COMMISSION ON THE POWERS AND ELECTORAL ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WALES

 MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS

 of the

 EVIDENCE OF:

DAVID MELDING AM

held at

THE HILTON HOTEL, NEWPORT

on

22 may 2003

In Attendance

Lord Richard, Chair, Richard Commission

Ted Rowlands, Richard Commission

Tom Jones, Richard Commission

Peter Price, Richard Commission

Dr Laura McAllister, Richard Commission

Sir Michael Wheeler Booth, Richard Commission

Paul Valerio, Richard Commission

Vivienne Sugar, Richard Commission

Eira Davies, Richard Commission

Huw Thomas, Richard Commission

David Melding AM

Can I start off by welcoming you and thanking you very much for coming. The procedure we have adopted in respect of other witnesses is to ask them formally to identify themselves and then perhaps if they would be kind enough to open up the discussion, setting out your position and then we shall pursue those issues we want to discuss further.

David Melding

Thank you very much, Lord Richard, and I am very pleased to be here to help you with this important work.

For the record, I am David Melding, Conservative Assembly Member for the South Wales Central Region. I have just started my second term in the Assembly. I will not go through the paper that I have put to you, but if I can just put it in a little bit of context. I still think with nostalgia of "the ancient regime", the unitary state which existed before 1997. I voted No in the referendum, but I have to say with somewhat mixed feelings, because it was quite clear that the Scottish people very substantially wanted devolution and the move away from the unitary state was going to happen. There were arguments against Wales joining the devolution scheme, but then we could have had an even more unbalanced Constitution than we have at the moment. It has been my view since the mid-1990s when it was increasingly likely that a Labour Government was going to be elected that if we were to move away from the unitary state the best outcome would be some kind of federal state. I am very loose in the way I define federalism, according to most academics, but I mean by the term consistent mechanisms for dealing with domestic as distinct from UK law. If I say domestic, I mean that legislative power devolved to Scotland at the moment and potentially to Northern Ireland. A federal settlement would have required some form of legislative process in England and it would have also required at that time the people of Wales to decide for or against an Assembly with primary law making powers. That remains my position. Having seen executive devolution in operation for four years, I think its weaknesses are quite fundamental and can only be solved by a practical process that effectively gives primary law making powers to the Assembly. One rather convoluted way to achieve this would be to issue Welsh bills and clauses in draft and subject them to extended scrutiny in the Assembly followed by formal endorsement in Parliament. Alternatively we have the present system where there is rather inadequate scrutiny of primary legislation, poor involvement from the Assembly, certainly from Assembly members. I am not competent to talk about the Executive's relations with Westminster.

 If I can just finish my opening remarks on this point. What we had in 1997 and then implemented in 1999 is the establishment in Cardiff of a very strong executive. It is a Government; there are no two ways about it. You can compare it to Scotland, a province in Canada, or the states in Australia. The Welsh Assembly Government is much more than a County Council or some unit of regional Government, as proposed for England, and I just think it is illogical and against the British Parliamentary tradition not to locate the executive and the legislative functions in the same institution. That remains a fundamental flaw and it cannot be resolved until the Assembly receives primary law making powers.

Lord Richard

Thank you very much indeed. It strikes me, if I can open up the discussion, that you have a sort of philosophical reflection, not just a passive reflection; it is really quite a deep argument in principle.

David Melding

It is quite an astute observation. I thought you were going to follow that and say, "Is this all a council of perfection and a departure from the reality of practical politics?" And that is a fair point. I certainly believe the agenda that I am trying to promote is a more long term one and we probably will not see great change very quickly. However, I neither want to anticipate the Commission’s conclusions, nor consider whether they might be taken up by the Executive. We will have to wait and see. What is likely is that at some point a Conservative Government will be elected at UK level. That Government is unlikely to be supported in Cardiff by a Conservative administration, unless things change very dramatically in the next 5 to 10 years. This will create a strain on the system and that is not an abstract philosophical point. It will create a strain, and I have to say that I do not particularly want to see the Welsh Conservative party weakened by constant criticism from a non-Conservative executive in Cardiff that cannot implement its measures because it has been frustrated by the Conservative Government in London which controls the primary legislative machinery.

Lord Richard

We understand.

David Melding

I have to say that there are not many Conservatives who see this danger. It is a bit of a lonely job I have at the minute in this sense.

There is also the prospect of a Government being elected at Westminster that does not have a majority in England. This has happened twice in the relatively recent past; and I think this will open up some real dangers to the British Constitution. I have to say in finishing that you may think my approach philosophical, but my primary objective is to preserve, or help preserve, the British state. I am a unionist first, second, third and last.

Lord Richard

Not a unitarian.

David Melding

No. If we could go back to "the ancient regime", I would still opt to do so, but I think the world is made of glass in that sense, we cannot go back. It is only in terms of constitutional breakdown that you could see a process of reversal in Scotland and I can see no prospect of a stable Northern Ireland without devolution and therefore we are locked into the devolution project as it were, but I still think there are some real issues to be faced.

Lord Richard

What about the timing? Do you think the primary legislative powers should come down to Cardiff, but only when there is an appropriate structure, If that is what your argument is?

David Melding

You are quite right. The position we are in is that you cannot take this question of the Assembly's powers separate from what happens now in England, because the moment you establish primary powers in Cardiff, you create a legislative process for England. That is automatic. It is unavoidable and that does open up -- some people call it the English question -- but you do then get into issues of what happens as far as Executive Power in England is concerned, and how that is connected to the legislative process. There are real issues here, but I am not sure you want to investigate them at this moment.

Lord Richard

I would be interested in your views.

David Melding

I think the main danger is clearly a bifurcated executive. I can see no prospect in practical terms of a separate English Parliament being created and it is interesting that most arguments for devolution within England really propose a form of executive devolution that might work supported by  regional Government with limited executive powers. So I think what is likely is that you would have an English legislative process within Westminster. That is the most practical way forward I can see.

That does introduce the problem of what happens if you have a Government that cannot carry England but is elected at UK level. I suppose it would be the Labour Party in such a position, it is very unlikely that the Conservatives would be relying on Wales and Scotland to create a majority that is not generated in England, so let us make that assumption. The obvious way out for a Labour Government in the circumstances described would be to form a coalition that would then take them into a majority position because even when we have the situation of the Labour Party not winning a majority of seats in England it is fairly close result. The maths cannot work in any other way, otherwise you have a Conservative majority Government on a UK basis. That is probably one way out. The other way out is that we use a system of proportional representation for Westminster elections and that would immediately counter the threat.

Lord Richard

You have set yourself some fairly high hills to climb. Can I ask you just one other question on the federal aspect of what you say. Do you think it is possible to develop a functioning state, if I can put it that way, without having one form of devolution?

David Melding

Yes. I could not see Britain becoming a Parliamentary federal state in the sense that newly created states are -- Canada and Australia are the best examples I suppose. Both established incidentally by legislation passed by Conservative Governments. If we look at the practice of the Conservative party in Government it has not always been anti-federalist in that sense. But I do feel it is a bit fanciful to see England being divided up into units that would be suitable for full devolution. I could see England having some form of subordinate regional government, and I think that is quite likely. So I would say a quasi-federal state whereby you would have, quite classically, federal parliaments in Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast and an English legislative process probably still located within Westminster, with agreements obviously to exclude MPs from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland from English business.

Lord Richard

Where would they come together? What powers would be retained?

David Melding

Presumably the speaker would identify English-only Bills.

Lord Richard

It would be a constitutional step and I just wonder if you have any views?

David Melding

I think a broad range of macro-economic policy, but I would see a system developing in Britain where you may have the areas that are devolved still being referred to Westminster simply for convenience. The devolved units would identify such legislation and say, "We do not have time, but we are happy to advance at a Westminster level". I think that is possible.

Lord Richard

How do you do that?

David Melding

It is done in Scotland at the moment.

Lord Richard

Of course it is, but they have a federal system. Unless you have got equality of devolution it seems to me I do not see how you can have a federal system.

David Melding

Hence my reverence for the unitary state. It did not get us into these difficulties, but we are now in a devolved situation and we will face challenges in my view and they are difficult and there is no perfect system.

Sir Michael Wheeler Booth

The rational presentation. The one thing I may have misunderstood. Were you actually saying that you prefer to undo the whole thing and go back to the situation as in 1997?

David Melding

I think the Conservative Party in Government --

Sir Michael Wheeler Booth

I meant you; your views rather than just -- your views are distinct from the Conservative Party views on this issue of constitutional change.

David Melding

Yes, they certainly are.

Sir Michael Wheeler Booth

But you would like to put it back to pre-1997?

David Melding

I do not think that is practically possible.

Sir Michael Wheeler Booth

No, you said that, but I think you also implied that you would prefer --

David Melding

I would have preferred Britain to remain a unitary state.

I accept that we will not go back and devolution cannot be undone. Short of constitutional breakdown as it were. There has been a huge shift in public opinion in Wales. If you look at the response to opinion polls we have shifted even further than the huge swing of opinion which occurred between the 1979 and 1997 referendums. We have gone even further, and incidentally when we look at the figures for Conservative supporters, between a quarter and a third want legislative powers to be given to the Assembly. So I accept that is where we are. I was an answering an abstract point: do I still philosophically prefer the unitary state? Yes, but it is not a real practical proposition. The world has changed.

Sir Michael Wheeler Booth

I have been surprised, because I read a very charming short piece in a collection of essays by you about what the Assembly has done, I am afraid I have forgotten it now, and you had really a pretty rosy picture of the increased dialogue, political dialogue, that is going on, and that is why I am so surprised that you are really hankering backwards to a situation in which the Conservatives have nothing in Wales and you can have a Conservative Secretary of State in London telling essentially non-Conservative Wales what to do. I do find it very surprising, because you were so profoundly logical in your presentation and I was surprised.

David Melding

Yes. Perfect consistency does not exist in anyone, I suspect, but I do concede that Wales has benefited from becoming a political nation. I recognise that, but I still think that the way devolution has been introduced in Britain causes challenges for the British state and that is what I fear. These challenges are not present in a unitary state and in that sense I would go back and then look at the issue, including England's position and then see if we did want to go to a different form of state.

Dr Laura McAllister

Can I put things on a much more practical level: where does the burden of proof lie? This is something that has been exercising us on the Commission. Does the burden of proof lie with those who wish to protect the current devolution, or does the burden of proof lie with those who are suggesting a change, either on the basis that you are suggesting or other ideas?

David Melding

Well, I think we would have to have another referendum: we cannot advance without that. The electorate endorsed the current settlement and any change would require another referendum. As far as the burden of proof is concerned, I think it is reasonable for people to argue that the current model of executive devolution should be improved to see if it is sustainable. That is one way of advancing; perhaps that is the more organic way of approaching it and the way I would anticipate things proceeding. But there is a chance that we could face a large crisis in the future of the type I described, and then I think we need to be prepared perhaps to move a bit more quickly.

Huw Thomas

You have already given the answer to one of the questions I was going to ask, namely the issue about whether or not you feel there should be a referendum at the next stage, because I can understand the picture you are painting as the end game. However what I am not too sure from your argument is how one moves to that end game. You referred to the fact that you felt that there had been a shift in Wales. Other commentators, of course, have pointed to the lower turnout at the election as indicating there is not such a shift. There may be a shift among what I describe the chattering class, but not in terms of the volume of the population, and I would be interested to know how you seek in convincing the people of Wales that there is a need to move to that next stage.

David Melding

I think if you ask the electorate they probably would move to the next stage because at the moment you have to contend that the Welsh are constitutionally deficient in not being able to have executive and legislative powers as granted to Scotland and Northern Ireland. I think in these terms people will vote for a full form of devolution. The issue of turnout is very problematic and of course occurs at all levels of Government.

Huw Thomas

Can I just as a follow-up say linked to that and linked to the shift of primary powers you would also concede, as in Scotland, the reduction in representation of Wales at Westminster.

David Melding

It would be justified on the basis of population. The old argument for having more MPs from Scotland and Wales and eventually from Northern Ireland, (because they did start the other way round when Stormont justified under-representation), was that you needed a larger voice in a UK Parliament for Scotland and Wales than you got just on a population basis. That justification is now removed as we have separate institutions for dealing with devolved matters, and it would just go down to a population basis.

Paul Valerio

Two points which I would like to ask a question on. You referred in your paper to scrutiny, or the lack of scrutiny. As far as the evidence we have had, we have had some evidence that explains the difficulty of the Committee structure, with numbers and frequency of the meetings. We are going to come to a decision at some time regarding numbers of the Assembly, whether it is adequate or not. As far as scrutiny is concerned, would more members in itself enable better scrutiny?

David Melding

No. It is much more a question of how the Committees operate I would say.

Lord Richard

I would be interested to hear the views on why they are not operating.

David Melding

They lack a consistent focus which I think is the main difficulty. I would say the biggest weakness of the Committee I have been on, and I have analysed the work of other Committees, and they also seem to suffer from this, is that there are a lot of policy items which are brought to the Committee usually at the request of the Minister. If we look at the Health Committee, for instance the Dental Strategy. How on earth you can scrutinise policy in half an hour, I do not know. It gets very rushed, and that situation was quite frequent. If you added up the number of policy items on the Committee agenda for a very brief discussion they probably ran into hundreds during the first term. So in my view we should not have looked at a policy in such a cursory way. If an item came up once for half an hour it was not worthy of our scrutiny at all.

If Committees settle to conduct reviews in detail, in a particular area, I think that does influence policy. And it puts some meat in the process. The other parts of the problem are to scrutinise the Minister through some kind of monthly reporting system and to conduct more scrutiny of secondary legislation. There is hardly any legislative scrutiny done by Committees. Towards the end of the last term, the Health and Social Services Committee started to do this in a systematic way, but even then it was fairly light. There is a practical problem - about 40 per cent of all legislation is in the Health and Social Services field. Only one Committee! There are some Committees that go a whole year without a single piece of secondary legislation coming to them. The Economic Committee and the Culture Committee are prime examples, so there are problems about having to handle the scrutiny of secondary legislation. Overall the approach is highly fragmented and piecemeal and really quite cursory in the amount of time that can be given to such a varied workload.

Lord Richard

That is an argument for more Committees.

David Melding

It is an argument for a more selective approach. We cannot do everything. We need a Government. The whole idea that the legislative arm can comprehensively develop policy is nonsense. Of course we need Government. That is their job.

Lord Richard

Who would you have select the items, David?

David Melding

I think it has to be done through the Committee Chair but with the approval of the Committee, clearly. Any Committee Chairman worth his salt is not going to end up reviewing policy that the executive does not want to consider or develop. Unless there is an overwhelming issue of public interest (then you may think there are grounds for it) the Minister's views have to be taken into account so that you may anticipate what might happen to the report eventually produced.

Dr Laura McAllister

Following up that long and very interesting answer, two points: the membership lies in the Committee's hands, if for example on your Health Committee you have just done two or three big issues in the four years and gone for the jugular on those, that does not always mean agreeing with the Minister. That was the other point I wanted to ask you, you seemed to say they could not do anything unless the Minister was in control, but that is not the idea of a Parliament. The idea of a Parliament is to bring out sometimes awkward issues - Westminster talking about the Euro or indeed even talking about Iraq.

David Melding

I agree with you on issues of obvious public interest, but I was perhaps referring to areas of policy development. There are lots of areas that could potentially be looked at and the co-operation or approval of the executive is clearly desirable. Sometimes awkward issues need to be faced, to take an example in the last Assembly I think we should have had an enquiry into the waiting list position in the Health Service. The Executive certainly wouldn’t have liked it, but I think we should have done it because there was an overwhelming public interest. I agree with what you said in the first part of your remarks that much of the solution lies with the Committees. That is a fair point. The Executive really gets away with as much as it can, so committees must flex their muscles and say "We are not going to just take your agenda all the time". What would happen if Ministers block committee initiative? That would become a matter of public knowledge and the Executive would probably find it difficult to sustain such blocking tactics.

There is one area where I think the Executive has not been terribly helpful and that is in the scrutiny of legislation. We do not have enough lawyers. AMs have not been trained in any way to effectively undertake the job of scrutinising and amending secondary legislation.

Sir Michael Wheeler Booth

Support is one of the big points, because in order to be effective a Committee has to have good support. We are not trained as lawyers. You are not trained in Health issues, so you have to get specialist people to advise you and good supporting staff. If you have been given inferior staff you should insist on having better staff.

David Melding

Yes, I agree. I think the power of initiation lies with AMs and the committees to demand support.

Vivienne Sugar

I wanted to pursue any other ideas that you might have of improving the current model. The emphasis so far has been on sharpening up the Committees. Is there anything about the way that the Assembly conducts its whole business: timeliness, or use of time, the frequency of meetings, and then perhaps I could also ask you whether you are happy with the way that the Assembly's budget is agreed.

David Melding

As far as frequency of meetings is concerned, I think we ought to have longer plenary sessions. I think they are fairly short and if you look at the length of debates on quite important subjects they can be just an hour long, or even less. A two-hour debate is very rare, and I just don't think even that is long enough.

The frequency of Committee meetings is an issue that will come up I think. There is a proposal that the Committees should only meet once a month, which would be 8 or 9 meetings a year, and I think that would be a great departure from current practice of having fortnightly meetings. I would certainly oppose that. I believe when a majority Government cuts down the number of Committee meetings the scrutinising function is diminished.

As for the budget process, I would have to say that I do not feel in a position to answer you in any great detail. It is not an area where I have expertise, apart from the discussion we have in the Health Committee about the health budget. If you want me to enter into correspondence I would happily look at this issue, but it is not something I would feel competent to go into yet.

Vivienne Sugar

What I am after is whether you feel that the Assembly properly holds the Finance Minister to account. This is about the accountability of the Executive. What is the mechanism for that and how does it work?

David Melding

There is not a Finance Committee. I do not have any very great knowledge of this area. I think my opinions are not particularly developed, but if you want to pursue it I will answer where I can.

Vivienne Sugar

To extend it then, if there were to be a change of powers and they included tax varying powers.

David Melding

I do not think tax varying powers are particularly significant. They have not been used in Scotland. They relate just to income tax, which is withering on the vine. If there were more effective taxation powers then it may become more of a live issue, but I have not given an opinion on whether we should have tax varying powers in the Assembly. It is just not something I am that concerned about. It is the legislative problem that I think most weakens the current settlement.

Ted Rowlands

Let us go back and check the premise on which you tend to base this model a bit more. The premise is that because Scotland has these powers you are now wanting to create some kind of devolution so that it all matches. First of all, do you know of any federal structure, successful federal structure, which would be as asymmetrical as it is, or would be in the case of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the England situation?

David Melding

With respect, I think my premise was that in the British Parliamentary tradition which extends over much of the English speaking world, executive and legislative functions are located in the same institution, that is my premise.

There is a real issue, obviously, with the second point you raise, the Prussia question so called, but that is why I think we will end up with a quasi-federal state; it will not be a classic model.

Lord Richard

It is the quasi bit that we are all bothered with. We are not quite sure what it means.

David Melding

Yes. It is because of this that I would see the English legislative process being located at Westminster. It seems to me that is likely.

Ted Rowlands

Because even in the existing arrangements, even Northern Ireland is not the same as Scotland. It actually reflects the particular arrangements and conditions in Northern Ireland. Why do you not think the Welsh/English relationship is different? Is it different from the Scottish/English relationship? Historically? Why should not devolution reflect those differences as much as Northern Ireland, for example?

David Melding

You are quite right to say the model in Northern Ireland is very distinct because of the particular circumstances. Obviously they do not have a classic executive because of power sharing. I concede that they are as unique as Wales in respect of such a departure. The explanation lies not in the weakness of classic Parliamentary federalism, it lies in the political situation in Northern Ireland. The power sharing executive would not survive if the political situation was normalised. Obviously the state has to adapt to embrace particular circumstances, which in fairness brings us on to your second question.

Ted Rowlands

Do you see a Welsh/English relationship any different from the Scottish/English relationship?

David Melding

If I can just finish the original question, and then come to that . I think it is fair to say if we improve the model of executive devolution, modified in the light of experience but not to include direct primary powers, it is certainly possible that we would have a stable situation emerging which would be on an England and Wales basis. The machinery for primary legislation would remain at Westminster. You are not going to like this reference, but I am going to give it to you anyway: in the constitutional chapter of the Conservative Party’s 2003 manifesto, which I believe was attached, that is the premise explored. If I may modestly say, I wrote that chapter according to the instructions I received. I suspect that we are not going to jump to my ideal solution, which is perhaps what some of you think it is. I suspect we will see an improvement of the current arrangements to see if they can work more effectively and create a stable situation. But ultimately I believe what they will do is create a form of legislative devolution. You would have a process where scrutiny by the Assembly of draft bills is so comprehensive and the Parliamentary stage so accelerated that you are just going through convoluted loops to deny the Assembly direct legislative powers. I think that is probably where it would lead, but it is conjecture naturally. However, there is a very strong argument to say that would stabilise the situation.

Ted Rowlands

Because you lead me on to the next point: if we look at the practical side of it, it is our simplistic view that legislation is Wales only, or UK. In fact lots of England and Wales Bills, like the Planning Bill before Parliament, for the Assembly is a genuine hybrid, where there are distinctive planning procedures, where all the compensation issues and other land issues and tenant issues, because England and Wales are synonomous in that respect, reflect that legislation, and even more so than Scotland. You are going to have much more the hybrid type of legislation, so whether one likes it or not one is going to have to have a sort of core legislative process.

David Melding

I agree.

Ted Rowlands

One final question. Listening to you on the Committee structure, I am fascinated to know how you draft the form of primary legislative infrastructure.

David Melding

And that is an interesting point. If you look at the work of the Health and potentially Education Committees, they could be involved in a very large legislative workload and it might become difficult to do other committee work. Obviously in Parliament you have  Standing Committees to deal with legislation, and we may need a similar system in the Assembly.

Sir Michael Wheeler Booth

You would not follow the Scottish model which uses the Committee to carry its legislation through. It is a bit of a legislative sausage machine.

David Melding

It would overwhelm other aspects.

Peter Price

To set out an issue of constitutional principle, the policy making and the legislation should be located in the same place. If we think about the practical, rather than the principle of that, in the way that policy making leads to legislation at the moment, from your perspective when policy is being devised, does it appear that it is being devised on the basis of what is the best policy at large, or what is the best policy that can be devised within the limits of the existing legislation?

David Melding

I think it is probably a mixture of both. There is a weakness I think, in that the room for legislative initiative is obviously much weaker if you are a Government Minister in Wales. Unless there is some Bill about to go through the Parliamentary process that you can attach the particular policy developments to, you are going to be in difficulty because it is hard to get parliamentary time for legislation. In fairness all departments in Whitehall have the same difficulty getting legislative slots. That is inevitable, but, in defence, the Government would probably say that they have managed to get some major policy issues through.

I am more concerned really about how we track, monitor and scrutinise that process. It probably is a bit more flexible than we give it credit for sometimes.

Peter Price

The other thing is following through policy making. Originally the concept was that the Committees would be a place where policy was being made, and it seems to me that the presence of the Minister as a member of the Committee stems precisely from that concept. From what you said earlier, I understood you to be taking a different approach, that at the end of the day it simply is not practical for a Committee to make policy. It could improve its scrutiny obviously, but the policy would be made by Government led by the respective Minister. If that is the case is that your view? And secondly, does it then follow that the Minister should not be a member of the Committee?

David Melding

I think yes to most of those points. To use the example of the half hour discussion on dental policy, we were informed about policy rather than involved in its development. I just do not know whether anybody here would pretend otherwise, but I think it is fair to say that in a more extended review procedure you could contribute to policy if the Minister takes the resulting report seriously. I do not think review work is completely separate from the policy making process. It is optional for the Government to take things forward, but they have to respond and justify any rejection or differences of approach, so it is useful in that sense. Also effective scrutiny of legislation does have an effect on policy, because you can amend legislation and directly influence policy. However, this influence comes at the end rather than the early stages of a Governmental policy development process. Governments need a level of privacy to be effective. I believe in a strong Executive. I have no problem with that whatsoever. It is just that I do not like the weak legislative power that we now have.

Lord Richard

That is an argument, surely, for perhaps increasing the number of Assembly members, beefing up the Committee system and making it more vigorous, if you like, making sure the Committee Chairmen bring the system to account. It is all good Parliamentary activity.

David Melding

I am agnostic on this point, because suddenly having 80 in the Assembly, whatever the number is, is not going to transform the situation. If the system does not work with 60 there is no guarantee that 80 members would resolve the practical problems. I think then you would wrestle with the issue of numbers. To do that before you see a better system in place is not going to get much support from the public. It would drive down the turnout rather than increase it.

Peter Price

Obviously, we all have to take account of the view, but from the viewpoint of somebody who knows how the machine works, at the moment can these Committees all be effective with the existing number of members serving on several different Committees and therefore having limited expertise?

David Melding

I simply cannot accept that if you have 60 it is ineffective, or less effective, but at 80 transformed. You would have to go into another order of magnitude and say 150 is what you need for it to be effective. I am sure that is not what you are proposing. So I do not really agree. I just do not think the argument for more members is at this point justified.

Dr Laura McAllister

The members are not the issue. It is what you do with those numbers and what we are trying to get at is the primary legislative powers you are suggesting. How would you manage that within the internal architecture of the Assembly and for that, the changes you would then need to make, you do need additional members. That is the question. You are suggesting primary legislative powers.

David Melding

I have also said, in response to Mr Rowland's remarks, that I do not propose the absolute distinction that you can get in a classic Parliamentary federal model. I do think that we would continue to see Westminster dealing with a lot of UK issues and the administrations of the other parliaments deciding that certain issues are best progressed that way. That is happening at the moment in Scotland, even in areas where they could legislate, and then, obviously the executive is held to account in its own Parliament for that decision to defer. I suspect that we would be fairly limited in the areas of primary legislation that we would take on at any one time and it would be closely related to the policy developments in the areas concerned. Health and Education were the obvious ones in the last Assembly term; major reform in these areas would have been a very considerable body of legislative work. I do not see us getting into a sort of a petite Westminster model where we are the sovereign body for everything.

Dr Laura McAllister

There is a tension, is there not, between your suggestion of the legislature and the use of Sewell conventions as in Scotland and your points about scrutiny. One of the key points that was made to us in Scotland was that because so much is passing through on the convention if something was amended there was not an opportunity to seriously discuss it at Parliamentary level. How do you marry those two things?

David Melding

I certainly agree that is the danger we would face. However, you cannot spend time examining everything in great detail. You have to use judgement. If we get something wrong, allow something to go through that should have been subject to full local procedures, then we would be held to account.

Paul Valerio

The question which I would not have asked had you given evidence before the election because I did not think it was an issue then, but since then it is the system of election for regional as against constituency first past the post members. Since the election there has been a lot of public comment and discussion saying that they do not think the system is fair. In fact it is just the letter we have had from Wayne David putting down an early day motion, and in that he says that the existing system undermines the democratic process and gives a morally weak mandate to AMs elected in such a way. This is a subject we have to deal with.

David Melding

Morally feeble?

Paul Valerio

You actually are in the category where you almost won the constituency vote, but of course you were in fact elected as a regional member, and your views as a regional member on this would be quite interesting.

David Melding

In fairness and deference to my Labour opponent who was the victor, and increased her majority, there are a couple of issues here. First of all, I think there can be a tension between the constituency members and the additional members. The system allows regional members basically free rein in the constituencies of their region. This has on occasion I think been difficult with certain personalities. I have to say that I have always been very respectful to the Labour incumbent in the Vale of Glamorgan, which is where I live and where I stood, and I think it would be quite wrong to masquerade as the shadow member for the constituency. I think that would undermine, quite frankly, the procedure.

Now there may be more conflict in other areas, and I simply do not know.

If we had not had a form of PR then the Assembly could have been very different. It is possible that if PR had not been used a different dynamic would have been generated in the election. You cannot just extrapolate and ask yourself what would have happened if PR had not been used. But it is likely that the Labour Party would be even larger and the Conservative Party might not even have formed a group. I do not think that would have been good for the whole devolution project.

I have often said that each night I fall to my knees and pray and give thanks to the Labour Party for my position in the Assembly. I think it was an act of grace and that is not something you get from Governing parties very often.

The alternative to regional lists is an All Wales list, which would remove the possibility of the conflict I have described.

I think the additional member system works well in the sense that it preserves constituencies and the first past the post election, which is very important I believe, rich in Parliamentary tradition.

If I could be very mischievous I would ask you why do we have a second ballot? We could extrapolate from the constituency results and produce the regional or the all Wales result. One of the weaknesses at the moment is that we do in effect have two elections on the day. With due deference to Mr Price, the Liberal party did run a campaign suggesting that people should vote very differently in the second ballot from the first ballot. This could undermine the aim to have proportionality, because you could produce an entirely different pattern on the second ballot.

I understand what the Liberal Party did for tactical reasons, and I am sure we would have behaved in a similar fashion in their position, so I am not making a harsh point. But having the two ballots does invite a very different pattern on the second vote which could undermine the principle of proportionality. But there again it has not done so yet in the two elections held, so perhaps it is not such an important point.

Tom Jones

What would be the practical effect if we had this one vote system? What would the numbers be like?

David Melding

I think they would be very similar. However, there is the potential for great shifts tactically between the first and second ballots if Labour supporters act on the fact that they are unlikely to elect additional members.

Vivienne Sugar

Other witnesses have told us that the Regional Committees are not very effective. I would like to hear your comments on that. I also want to go back to what you said about freeing up the Assembly Committees to give greater scrutiny of secondary legislation or appropriate scrutiny of primary legislation by taking the Committees out of the system of policy development. Your words were that the Executive should have the privacy to come up with the ideas. That will go completely against the way the Assembly has actually worked over the last couple of years, where we have had evidence from voluntary groups or other organisations about how much they value being involved at the inception stage of ideas by coming into working groups and so on. How do you marry those two things?

David Melding

The latter would happen, would it not, if the Executive were pursuing good policies, good procedures for consultation. I think that if you ask the voluntary sector they would say there have been advances in this area since 1997. In fairness, the idea of issuing more draft legislation is part of this process. It is not a perfect system, but it is considerably better than the system that pertained pre the Assembly. It is not just for the Government to come up with ideas, but the Government is elected on a manifesto. They have a mandate for Government and if they present their vote they obviously have every right to govern on that manifesto.

The Regional Committees are weak. If you look at the attendance, many members just do not attend them at all, or not very regularly. You can check my attendance record and it is a good one as I think it is very important. I myself feel that they cannot do much when they are just focusing on specific policies because there is no obvious mechanism into a Subject Committee or to refer to the Minister. I do not think they have done very much in that way, but the open-mike sessions have been very interesting and perhaps we just need to make regional committees the grass roots element of the Assembly's procedures. I have enjoyed the open mike sessions because you cannot anticipate what is going to happen and nor can Ministers. For example, if we are out in Pontypridd Rugby Club and the First Minister is there, a member of the public can come along and ask a question and I think that is valuable.

Huw Thomas

That is very much from the perspective of an AM -- Can I just finish as a follow-up to this one -- the perspective of an AM with a constituency within a stone's throw of the Assembly. Would you see a different role in terms of the Regional Committee servicing the west and the north?

David Melding

I am sure that is a fair point and what I have said is based on my practical experience. There may be more difficulties in the way the other Regional committees have worked, but I have not been on them and I am not competent to judge.

Tom Jones

Actually that last question is one of the questions I was going to ask on the Regional Committee - how to make them effective and engage with the public, but that has been helpful. Congratulations on becoming Chair of the Health Committee.

David Melding

I do not think that has been announced. That is the hot tip for a week Tuesday.

Tom Jones

The Mail this morning I think announced that, but there are a few instances where obviously you will discuss that, but my question was because of your membership of the Health Committee in the first term: the whole legislation. You will have had presumably links with MPs on Bills going through Parliament that are effectively on your health portfolios. Can you tell me about the links between the AMs and Parliament, particularly on the Health Bills and more generally?

David Melding

The Welsh Select Committee did come down on a couple of occasions and we held informal joint sessions. I think that is very effective and more so if we have Wales only bills; it is a very good way of proceeding, and a certain rapport has been developed. We had a couple of sessions with Don Touhig, which I again thought valuable. So currently within the existing parameters there should be more co-operation of this kind.

The other thing that is done is for members of each political group to liaise with Members of Parliament from their respective parties. That is done quite extensively because there is a need for joint briefings and liaison to develop policy.

Eira Davies

Can you give us your views on the Rawlings principle and the evaluation of how they have worked in practice?

David Melding

Well, it depends really. If you take the First Minister's response it amounts to saying he is doing it already, apart from one or two he disagrees with. The Executive I think feel slightly threatened, or they just feel that it is good practice anyway. I think the UK Government does need to make a specific response on what it feels is the value of the Rawlings principles.

Lord Richard

I am afraid we have run out of time. I am sorry, actually, because I was going to try and explore with you -- well, our old friend "quasi", but we have not got time for that -- I was going to try and explore with you what you thought could be done to improve the situation within the existing structure, within the existing settlements -- quasi-settlements -- what do you think should be done? We have heard a lot of things about jagged edges. I do not know whether it would be a great imposition for you, but would it be possible to put your thoughts on one or two sheets of paper and let us have it?

David Melding

I can certainly do that. It is also contained in the manifesto chapter. It is quite developed.

Lord Richard

You would not want to go beyond that.

David Melding

That, in my view, would strengthen the existing model considerably and then you could test my contention that it takes us in the direction of primary powers.

Sir Michael Wheeler Booth

You say in one of your articles that this recent election will be a kind of verdict on the Assembly, and if there is anything from the recent election, and so on, you have to add what has been said?

David Melding

The verdict was an excellent result for the Labour Party.

Sir Michael Wheeler Booth

I mean in the institution.

Ted Rowlands

If there is -- whatever it is -- could I just pursue this: one thing that has puzzled me with a lot of the evidence we have received over many months is that there has been a first class working relationship, it seems, between Assembly members, and a whole range of new policy, outside bodies and voluntary sector, pressure groups if you like to call them, have really created a very good relationship and they all testify very strongly to the open accessibility. It seems to me then there is a gulf between both those and the general public who have reflected their ambivalence in the low turnouts in some areas. Any explanation to us why this system is working at one level very well and how often there is access and all the rest and yet there seems to be a gulf between them.

David Melding

I think it is very curious and quite disturbing that the turn out was only 38 per cent, and I do not have any magic answers. I suppose devolution is still a pretty new project. We are some 4 years into it, and over time perhaps the public will really get to grips with the fact that in terms of health, education, housing, and those sorts of issues it really is the Assembly that determines policy and I am not sure that we got that across. No one could have predicted that 4 years ago, or even anticipated how to deal with that in an election campaign, and it was a very short campaign with Easter in the middle. It is a worry, but I have no great insights into this area.

Lord Richard

Mr Melding, thank you very much indeed for coming.

David Melding

Thank you very much.