MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS

of the

EVIDENCE OF:

Win Griffiths MP

Jon Owen Jones MP

held at

Caradog House, Cardiff

On

FRIDAY 11 JULY 2003

In Attendance

Lord Richard

Eira Davies

Vivienne Sugar

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Tom Jones

Huw Thomas

Ted Rowlands

Dr Laura McAllister

Peter Price

Carys Evans

Malcolm Horlock

Win Griffiths MP

Jon Owen Jones MP

Proceedings

Lord Richard

Firstly, thank you very much for coming. Secondly, could you identify yourselves for the sake of the record and thirdly, if you'd like to have five minutes to open it up. You haven't got identical views. Then we can discuss it afterwards.

Win Griffiths

I am Win Griffiths. I think I ought to give Jon the honour of starting. I have put in a written submission.

Lord Richard

Jon has.

Jon Owen Jones

I thought I had as well!

Vivienne Sugar

It was in the Western Mail this morning.

Win Griffiths

Even more reason for you to go first!

Jon Owen Jones

Thanks Win. I wasn't sure that I was going to make an individual submission and the reason I have is because of my recent experience. I think you have read a number of comments that I have made in a number of Welsh Bills as they have proceeded through the House. In general, and in fact in almost every specific example I have not been content that due scrutiny has been given to significant Welsh legislation, unfair to describe it as insignificant Welsh legislation, but Welsh legislation, and entirely consensual Welsh legislation, has had huge degrees of scrutiny, been subjected to scrutiny in draft form by the Welsh Select Committee. Has been scrutinised by the Welsh Grand Committee, then gone on to the floor of the House. So we've had scrutiny perhaps to excess for Bills which are non-contentious. Whereas highly contentious bills with significant differences of opinion have been piggy backed either ‘as England/Wales Bills’ or ‘on English Bills’. The result of that is that it is very difficult to be able to ask difficult questions of a Minister and have them answered. In general, you are asking questions of English Ministers who have no particular knowledge, or no ownership of the line of argument that they are expected to defend. I thought the Bill that restructured the health services in Wales and brought in local health board was a classic example of a highly controversial Bill, the consultation upon which was mixed, to say the least, and yet that Bill had hardly any real scrutiny and the Bill that has just finished its House of Commons stages and about to start the House of Lords stages is just as equally contentious and important and again it's been treated as a piggy back Bill and been given very little scrutiny.

Jon Owen Jones

My view is that we have achieved a great step forward in Welsh accountability with devolution, but we have missed something rather important in the process. It's now true that policies specifically for Wales are more accountable to the Welsh population since the Welsh population have an opportunity to vote on those things alone, not mixed up with a generality of policies for the UK. In that sense devolution has improved accountability greatly. But the legislative process involves more than just putting forward a manifesto of policies and getting elected. You elect representatives to examine in detail how the policies are put into statute. That process does not work at all in Wales at the moment. In fact, you could argue that's it's working worse now than it worked previously. Because in effect what happens is that the policy line which may be in the manifesto but not necessarily so, is agreed then put into practical wording by Welsh Assembly officers, by Civil Servants working for the Welsh Assembly presumably together with the Ministers, then it is negotiated with civil servants in Westminster departments and presumably Ministers at some point and then the result of that negotiation is then presented to Parliament. But in Parliament, in effect, there is not the ability to scrutinise and amend and improve that legislation. There is at least in theory that ability to do that about everything else. It's not just that Welsh MPs are not in a position to do that job, Welsh AMs can't do it, because when Parliament has decided what the wording of a Bill will be, Welsh AMs have no power to change it. So there is a lacuna here in the system. There are two general ways of dealing with this lacuna. You either give primary legislation power to the Welsh Assembly and let the Welsh Assembly AMs do a job of scrutiny of legislation. Which they currently don't do. Or you amend the processes of Parliament so that Parliament is better able to do that. If you go down the route of primary legislation to the Assembly, which is the simpler route, well, no it's not the simpler route, it's more complicated to do but it has greater benefit of clarity to explain to everybody else what you have done, if you do that you would have significantly change the Welsh Assembly. The Welsh Assembly would not operate as it does, you need more people in it, you need them to work longer hours, especially a lot longer hours at scrutiny, you would transform the structure. It's a different body than we have currently got. I don't think you can do that without asking permission of the population to do it. So if you go down that route you need to have a referendum. If you have a referendum to set up a much weaker body, you need one to create a much stronger body and all sorts of considerations must be taken into account of how the arguments around that would then occur. There are obstacles there. One of the things that we have to argue, as we argued for devolution in the first place, that the results of this alteration is to improve the way in which people get services. That's why delivery of services is an issue in terms of how we devolve powers.

Vivienne Sugar

I wonder if you say could say a little bit more about how scrutiny could be improved by the MPs if the present situation carries on?

Jon Owen Jones

I put forward some ideas. Ian Lucas put forward some ideas. But basically what you have got do is deal with piggy back Bills. Get rid of piggy back Bills. You have got to have the ability for Committees which must largely be compiled of Welsh MPs to look in detail at the subject. You have to set up parallel processes. If you can't deal with them on the floor in the same way as everything else because Parliament has limited time to deal with legislation. In fact, the main power of oppositions is to deny time to Government to get through their legislation. So if you push in extra Welsh legislation on the floor in the same way as the UK legislation you are going to push UK legislation out. So that's not going to work. You have to have some parallel structures set up. We could do what Lloyd George suggested in 1907 and have Committees which comprise of Welsh MPs to look at the details of Bills. We could do something like Ian Lucas has suggested and create some sort of hybrid Committees of AMs and MPs. But you can't do it within the present arrangements of the Parliament. You have to change the present arrangements of Parliament and allow Parliament to have some additional parallel structure in which Welsh only legislation is looked at in detail by the Committees which are either wholly or mainly composed all Welsh MPs and of course, because it's still part of Parliament, those decisions and the amendments would then have to be brought before the whole House for agreement. But what you would have done is you would have put the legislature into the negotiation. You would not make it, you would not make it an exclusive deal between the governments which is the present position, the Government's are agreeing legislation. But the legislature either in the Welsh Assembly or MPs have very, very little say in it.

Vivienne Sugar

Wouldn't you be bound by party discipline not to challenge, if there had already been an agreement between the Welsh Assembly Government and the UK Government, the majority of Welsh MPs are in the majority parties.

Jon Owen Jones

That's the position anyway. Party discipline. You might say that the whole process is pointless of scrutiny through the Committee structures since everyone is whipped at every stage. In large measure that is what happens. In large measure party loyalties mean that Government Members on a Committee hardly ever say boo or bah and vote Government line. But it's not an entirely wasted process because that doesn't always happen. Exceptions occur. Flaws are discovered. Governments as embarrassed. Arguments are made in Committee and supported cross party. They are brought up by various different parties and the Government makes amendments. Usually it makes amendments in the House of Lords because it's easier, it loses less face to make the amendments in the House of Lords. All though I'm sure their Lordships would prefer it to be the argument that is because they get greater scrutiny.

Lord Richard

It does get greater scrutiny. No question about that.

Jon Owen Jones

Often what happens is arguments are raised in the House of Commons, if the Bill follows the stages, they are then developed in the House of Lords and amendments are made to Bills.

Lord Richard

That's a polite way of putting it. I mean that assumes the House of Commons has actually considered the thing. Half the Bills the House of Commons has not looked at. Never mind, let's not argue.

Win Griffiths

That’s another argument. Could I add something to what Jon was saying there? Because, for example, the Children's Commissioners for Wales Act, I was on the Bill, we did raise certain issues and there were changes made to the Bill during the course of its process through Parliament. I can't remember now whether they were changed in the Lords or at report stage, but there were changes. So to answer---

Lord Richard

Whose the Minister on that? Was it one of the Home departments.

Win Griffiths

There was a home office minister on the bill. I can't remember who it was now. But there definitely was an English department involved.

Lord Richard

In charge of the Bill?

Win Griffiths

Yes, I think actually it might have been, I am trying to recall, there certainly was an English Minister. I can't remember if she was/he was in charge.

Lord Richard

Wales-only Bill?

Win Griffiths

There was a Welsh Minister on the Bill.

Lord Richard

Wales-only Bill, that's all.

Win Griffiths

Because although the Children's Commissioner doesn't have direct powers over non-Welsh departments there was a relationship that had to be developed which was important for English departments. Also on the issue of Welsh legislation and English Bills, Jon is pretty much right there, certainly I wasn't happy with the way the local health board concept was implemented. I was happy with the concept – indeed I had introduced it with the local health groups.

Lord Richard

Why do you say that the Welsh Health Bill was not scriutinised properly?

Win Griffiths

Not the Welsh Health Bill, it's the Welsh bits of the Health Bill and the two of them. I think the simple solution would be to give the Welsh Grand Committee the power to scrutinise because it's already there. It would require a change in the Standing Orders rather than try and set up another type of Committee. Also what I would say is that whilst I think the relationship has broadly been a good one between Parliament and the Assembly, on some of these issues where there is a difference of opinion developing between what MPs feel and what the Welsh Assembly Government feels, it is difficult to get sufficient time to look at the issues in enough detail. You can argue that maybe the political parties, and maybe the Labour Party especially, should think through more about how it can make time available for AMs and MPs to get together and discuss these issues.

Lord Richard

You are talking about time. Not time in the Parliamentary context?

Win Griffiths

No, time overall. Having had the experience in the European Parliament it is incredibly difficult, where the Members of different institutions are based in different places, to get a specific Committee set up to draw them in for meetings – unless you institutionalise it as the Danes have done.

Jon Owen Jones

You have to follow through that the implication of what the present settlement says. What it says is that the primary legislation is in Westminster and it says, though I am arguing and Win is agreeing, that actually it's paying lip service to proper scrutiny whenever it is likely to present differences. So if that scrutiny means anything at all, but it must mean there must be an ability on the legislators which are doing the scrutinising to change the Bill. There is no point in, if you haven't this fictional ability to look at and scrutinise, if you don't have the ability to see it right through.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

I don't think Government whips would agree with you.

Win Griffiths

There have been lots of opportunities.

Jon Owen Jones

This does happen. For example, the Local health bill had it gone through a Committee of Welsh MPs who had had opportunity to scrutinise the Bill, I have little doubt that it would not have emerged in quite the same way as it finally did emerge, whether that's acceptable to the Welsh Assembly I'm not sure. But that is what our legislative structure is meant to do and we're sort of trying to finesse it and pretend it has that function and not allow it to experience it.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

One solution would be to say always have a draft bill. May not be realistic but it would be a solution.

Jon Owen Jones

Not a full solution. Because you still have to allow the people who look at the draft Bill to amend the Bill. If you are not prepared to allow that to happen---

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

They do amend draft Bills.

Jon Owen Jones

The only draft Bills that we currently have been in completely consensual and non-controversial areas, so you may say we're happy for you to look at and amend that because we know everybody agrees with it. But we're not going to let you look at in detail at amend this because we know it's highly controversial.

Peter Price

Is not the distinction actually more that you have been drawing between Wales only Bills and piggy back Bills that what you have been saying is that the Wales only Bills have tended to be less controversial and have the scrutiny, whereas the real controversial stuff has been in piggy back bills. Your remedy about scrutiny by a separate group dealing with Welsh clauses has one weakness. It's this, that there are underlying principles in the Bill which the, let's call it All Bill Committee, the Standing Committee will have got to grips with. The underlying principles and lots of aspects which are going to apply in England, and are then carried through to Wales perhaps in some altered form. Now, if you have the scrutiny of the Welsh clauses by an entirely separate group, who haven't participated in the other debate, are they not in some disadvantage and are we not setting up a situation in which there could be unnecessary friction of a three-way character, possibly between the MPs in the Assembly, but ultimately between those on the Committees dealing with the Welsh clauses and those on the Committee dealing with the rest of it?

Jon Owen Jones

There is not a perfect solution. But I am presenting evidence about how the present system works and where its weaknesses are. There are some significant weaknesses, in my view.

Lord Richard

Win might want to say something.

Win Griffiths

I broadly agree with what Jon has said. I wanted to talk about secondary legislation---

Ted Rowlands

In a sense what we have been doing we have been trying to categorise Bills. There are thee types of categories. One, the Wales only Bill. Secondly, the Bill's where there are substantial Welsh clauses, eg, the Planning Bill, for example. Then the third are those where all responsibility is devolved but the England and Wales legislation is almost uniform. I would like to look at third category. Let's take the Community Care Delayed Discharges Bill. I understand from the exchanges, from the information that we have received, because we have ask Assembly Government Ministers to tell us what happened, what their input into the Bills were. This was a Bill which even if you had primarily legislative powers probably wouldn't have wished to have been taken through as a Wales only Bill, or a Welsh Bill because there was common -- much of it, there was a lot of common issues in some places, although it then ran into a lot of trouble. It's almost as important as the Bill itself. What degree of scrutiny took place on this Bill? Either of you know? What has happened as a consequence? This is the third category.

Jon Owen Jones

I don't think that any Welsh Members sat on that Standing Committee of that Bill. Not that I recall. I remember the debate, I think I spoke on it, oddly, in the Welsh Health Bill. I raised it in the Welsh Health Bill. But it's an interesting -- it empowered the Welsh Assembly to do something the Welsh Assembly said it clearly didn't want to do. It did other things as well but that was because the Bill was designed to deal with bed blocking. I read the day before yesterday the Wanless report, which conveniently came out the day after the Foundation Hospital Bill went through the House of Commons. But that report clearly recommends to the Welsh Assembly that they bring in the powers in the Delayed Discharge Bill or something similar. They are only able to do that because the Bill that went through the House of Commons gave the Welsh Assembly a power that they said they didn't want to use. Without primary legislation your ability to do different things is extremely constrained. So it's odd that the Welsh Assembly should at various points say that they didn't want to take up potential powers which they may want to use at a later stage.

Ted Rowlands

One of the aspects in the agreement was to actually control the Commencement Orders. That's what they have done in this case. The amendment that went through on the Bill was to give the Welsh Assembly the Commencement Order secondary legislative power, in other words, to decide how, if it wanted to implement it, and, if so, when and how.

Jon Owen Jones

The same with the Community Health Councils. The Welsh Assembly has the power to get rid of the Community Health Councils as England did but chooses not to begin the Commencement Orders, so it doesn't do it.

Ted Rowlands

Did you as Welsh Members have any communication? The Assembly Government were conveying the views of the Assembly Government to Ministers in London. Did they advise you of their thoughts about the nature of this Bill?

Win Griffiths

No, I don't think we were. We were not copied into the process. I suppose because of the time, there was not a lot of debate. There was a bit of a row about it, but right up to the near the end there wasn't a lot of debate about it, unlike some of the other things where we have tried to raise issues that concerned us, but again because of time, etc, both outside and within the Parliamentary process it is difficult to achieve a proper dialogue. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is difficult.

Lord Richard

I suppose you if you had a different Government it would be easier in the sense that, well, if there was a Tory Government in Westminster and a Labour administration here, Labour MPs would spend a lot of time putting the Assembly's point of view.

Jon Owen Jones

Yes.

Win Griffiths

What you have to remember is this issue about Commencement Orders, etc, that existed with the Welsh Office, and the two which spring to my mind where the Welsh Office had the power but these powers were never used, was on the creation of City Technology Colleges. No serious effort as far as I know was ever made by the Welsh Office to create them in Wales. The other was the very significant differences in the development of planning guidance in Wales and England which occurred in, I think, it was the Gummer/Redwood period where they had quite a different philosophy about these things. It's not an unusual situation. It's more that it is more marked now that the Assembly is supposed to reflect more closely what's happening in Wales. What I was surprised to find out, in preparation for this session, was what the Assembly has been doing in it's first four years. At the time I wrote this submission I didn't have the information but I did get it this morning. Although a part of it had been in the press, David Melding's information about subordinate legislation, secondary legislation, I was very, very surprised when I saw the figures. In the information I received actually less than five per cent of the Assembly's debating time, business time was spent on secondary legislation. 70 per cent was neither debated nor voted on by the Assembly. I also just got a list of some of the items which went through. I reckon about half, I would have thought, would have been deserving of a look at by the Welsh Assembly to see if there was some justification for Wales being different. I was surprised that only five per cent of time was considered sufficient to look at the differences that may be needed for Welsh circumstances.

Lord Richard

Have you got the Westminster figures at all?

Win Griffiths

For?

Lord Richard

Similar figures. How much time is spent debating Standing Committees?

Win Griffiths

It requires - I mean this is partly the function of the Opposition because this is secondary legislation - on the whole it requires a prayer from the Opposition, then through the usual channels decision are made about what is considered in Committee for an hour an and a half.

Lord Richard

There is only (Inaudible)

Win Griffiths

It's probably very tiny in that case. But here we're looking at something which is specifically the needs of Wales.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Surely there is not an argument because Westminster does subordinate very badly that the National Assembly shouldn't do it at all?

Win Griffiths

I wouldn't say Westminster does it badly.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Most outsiders would. They think that they too do it very badly indeed.

Dr Laura McAllister

It's clear from what you said and looking at the details of the different process which by subordinate legislation could be scrutinised, it's not doing the job effectively. What we keep hearing from the Subject Committee's in particular and individual AMs is that the Subject Committee's are much more geared up to the policy development function than the scrutiny function. Part of our remit is to find out why is that the case. Why they are falling down on the scrutiny role. I wonder if you can give us some of your own interpretations of why that might be the case?

Win Griffiths

Interesting because I think that it is a not only a problem in simply legislative terms, the fact that the Committee seems to concentrate on policy development and doesn't look at the implementation of legislation at the secondary level - can they make changes? But I think, for example, just to take the development of policy and implementation on the health side, there is quite a lot of good work being done on trying to develop a long-term policy for health, but I think on the scrutiny of what is actually happening in the health service there is not the same focus. I suppose Wanless, to a certain extent, exposes some of these problems in the report that he did at the behest of the Assembly. I am not saying it's a case of dereliction of duty. It is just a case of getting a better focus.

Dr Laura McAllister

Is it a question of time? This is the other issue that has been raised.

Win Griffiths

Could be a question of time. It could be a question of perhaps not having the right sort of experience, I wouldn't like to be definitive, I think you need to ask AMs as to why they don't seem to have developed this aspect of their work.

Jon Owen Jones

You need to understand that scrutiny is very time-consuming. The Bill was brought in Foundation Hospitals, that I sat on and Win chaired, took about 60 hours. If you compare that amount of time to the amount of time Welsh Assembly Committees are sitting.

Dr Laura McAllister

Also a question of organisation within that secondary legislation because some of it may be relatively straightforward. Of the 700 SIs that it could have scrutinised, one would assume a big chunk were not terribly relevant.

Ted Rowlands

35 per cent of secondary legislation that goes to the Welsh Assembly is different from its English counterpart. So there is an element of scrutiny required.

Win Griffiths

How much of that was already there? Because what may have happened is that this was just reaffirmation of existing differences. Are they saying that these were 35 per cent new changes made? If there were, then a lot of that must have been done, not as a result of scrutiny by the Assembly, but by executive decisions of the Wales Assembly Government. Could I also say whilst we're on the subject, the Welsh Assembly has done some very significant things using secondary powers. On free bus travel, prescriptions, school milk, developing the Welsh baccalaureat and the ending of key stage one tests. There are a whole host of these which are significant. I am surprised they haven't done more.

Vivienne Sugar

One of the things that they haven't done of course is the bonfire of the quangos. I imagine that quite a lot of your constituency work will involve issues where people have got concerns about the different agencies that are operating in Wales. I wondered whether you would like to give us your views about this?

Win Griffiths

I can say that Tai Cymru was wound up and brought within the orbit of the Welsh Office and now the Assembly before the deadline that we set for ourselves. The Welsh NHS Trusts were also reconfigured and almost half of them went. The Welsh Economic and Industrial Development Agencies were brought together into one, three into one. Why? I think you have to ask the Wales Assembly Government why they have not focused on reducing the number of quangos. I think there is a case for reducing them.

Dr Laura McAllister

Also a case for better scrutiny of them because we when we have had ASPBs before us we have been told that the scrutiny is perfunctory or---

Win Griffiths

Maybe that's an issue of the amount of time the Assembly allows for business. As Jon was saying, the amount of time we spent on this latest Health bill was enormous compared with some of the Committee work in the Assembly.

Ted Rowlands

Could I ask you a more general question. You and the other witness were actually the architect of the Bill itself. You carried the Bill through the Commons and were there for a preparatory period and in a sense shaping the nature of the settlement. We have had a string of witnesses who have rubbished the settlement. In your experience looking at the first four years and observing it at work, do you think that the experience of the last four years justifies a major significant change to the settlement?

Win Griffiths

As I said in my evidence, really the Welsh Assembly got off to bad start which had nothing to do with the settlement itself. Therefore, a year or more was lost because of that. I do think it's premature to make a judgment. I think some of the things the Assembly has done, things I mentioned earlier, indicates in this settlement there is a lot of potential to do things differently even though they don't have the primary legislative powers. But given, again, my introductory remark about the fact that the settlement we got was a compromise between those who wanted the primary powers and those who didn't want any change whatsoever, I think that we came up with a solution, which despite the difficulties there have been in the first four years, has shown that the Assembly can make some significant differences.

Lord Richard

Going back to the days when you and I sat in those Committees, Derry Irvine chairing them, looking back on this, it does seem to me that if the two nations had the same basic devolution settlement, I mean, it might have been much easier.

Jon Owen Jones

Can I say something on that because my role in that period of time and the year developing the policy going into before the general election and the year putting it into effect I was the whip. My job was not policy, my job was to get the policy through. I think that sort of consideration has to be in your minds when you write your reports too. It's not simply what system seems the neatest and tidiest, it's what system that you can get.

Lord Richard

I agree with that. You will be surprised to hear!

Jon Owen Jones

We had immense difficulties in agreeing what the devolution policy was going to be and getting it through the party, in getting it through Parliament and all sorts of deals and conversations went on. I remember conversation with one of your Members. Conversation with every single Member just about. My view before the Welsh Assembly was set up was that we needed an Assembly which was on the same lines as the Scottish. My view has not changed, but it is getting from where we are to getting where we want to be.

Lord Richard

Let's be sure where we want to be, that's all.

Jon Owen Jones

We don't always want to be in the same place.

Lord Richard

That's why we are asking you two. It did seem to me looking at it from the point of view of administrative tidiness, if you like, the good health of the governance of the nation as a whole UK as a whole, I mean, it would have been better if the two settlements had been broadly similar and based upon the same principles which is what you devolve and that which you don't devolve you hand back.

Win Griffiths

Would have been more straightforward. On the other hand Spain has got a multi-staged-regional government system.

Lord Richard

I wasn't arguing for total symmetry. I was saying that in terms of relationship between the devolved institutions and Westminster, I mean that would have been much more comprehensible and accessible if the settlement had been broadly similar on the Scottish---

Ted Rowlands

Even on the executive model couldn't it have been -- wouldn't it have been simpler to produce one schedule - here's the fields of devolved responsibility. Then we went in for an incredibly elaborate item by item transfer of function. Why couldn't you have devolved executively the whole field and have the reservations that you have got in the Scottish Parliament which were not related to the executive transfer as opposed to legislative transfer?

Win Griffiths

I think the issue was getting certainty. By listing everything it would be very, very clear and would avoid constant arguments about whether this or that should be done. I think that the matter of certainty was an issue. Ivor is right, it is a complicated system. It does require a lot of hard work to make it satisfactory. I think you can say 80 per cent of what's happening is working satisfactorily.

Lord Richard

I put it slight differently. The way it has been put to us is basically here what you have got is flawed or quasi-flawed settlement which is being made to work because a lot of people are putting an immense of effort into making it work. The administration in Cardiff and Westminster are broadly moving in the same direction. If that is the position then one of the questions we have to consider is would it last?

Win Griffiths

I have been thinking about this in the context of what happened before devolution. Obviously there was a long period where a conservative Government was in power and it had little or no representation in Wales at any level of Government. But even within that the were these options, like the one I mentioned on CTC. So there were options allowed. I guess it's the Conservatives who need to be challenged if they were ever in Government again. They do seem to be committed now to the existence of the Assembly, probably they wouldn't want it to have any more powers than it has got. Say they came to power and the Assembly remained a Labour dominated body, one way or the other, I think they would in principle have to accept that. If they did thrust certain policies on the Assembly quite how they would do this, I think that would be a really serious challenge to the settlement -- I think the system could break down at that point. Because if the Wales Assembly Government didn't want to do something, and the Conservative Government said: we want you to create City Technology Colleges, for example, there would be an impasse.

Ted Rowlands

This constitutional change in Britain is a very interesting one where some of the biggest opponents of change have never gone back and overturned it. If you look and reflect on the whole, I mean even from the bitter opposition of the Conservative party to the establishment of the Welsh Office in the first place, then not only the adoption of it but the enhancement of it as time went by. In another field in the whole field of constitutional change I am trying to think in the 20th century, of all of the major constitutions how many were reversed by governments even though they bitterly opposed their introduced.

Jon Owen Jones

One of the reasons why I want wanted to establish the principle of the way in which we deal with Welsh legislation in the parallel structure is that we are in danger of setting precedents by our present system which a different Government which would be more hostile to different positions in Wales would utilise. For example, using the Welsh Select Committee even for less contentious issues rather than the Welsh Grand, the difference between the two Committees is everyone has the right to sit on the Welsh Grand, but the people who sit on the Welsh Select will be determined largely by the Government. So we're setting precedents which if the Tory party were in power in England, but not in Wales would be able to take benefit of.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

What is the remedy?

Jon Owen Jones

To set different precedents.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Like what?

Jon Owen Jones

If you establish a precedent that all Welsh Members, the precedent is already there, if you enact that precedent that Lloyd George set up it would be much more difficult for an incoming Government to remove that precedent then.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

But it's totally unusual to have a Committee in the House that does not have a Government majority.

Jon Owen Jones

It's unusual but it exists in the Standing Orders of the House.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

It's not used.

Jon Owen Jones

We're talking about something which is unusual, are we not?

Dr Laura McAllister

I want to ask you about the second area of our brief which is the electoral system and the numbers issue generally. I think you have both said that if the Assembly was to acquire primary powers you would imagine there would be a related increase in numbers, possibly with or without a decrease in numbers of MPs. Can you give us some of your views on that and how you might see those additional Members being elected if there were to be primary legislative powers granted?

Win Griffiths

I do think that if the Welsh Assembly does become a Parliament it would require more Members. Probably there would need to be some legal constitutional changes in its institutional nature (which I couldn't focus on here without doing a lot of work on it). But more Members are needed because I think 60 is not sufficient if you are getting into Parliamentary legislative scrutiny mode. How those extra ten or s would be elected - we'd need at least ten Members - whether they should be elected by some form of proportionality or not (it would be easier to do it within our proportional system). I also believe that if you increase the number of the Members of the Assembly, or Parliament, if it became that, there would be a good case for decreasing the number of Welsh MPs at Westminster. It might not necessarily need to be a ten for ten swap but there would need to be some sort of a change. Though that would mean a redrawing of the Westminster boundaries obviously and it would give us chance to review the issue of proportionality. As I say in my evidence, when we developed the system, basically what we were saying was that we wanted to recognise the need for some proportionality. I mean it is ridiculous that a party could get 20 per cent of the votes and have no representation. We wanted to recognise that in some way, but not to do away with a possibility of a party which gets good support across the country being able to govern. The situation we landed up with in the Assembly in the first, and to some extent in this term, I believe is a self inflicted wound by the Labour Party. Looking at our Westminster results we could have expected to have had, in the context of 60, we could have expected to have had a comfortable majority in normal circumstances. It didn't turn out that way, but I wouldn't blame the proportional system. I would blame ourselves. If you had 30 first past the post seats in a Wales Parliament situation maybe you could in fact have two Assembly Member representation i.e., male and female for each constituency, then perhaps another 10+ elected on a proportional basis. I am only throwing these ideas into the melting pot. I wouldn't say that I strongly would go for that particular system but I am just saying that there is potential to think things through again.

Huw Thomas

Why do you make the assumption that there should be more AMs? What we've been hearing they have only got two and a half days when they concentrate their activity on the Assembly. You criticised as well some of the nature of what they are doing during that period. So why not just refocus and spend more time?

Win Griffiths

Because I think that you need a larger pool of people to draw on when you get involved in developing legislation because, I mean, proportionately you have got to have more back benchers, and I just feel that you do need a bit of a wider pool to draw on if you are getting into it something which is seriously legislative. I mean there is an issue about hours as well, I think, but that's something that needs more consideration.

Lord Richard