and humiliation at apparently inescapable economic failure and national inadequacy which made a mockery of all social projects and bred a yearning for a decisive change of direction. A society which in Wales had been cast in a distinctive and peculiar mould was dissolving into something new.”

Much of this could surely describe our present day circumstances in Wales. At one level it is as though Gwyn Alf Williams was ahead of his time and it is only now that our politics are finally catching up with the fundamental socio-economic transformation he describes. Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that that ‘yearning for a decisive change of direction’ was answered in the referendum in 1997.

At that moment Wales did indeed “dissolve into something new” whose consequences we are presently living through. One is the nature of Welsh Conservatism and its political programme which is unrecognisable today compared with the mid 1980s when Gwyn Alf Williams was writing. The leaders of Welsh Conservatives in the National Assembly have now embraced devolution with more conviction than much of Welsh Labour and look destined to take it on to its next stage in the coming years. One indication is a forthcoming book by Conservative AM David Melding which the IWA will be publishing at the end of this month. Entitled Will Britain Survive Beyond 2020? it is a cogently argued case for Welsh nationhood in the context of a federal Britain.

Reviewing the book in the forthcoming Summer 2009 issue of the IWA’s journal Agenda, former Plaid Cymru AM and MP Cynog Dafis observes, “David Melding has produced a fine piece of work: erudite, stylish, lucid and elegant, logical, passionate yet suffused with a gentle and tolerant irony. In so doing he has seized the initiative on constitutional policy and thrown down the gauntlet to the political parties, challenging them to bring forward convincing alternatives to his compelling vision.”

I can’t imagine that even so prescient an historian as the late Gwyn Alf Williams could have foreseen that in the early part of the 21st Century Wales would be re-inventing itself once more by this particular route.

• John Osmond is Director of the IWA.
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Leading figures from Welsh cultural and political life, including the Archbishop of Wales, the National Poet for Wales, and the opera singer Bryn Terfel, have signed an open letter to the UK Government calling for a restoration of £25m a year they say is being lost to English language television in Wales.


Declaring Welsh television to be in deep crisis they say they “cannot accept that a mantle of invisibility should be placed over Wales within what will remain the most important mass medium of communication.”

They argue that rescuing ITV Wales’s news service is not enough and that steps must be taken to rescue general programming in the English language. They urge that the restored funding should be channelled through a new Welsh Media Commission to provide a full range of programming to complement and compete with that provided by BBC Wales. They say:

“We must retain a capacity to talk to each other in our majority language, whether in drama, comedy, documentary, entertainment, satire or arts programmes. Welsh life is a rich novel, it cannot and should not be reduced to a ticker tape.”

The crisis in Welsh English language broadcasting has been brought about by the gradual, and now terminal decline in ITV Wales programming, and by severe cuts at BBC Wales. A consequence is that the annual value of television programming for Wales in English will have been reduced by £25m a year by 2012.

The letter:

A television service for Wales
An open letter to the UK Government

Over past decades television broadcasting has been the most important medium of all for reflecting Wales to itself and an important outlet for its talents. Within tight constraints the BBC and HTV/ITV have served audiences in Wales in a spirit of public service and healthy competition. Their programming for Wales in the English language has commanded large mainstream audiences.

That English language service is now in deep crisis: in terminal decline in ITV programmes serving Wales and increasingly constrained at BBC Wales. While accepting that economic and technological conditions for television have changed irrevocably, we cannot accept that a mantle of invisibility should be placed over Wales within what will remain the most important mass medium of communication.

We are in full agreement with the Assembly Government’s view that “the current English language provision for Wales on television is not a defensible provision for a developed national community that brings to the table the sort of cultural legacy that Wales commands.”

On present projections the decline of recent years will continue for some years yet, reducing the annual value of programming for Wales by around £25m compared with the middle of this decade. It represents a major cultural setback, for this and future generations. That decline must be halted and reversed. Wales should no more be asked to dispense with this vital means of self-expression in a normal society than to jettison its National Museum.

We must retain a capacity to talk to each other in our majority language, whether in drama, comedy, documentary, entertainment, satire or arts programmes. Welsh life is a rich novel, it cannot and should not be reduced to a ticker tape.

Means must be found not only to sustain an effective competitor for the BBC in the field of news and current affairs, but also to guarantee the development of a substantial, diverse and high quality programme service that can reflect every aspect of Welsh life and talent through the English language.

We write to urge the Government at the very least to restore the value lost from broadcasting in Wales and to channel funding through a new and accountable multi-media Welsh Media Commission that can sustain a national culture and help steer media development in Wales flexibly in a period of vital change across traditional and new media.

Signed,

Dannie Abse, poet

Gillian Clarke, National Poet of Wales

Geraint Talfan Davies, Chairman, Institute of Welsh Affairs

Baroness Ilora Finlay, Professor of Palliative Medicine, Cardiff University

Trevor Fishlock, journalist and broadcaster

Peter Florence, Director, Hay Festival

Brenda Maddox, author

David Melding, Assembly Member for South Wales Central

Rt. Rev. Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales

Elaine Morgan, author

Professor Lord Morgan, historian

Jan Morris, author

John Pikoulis and Harri Prichard-Jones, Joint Chairs, Academi, the Welsh National Literature Promotion Agency

Lord Rowe-Beddoe, Chairman, Wales Millennium Centre

Bryn Terfel, singer

Dafydd Wigley, President of the national Library of Wales and former MP and AM. Read more...

Reviewing the devolution decade so far had been a common activity among political observers until the all-consuming MPs' expenses row rose to the top of the agenda. A welcome side effect of the wider debate about politics sparked by the expenses row is that constitutional matters are no longer just the preserve of political anoraks and cloistered academics.

Parliament's Justice Committee has published a report on the past decade of devolution across the UK. Scottish devolution occurred largely in one step in 1999, whereas Wales has the constant state of devolution flux brought about by the Legislative Competence Order system. It is somewhat symptomatic of the differing natures of Scottish and Welsh devolution - Scotland's was an event not a process - that the legislative system in Scotland receives a little more than two pages of analysis, compared with five and half for Wales's ongoing devolution process.

Unfortunately, yet again, the bulk of the Wales-specific recommendations concern detail about legislative processes, rather than outcomes. That seems to be the largest disadvantage to the current system.

Nick Morris is the IWA's Research Officer. Read more...