Devolution: A Decade On
Embargo: 1am Saturday 10 November
In any new referendum on full legislative powers for the National
Assembly there should also be an opportunity to vote on increasing
the Assembly’s membership to 80 elected by the STV fully proportional
system of representation.
This is one recommendation made by an IWA expert working group to
the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee’s inquiry
into Devolution: A Decade On. The changes would mean amending
the 2006 Wales Act along lines also recommended by the Richard Commission
into the Assembly’s powers and electoral arrangements in 2004.
“Such steps should be taken before any referendum is held so
that the people of Wales are enabled to vote in the full knowledge
of the system that will operate in future,” say the Working
Group. “At the same time, consideration should be given to whether
additional Fields of Competence should be added.”
The Working Group, comprising Keith Patchett, Emeritus Professor of
Law with the University of Wales, and David Lambert and Marie Navarro
of Cardiff Law School, also says that extending the Assembly’s
legislative powers could have the far-reaching consequence that a
separate Welsh legal jurisdiction will be needed:
“It seems inevitable that the emergence of a separate body of
law will give rise to demands for the separate treatment of Welsh
legal matters from that for English legal matters. These would become
stronger should the case for devolution of the criminal justice system,
soon to be under consideration by the Assembly Government under the
terms of the One Wales coalition agreement, be accepted. This implies
the creation of a Welsh jurisdiction, entailing, at the minimum, a
separate court system, judiciary, legal profession and statute book,
alongside a distinct jurisdiction for England and parallel to those
in Scotland and Northern Ireland.”
The Working Group concludes that the current trend for quasi-federal
relationships between the nations of the United Kingdom are likely
to continue:
“In future we can envisage greater autonomy for Scotland, ‘English
laws for England’, a separate jurisdictional status of Wales
from England, and closer relationships between Northern Ireland and
the Irish Republic. All these may require a formalised constitutional
structure in which intergovernmental bodies such as the Joint Ministerial
Committee and the British-Irish Council would play much more substantial
roles than at present.”
For Further information contact
John Osmond, Director, IWA: 029 2066 6606, 07720 599457
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