RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS - EVIDENCE TO
THE RICHARD COMMISSION BY PROFESSOR ROBERT HAZELL ON
24 OCTOBER 2002
|
| LORD RICHARD: Professor Hazell, thank you
for coming. Would you like to open with a statement? |
PROFESSOR HAZELL: Yes, if I may. Obviously
I am in your hands in terms of what you want to ask. I
thought we might possibly want to cover three broad areas.
The one we might come to last relates to the set of papers
that I have just circulated, which is our own Independent
Commission to review Britain's experience of PR voting
systems, a commission which obviously intercepts in terms
of its agenda with the second part of your terms of reference
about the electoral arrangements in Wales.
I am very happy to answer any questions about that Commission,
of which I am the Vice Chair. |
| I wondered if I might begin just by saying
a little bit about the background to the devolution settlement
in Wales because I was involved in that in the mid-1990s,
first as a keen observer and then as a very marginal player.
I thought it might be helpful to some members of the Commission,
who were not perhaps keen observers of devolution before
1997, to say something about the background and why the
settlement developed in the way that it did. |
| My credentials, such as they are: let me
begin with a disclaimer in a way. I am an Englishman,
as you will have discerned from my voice, Home Counties
born, London resident. So I had no prior knowledge or
expertise about Wales, and in a sense within the
Constitution Unit, I played the kind of part that perhaps
Michael Wheeler Booth does on your Commission, that
of the detached observer from across the border. I started
certainly with no baggage and no preconceptions about
what should be the devolution settlement in Wales. |
| The Constitution Unit Mark 1, if I can
call it that, was founded in April 1995 and worked very
intensively for the two years before the 1997 General
Election on all aspects of the opposition parties’
commitments to constitutional reform and we brought out
three major reports on devolution. I was the main author
within the Unit of our report An Assembly for Wales,
of which I have brought a copy to give to the Secretariat.
That was published in June 1996. In that report, we took
the commitments of the various political parties, such
as they were, in particular Labour Party policy, because
if any of this was going to happen, it was because Labour
might win the then next election, the one they won in
1997, and try and put that into practice. We did a very
detailed feasibility study on how that policy might best
be implemented. |
| At the time, that led us to try, in suitably
balanced and diplomatic language, to challenge Labour
thinking on four main topics. One was the need for a referendum
because at that time Labour Party policy was that the
General Election and the victory in a general election
provided a sufficient mandate to introduce devolution.
We argued that there should be a referendum, particularly
given the 4 to 1 defeat of the previous Labour Government's
devolution proposals in 1979. We also argued, unlike the
1979 referendum, that any future referendums should be
pre-legislative. As you will know, Labour in fact did
change their policy on that in June 1996, two days after
the publication of our report. |
| Secondly, we devoted a chapter in the report
to the voting system and set out, I hope in a balanced
way, the arguments for and against different voting systems,
and the argument for PR, which as you know was being advanced
then by the Lib-Dems and Plaid Cymru, but not espoused
by Labour, that for the Assembly to be broadly representative
of different stands of political opinion in Wales, it
should be elected by PR. On that, Labour eventually changed
their policy in March 1997, just two months before the
May 1997 General Election when Ron Davies finally persuaded
the Labour defenders of first-past-the-post to accept
a measure of PR and a more inclusive Assembly. |
| This bit, forgive me, I cannot remember
for certain but up until that time I think Labour
Party policy had been for an Assembly of 80 members. I
think, as it were, part of the deal that Ron Davies negotiated
was a reduction on the size of the Assembly to 60, 40
constituency members, plus 20 additional members to provide
proportionality. |
| Third, we raised in our report the possibility
of a cabinet model of government rather than the local
government committee system, and we devoted a whole chapter
of the report to that. I think we may have been the first
to question what had been rather uncritically accepted,
that the local government committee system was more appropriate
to the executive model of devolution being proposed by
Labour and more inclusive than the adversarial scrutiny
committee system that certainly comes with cabinet government
at Westminster. |
| At that time, floating the alternative
of cabinet government had no impact on Labour policy,
but you will know that during the passage of the Government
of Wales Bill through Parliament, amendments were put
down by the Government which would enable the Assembly
to adopt a cabinet model if it wished. You will know that
the Assembly has subsequently done so. |
| Fourth, in our report we devoted a chapter
to the whole issue of legislative powers. If I may, I
would like just to quote from a couple of paragraphs to
record our conclusions on that. |
| "In reality what matters is who initiates
the legislation. Under our parliamentary system of government
legislation is as much a function of the Executive as
of Parliament. ….So long as legislative power remains
with Westminster the initiative remains with the British
Cabinet, which controls the legislative programme and
the content of individual items within the programme. |
| "Given the tremendous pressure each
year on the legislative programme, it is unlikely that
the UK Government is going readily to insert additional
items to accommodate the needs of a devolved administration
in Wales. This is a further argument for the Welsh Assembly
having primary legislative power: to get round the Westminster
logjam. With executive devolution, Welsh bills would have
to take their chance in the long queue of measures put
forward by Whitehall departments each year, only one quarter
of which finds space in Westminster's legislative programme.
With legislative devolution, Welsh bills could find their
own priority, in a legislative programme prepared by the
Welsh Executive and presented to the Welsh Assembly." |
| "An Assembly with executive powers
only risks incurring the worst of both worlds. It would
create high hopes in Wales of independent action which
the Assembly might not be able to fulfil; but be a permanent
supplicant in Whitehall, leading to continuing tension
between London and Cardiff." |
| As you know, those words of ours at that
time were completely ignored but the issues we raised
then have not gone away, and they lie squarely in the
first part of the terms of reference of your Commission.
Those of you who were at your seminar in Aberystwyth will
remember my concluding my presentation then about the
legislative programme in Whitehall and Westminster, by
saying that I felt it gave Wales the worst of both worlds.
I thought that was quite a neat summary. I did not realise
at the time until preparing for this session that those
were in fact words I had used before back in 1996. |
| I should pause there, Chairman, if I may.
I would like at some point briefly to say something about
the referendum in 1997 and the state of public opinion
in Wales in the run-up to the referendum. Forgive me,
I have already taken too long in opening, so let me stop
now. |
| LORD RICHARD: Please go on. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: If I may, I can take
this rather more shortly on the state of public opinion
in Wales. Clearly, in challenging Labour thinking on the
issues that I have just described, we were sticking our
necks out. I was very concerned, as an Englishman, with
the limitations that I have described, to try to find
out what the people of Wales really felt about these issues.
|
| As you all know, the received wisdom on
the 1997 referendum is that it is interpreted generally
as suggesting that the people of Wales were very doubtful
about devolution. From my rather obsessive watching of
the people of Wales, as I have described from across the
border, I interpret it rather differently. I think the
people of Wales were bounced into a decision for which,
in September 1997, they were not ready. Again, I did say
something of this at the time and I have brought for the
Secretariat an article which I wrote in the summer of
1997, two months before the referendum, where I raise
my fears that the referendum was being held too early
because, by contrast with Scotland, there had been next
to no public debate, and the people of Wales did not know
what they thought on devolution. |
| You can see that quite literally in the
opinion polls in the two or three years running up to
the referendum where the proportion of "don't knows"
in the opinion polls which asked about devolution –
and there were two kinds of polls, some simply asked "are
you for or against?", others asked about different
models of devolution – recorded "don't knows"
typically ranging from 20 to 25 per cent. On one poll
the "don't knows" were as high as 40 per cent.
The proportion of "don't knows" in equivalent
Scottish opinion polls about devolution in Scotland at
that time was about 2 to 2.5 per cent. Why the
difference? I do not think it is that the Welsh are chronically
indecisive or that the Scots are wonderfully decisive.
Rather I think it is simply that in Scotland there had
been a public debate for the best part of ten years engendered
by the Scottish Constitutional Convention, and the people
of Scotland had made their minds up. They were not all
in favour of devolution and there continued in Scotland
to be about 25 per cent against, but broadly they had
had a debate in Scotland for many years and people knew
the issues and the "don't knows" were vanishingly
small. |
| In Wales you have this extraordinarily
high proportion of "don't knows" because they
had been no public debate. Attempts to orchestrate one,
or to establish the Welsh equivalent of the Scottish Constitutional
Convention had been suppressed by the Wales Labour Party,
because the Wales Labour Party was terrified of exposing
the divisions within its own ranks which went right to
the top, and they were particularly sharp inside the Wales
Labour Party Executive. For that reason, it deliberately
stifled any public debate. |
| Interestingly, to the extent that the people
of Wales did express an opinion or to the extent that
the opinion polls asked about different models of devolution,
the people of Wales did seem to favour an Assembly with
law-making power. I tried to find my papers relating to
this period before coming down to give evidence to you
today but I am afraid they are now in an archive which
we have lodged with the British Library. |
| I hope, following the seminar in Aberystwyth,
that Richard Wyn Jones will present you with
the range of opinion poll data, including polls from the
commercial polling organisations going back as far as
he can go. I can only say this from memory, but of all
the polls that I am aware of, certainly there were not
many polls that asked specifically "What kind of
Assembly do you want?". To the extent that there
were polls that distinguished between different models,
all the ones I know of suggest that more people, even
at that time, wanted an Assembly with law-making powers
rather than executive devolution only. Of those polls
which also asked respondents to indicate their party affiliations,
the same holds true of supporters of the Labour Party.
Ordinary Labour Party supporters also at that time were
indicating to pollsters that they wanted an Assembly with
law-making powers, which may have run slightly contrary
to the views at that time of some of their party leaders. |
| That last bit I have also said once before
in public in Wales when I came down to Cardiff last year
to give the St David's Day Lecture. If I may, I will also
leave a copy with the Secretariat of that lecture.
Although there were in the audience several Labour Party
figures, there was no one, certainly in the question session,
who challenged that version of events. |
| LORD RICHARD: They just stared at you! |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: As I said at the beginning,
it is all subject to the limitation that I am a London-based
Englishman and this is simply my observation of the situation
in Wales during the period when obviously I did work very
intensively on the plans for devolution in Wales. |
| LORD RICHARD: That committee produced the
paper in 1996; that was not just produced by you, was
it? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: I was greatly assisted
by a really excellent steering group, whose names are
recorded on the inside cover. There were some 14 people
from public life in Wales. We met monthly here in Cardiff
over the period of about nine months. I was essentially
the editor and the rapporteur, if you like, of that consultative
group. |
| LORD RICHARD: The view in that report was
unanimous, was it not? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Yes. |
| LORD RICHARD: It was not a minority report?
|
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: No, although it was a
report of the Constitution Unit, as it were, not produced
by a commission, and so ultimately the editorial decision,
I suppose, was mine. |
| SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: But the people
who served in your expert group, whatever you call it,
were on the whole I suspect academics, lawyers and political
scientists who favoured devolution, or did you have, so
to speak, heretics, a substantial number of heretics,
not perhaps just one? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Only a minority were
academics, from memory three or four. They were mainly
figures from the public service and public life. Let me
briefly read out the names because they will mean much
more to the Welsh members of this Commission: Ivor Lightman,
Denis Balsom, Stephen Dunster, Elizabeth Haywood who was
then Director of the CBI in Wales, Roger Jarman, David
Jenkins who was then Director of the Wales TUC, Barry
Jones, Stuart Lindsay, Tony Morton, Nicholas Neale,
Keith Patchett, Meiron Thomas, Victoria Winckler (Ivor
Lightman). So they came broadly from the worlds of local
government, the health service in Wales, the civil service
and the wider public sector, a not dissimilar cross-section
from the background of some of the members of this Commission. |
| VIVIENNE SUGAR: Could Robert tell us a
little more about how and when things started to change.
You said that the Labour Party adopted in March 1997 the
argument for PR, or the one that we ended up with and
the reduced size, and also you referred to amendments
as the Government of Wales Bill was going through to the
provision for cabinet government, if that is what the
Assembly wanted. Could you tell us about any other changes
that you saw as the process was going through, what were
the pressures and what was actually happening behind the
scenes? We had evidence from Ron Davies in the previous
session about his version of why things changed. It would
be interesting to have your views. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Forgive me, but I cannot
add very much to what I have just said. I was operating
a bit like a "Kremlinologist" in a way from
London but there was only me and I did not have any agents
permanently on the case down here in Wales, and none who
were moles inside the Executive of the Wales Labour Party.
Ron Davies probably would be your best witness about the
discussions, which I think at times were pretty intensive,
inside the Wales Labour Party which led to those various
changes of policy. The change of policy on the referendum
was straight from Tony Blair and was a great surprise
to Labour supporters in Scotland and in Wales. |
| SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Who persuaded
him? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: I cannot prove cause
and effect but I have said that it was made within one
or two days of the publication of our reports. We published
on the same day, 25 June 1996, our reports on devolution
in Scotland and in Wales. We ran the argument for a pre-legislative
referendum and Tony Blair in his speech either the next
day or two days after changed the policy. |
| SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Is this making
out the sort of policy formation as perhaps more, so to
speak, objective or rational than I think it very often
is? I suspect there were political objectives that were
absolutely conclusive. I would suspect, and this is a
pure guess, that the reflection on what had happened to
the first single big Bill and then the two Bills between
1976 and 1978 on the previous devolution would have been
an argument, one about which, when you were coming up
against the buffers of a general election and you have
got to have something in your manifesto, various people
would say, "Look here, are we going to allow ourselves
to be put in this position again?" I am not saying
this was based on knowledge, but I am just asking the
question. |
| TED ROWLANDS: Chairman, I was wondering
what line this discussion was going to take. I was once
intensively involved in this period. The fact that I am
not going to challenge that should not be a read that
I would agree with it. In some fundamental respects I
disagree with your analysis and opinion. I represented
the (Monmouth) constituency at that time and the people
of that area and I do not think your interpretation of
public opinion is right. |
| I wondered whether it is worthwhile pursuing
this rather than looking to the future. I am happy to
embroil you in our discussion of opinion. In fact, very
briefly, the Welsh Labour Party's ambivalence was a very
accurate reflection of the Welsh public opinion, and had
been for quite a while. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: In response to that,
I can only say I am very sorry that I have not been able
to bring the opinion polls that I was referring to, which,
as I say, I was reading very obsessively from London
at the time. I do hope the Commission will receive more
evidence about public opinion in Wales, on which I am
certainly not an expert and I claim no first-hand knowledge
of Wales' public opinion at all. |
| TED ROWLANDS: There is a huge gulf between
the Welsh establishment and the Welsh public, and has
been for some time. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: And what I was trying
to suggest is that I think, possibly unknown to the Welsh
establishment in the Labour Party, public opinion might
have been slightly in advance of them. |
| TED ROWLANDS: I am sorry, you have misinterpreted
it. The Welsh establishment is not the Labour Party but
a whole cross-section. |
| VIVIENNE SUGAR: If I can just come back
on this issue about the referendum, was your recommendation
that a referendum was needed rather than simply a manifesto
commitment based on circumstances of the time, or would
you still be in a position where, if there were to be
changes to the Assembly's power, a new referendum would
be needed; it would not be sufficient for a party simply
to put it in its manifesto at the next election? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: On whether a referendum
was needed in the light of the 4 to 1 defeat of the devolution
proposals in 1979, at that time in the 1990s I argued
that a new referendum was required, for reasons both of
principle and of sheer political strategy or tactics.
The people of Wales in 1979 had indicated by 4 to
1 that they did not want devolution, and it was the same
model of executive devolution which Labour was planning
to introduce in the 1990s. |
| Secondly, in terms of tactics, we argued
that the referendum should be pre-legislative because
getting devolution legislation through Parliament in the
1970s had required an extraordinary amount of parliamentary
time and the expenditure of a great deal of political
capital in securing the passage of the Wales Act in 1978,
and then to see that defeated in the referendum in March
1979, the whole exercise was in effect at that point wasted.
That is why we said, "Why don't you ask the people
of Wales in advance before introducing the Devolution
Bill whether they have changed their minds in the last
20 years?" It was as simple as that. |
| On your second question, "If there
is a change to the devolution settlement now or in the
future, does it require a further referendum?" I
am genuinely agnostic. I think on balance I do not
feel that it does because, as I have indicated, in September 1997
I was not at all confident that the people of Wales knew
much about what they were voting for anyway, in the light
of the opinion poll as I have just described, which shows
such a high proportion of "don't knows" and
in the light of there being no serious public debate,
and they were just voting for an Assembly. I am not sure
that many voters were aware how great or how little the
powers of the Assembly were going to be. But if it helped
to give confidence, either to the Assembly government
here in Wales or perhaps, equally important, to a British
Government in Westminster that was being invited significantly
to re-cast the devolution settlement here in Wales, then
there is absolutely nothing against a referendum. A referendum
is often a political device as much as a genuine attempt
to ascertain the public will on a particular issue. |
| PETER PRICE: On public opinion, can I ask
to what extent do you think the turn-out in the next Assembly
election should be regarded as some kind of endorsement
of the current system or of devolution in general or in
what way should you treat the turnout in that next Assembly
election as indicative of public opinion in any way? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: I do not think you should
treat turnout at the next election as strongly indicative
of public opinion towards the powers of the Welsh Assembly.
When people here vote in May of next year in the Assembly
elections, they will be voting, let us hope, to some extent
on the issues presented to them by the political parties
in their manifestos for that election, but not exclusively.
|
| There is a great breadth and depth of academic
literature about what are called second order elections.
In brief, the thesis is that in some countries the elections
at what academics call the regional tier, for our purposes
Scotland and Wales, is in part a poll on the performance
of the national government, in our case the UK Government
in Westminster. There is some evidence to suggest that
that may be the case here too, but it is early days. |
| There is also a huge concern about turnout
more generally. As you will know, turnout in the General
Election last year fell dramatically. I think I am just
trying to sound caution that if turnout next year is disappointingly
low, I do not think people should rush to judgment in
saying it is either because the Welsh are disillusioned
with their Assembly or because they are expressing some
view about the nature of its powers. I am not sure that
either conclusion would be at all justified. |
| LORD RICHARD: When you wrote the constitution
document you produced in 1996, you came to the conclusion
that the Assembly should have primary legislative powers;
it has not had them. It has been functioning now for three
years without them. As you know, one of our functions
is to look at that and see whether that makes sense. Do
you think it makes sense? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: I think that the Assembly,
given the difficulty of not having primary legislative
powers, has, as you have heard from several witnesses
already – and I heard part of the Minister's evidence
this afternoon – done extraordinarily well with the
powers that it has. The officials, and it is entirely
to their credit, have got on with the job. Some of them,
understandably, particularly those in the public service,
have, as it were, almost made a virtue of that. Civil
servants are used to operating in sub-optimal circumstances.
It is very common, if I can go back to my Whitehall days,
to be working in a field where your legislative powers
are not ideal, and often your resources are insufficient
as well, but you do your best. I think what we have
seen is Ministers and the civil servants supporting them
rising rather magnificently to that challenge of doing
their best. I have been particularly impressed by the
performance of the public servants. |
| When you stand back from it, and in a way
it may be rather easier for a commission like this to
stand back from it than those working day-to-day at the
coal face, it is not ideal. The settlement is a very jagged
edge. I wanted at one point when Jane Davidson was giving
her evidence to be able to show you the Transfer of Functions
Order. I do hope that the Secretariat will supply not
the 535 page translation, as it were, or an expansion
of the Transfer Functions Order with the commentary that
explains it, but the first main Transfer of Functions
Order, which thirty or so pages long. That sets out statute-by-statute,
section-by-section the powers transferred. As a number
of people have described it, it creates a very jagged
edge. That is problem number one. |
| Problem number two is that it is very difficult
to understand, even for the officials involved either
here in Wales or at the other end in London. It is not
a transparent settlement. I do think those are two
fundamental difficulties. |
| LAURA McALLISTER: Is not a third difficulty
that the settlement as it stands results in massively
uneven policy development? We have heard from the Minister
for Education who speaks with a portfolio where most of
the areas have been transferred, most of the areas are
devolved, and only a few are actually retained at Westminster-Whitehall
level. But if we were to stand back, and that is our job
in a sense, and look at the whole remit of policy
development in the National Assembly since 1999, we would
see massively uneven policy initiatives. We would also
see a massively different degree of creativity used
by different Ministers. Under the current settlement,
are we reliant on creative individual Ministers rather
than a kind of consistent pattern of policy development? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Yes, but, as you will
know, in any government there is uneven policy development
between ministries and between ministers, in part because
it does depend on political leadership, initiative and
energy. |
| LAURA McALLISTER: But not scope in the
same way, which is different here? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Yes, it needs all those
things. |
| PETER PRICE: Can I raise a different issue
and that is this. You mentioned in the early part of your
evidence that your Constitution Unit carried out a feasibility
study as part of its work, to see how the proposals would
work in practice. Can you indicate at what stage you embarked
on that? Was it looking at a range of options or had you
narrowed it fairly considerably before you undertook it
and to what extent was this feasibility analysed? I am
looking at it partly historically, what you did in the
course of things with the question of lessons that might
have been learnt and things that we might be able to apply
in terms of our remit? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Forgive me, I am not
sure that there is anything that I could offer beyond
what I have said and what I will leave with the Secretariat
to help you in your work. When I talked about it being
a feasibility study, what I was trying to convey was that
the Constitution Unit has always been completely neutral
about constitutional reforms. Given my own background,
for most of my working life I was in the Civil Service,
and I brought to the work of the unit the same kind of
ethic of neutrality. This report on an Assembly for Wales
was taking as its starting point the known policy positions
of the political parties then advocating devolution for
Wales. It is a feasibility study, as it were, of how to
implement these policies. A big chunk of it is about how
to implement Labour policy, but there was a chapter also
about full primary legislative powers because that was
Lib-Dem and Plaid policy. |
| SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: I got all your
reports of the Constitution Unit at the time and read
them. The impression one got from the authors, with their
many advisers and experts and so on, was that there was
a sort of bent towards constitutional reform, I think.
It just is a fact. You would not have been studying it
if you thought the whole thing was a complete waste of
time. |
| The second point I would make is that in
a sense it struck me long ago when I read the Scottish
Convention documents, which had a lot of splendid stuff
in them, that they also did not answer some very important
questions. In a way, what you were trying to do for Wales,
and perhaps in one or two of your other reports, was a
bit of the thinking and intellectual wrestling with the
problem which had gone on in Scotland for years because
of John Smith and other influences, but was completely,
as you rightly say, not to be seen on the Welsh landscape. |
| My third point is about the referendum.
One of the really unsatisfactory things about the 1997
Referendum in Wales was that the "pro" lobby
had considerable funding and publicity which the "no"
lobby, as far as I remember, did not. It had no money
at all, no organisation at all until two months before
the actual date in September of the referendum taking
place. It is a most extraordinary sort of business because
you have one side saying it is the best thing since sliced
bread and the other just saying "no". It is
an absolute example of how a referendum should not be
conducted. That would not happen another time. If there
were to be another one, it is inconceivable, I would
imagine, because people would not put up with it at this
stage. It is wrong. Anyway, there is the Electoral Commission
now and part of its remit is to see that referendums are,
so to speak, full and fair. In a way, there was nothing.
It was partly because of that that the terms of the ghastly
long title of that Act were made. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Indeed, and in this first
clutch of reports the Constitution Unit Mark 1, there
was the report of a commission, the only commission we
established at that time, chaired by Sir Patrick Nairne,
an independent commission on the conduct of referendums,
which did recommend that there should be a watchdog body
to supervise referendums to ensure that they were regarded
as fair and therefore that their results were regarded
as legitimate. Again there, our recommendation fell on
to stony ground, and this was also in 1996. But nearly
five years later, in the Political Parties Referendums
and Elections Act 2000, the Electoral Commission was created.
You are quite right; in future referendums there will
be an Electoral Commission to supervise them and also,
at its discretion, the Electoral Commission can give grants
to the umbrella bodies on both sides of a referendum.
It can also introduce caps on their spending, something
incidentally which our Commission, chaired by Sir Patrick
Nairne believed was impracticable. We argued against trying
to introduce spending caps for a referendum campaigning
group but I am sure, Chairman you would not want to get
into that kind of detail. |
| You must indicate whether you want me to
say anything about our own independent commission. Would
it be convenient to move on to that? |
| LORD RICHARD: Yes. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: I have brought down for
you just three papers to try to convey the gist of our
Commission to review Britain's experience of the new PR
voting systems, but we are now sending all the papers
of our Commission to Carys in the Secretariat, and so
I hope we have done everything that we can to keep in
very close touch with each other. If there is anything
subsequently that any of you want to know about the work
of our Commission, we are very willing to try to help
and support your work in any way we can. |
| LORD RICHARD: What is the timing of your
paper? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: That is my first piece
of paper, this chart. It is our timetable and our timing
is fairly similar to yours. We have an 18-month life;
we are aiming to try to report by the end of next year;
and we began with our first meeting held in July of this
year. The first column shows the cycle of meetings at
the Commission, and so you will see that the Commission
meets next month and then we are planning to hold three
meetings of the Commission during 2003. |
| We have issued a consultation paper, which
is the third document I have laid in front of you. We
are going to start an on-line consultation, not in fact
in September which this work programme suggests but towards
the end of this year. We are also conducting research.
The Commission's research programme is the subject of
the second paper I have brought. That sets out our research
programme under the four main categories of people whose
views we are trying to seek: first and perhaps most important,
the public, citizens and voters; second, interest groups
and organisations of all kinds; third, politicians and
the political parties; and fourth the experience of the devolved
assemblies and governments elected by PR. That is how
we have structured our research programme to try to learn
as much as we possibly can in the time and with the resources
available about the views of those four sets of actors. |
| The research programme goes into overdrive
around the Assembly elections in May when we will conduct
focus groups which we did around the first devolved Assembly
elections in 1999, so this is something we have done once
before, and then a big public opinion survey, which we
in the Unit do not conduct. We do not have the expertise
to do opinion surveys, but we do that through the National
Centre for Social Research and their partners in Scotland
and in Wales. Again, this survey is something of a repeat
exercise, although additional questions are going to be
added in a separate module next May. As your Commission
develops its agenda and begins to focus on what you might
want to know about the electoral arrangements, it might
be feasible – I cannot make a definite offer, I would
need to consult with our partners who do the survey –
to add questions that you specifically want asked, if
they are not already being asked. |
| LORD RICHARD: Can I ask you about the survey
questionnaire? I assume those have gone out now? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Yes. |
| LORD RICHARD: What do they ask? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: I have a copy of that.
It was faxed down. It has been summarised at paper 5.
You will find under the heading "Politicians and
Political Parties" that there are about ten points
in the third paragraph "among the issues to be explored". |
| LORD RICHARD: You are not doing it for
Westminster MPs or the Scots or Welsh? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: We are, but separately.
Forgive me, it is a bit complicated. We have three different
research projects looking at different aspects of some
of the tensions that devolution creates, not simply between
the different categories of AMs but also between AMs and
MPs. The three different research projects are called:
one, the impact of devolution on Westminster; two, multi-tier
democracy; and three, the research commissioned by this
independent Commission. For some purposes, those three
projects come together in funding a particular survey.
This survey of AMs in the National Assembly and MSPs is
funded by all three of those projects. I have brought
for you the questionnaire itself but I think it is probably
too detailed for you to want to go through, unless you
would like me to. I just have the one copy. |
| LORD RICHARD: Could we look at it? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: The things that it covers
are summarised in those bullet points in the research
programme paper. |
| SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: You do not have
anything about the numbers of MPs or AMs and the proportion
between the two different kinds, which seems quite an
important question. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: We do ask in the questionnaire
– |
| SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Actually in
the real questionnaire? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: In the real questionnaire
we ask: do you agree that the size of the Scottish Parliament
or Welsh Assembly should be (a) decreased, (b) increased,
(c) stay the same. Then we ask an open question: "Have
you any comments on size"? |
| SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: But nothing
specifically on the 40:20 in the National Assembly, which
is a very important factor in the political composition
of the Assembly. Some people I believe talk about having
60:20 as a possible slight uprating. That would have
a considerable effect on the political complexion? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Indeed, and I am not
an expert on electoral matters but all of us amateurs
can understand that the ratio between the constituency
members and the additional members does determine the
degree of proportionality in the Assembly as a whole.
If the Assembly were to be increased to 80 but retained
only 20 additional Members, then the disproportionality
between votes and seats would increase. |
| PETER PRICE: That is about the electoral
system angle in terms of fairness, et cetera, but
you have got down here as one of the issues "perceptions
of difference between list and constituency members".
What does that mean in practice in your questions? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: I will try and find them. |
| PETER PRICE: This may cover this angle.
It is on page 3, this list of issues to be explored. The
second one is: "Perceptions of difference between
list and constituency members", which seems to be
coming at the same point. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: This is a questionnaire
with 28 questions. I will try and send you a better copy
than this which is a faxed one. It has a battery of questions
about relations between list and constituency members,
not least because we were trying also to find out whether
the relationships varied depending on whether these were
relations between members of the same party or of different
parties. |
| They are separate questions, first of all
directed to constituency members and to list members,
and then question 15 asks for all members "your relations
with the list MSPs and AMs in your electoral region".
Then there is a question for list members only and then
there are questions about the relationship with Westminster
MPs. I can try and go through them all but I think it
would be better, if I may, if I leave you the questionnaire.
This is precisely the kind of issue where, when you have
looked at the questionnaire and the Commission has advanced
its own thinking, you think that there are questions that
we are failing to ask which are really important for your
work, then we might be able to add some questions in subsequent
surveys. |
| PETER PRICE: You are half-way through it
and you will conclude this type of questionnaire with
an interview, indeed in January. When will the results
of that work be available? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: I do not know for certain.
Forgive me, again I hesitate because we are doing
too many of these surveys for me to keep them all properly
in my head. I think, if I may, what I will try and do
for you is send you a schedule of all the surveys
that we are conducting with their timescales, including
when the results will be available. |
| LORD RICHARD: That would be very helpful. |
| TOM JONES: Can we look ahead. We have 12
months plus to go, we have recommendations to make which
may take five or ten years to be enacted if we are lucky,
and the changes would happen in ten or twelve years' time
and be expected to last for another five or ten years.
With all your experience, what sort of models can you
imagine would best suit Wales in an environment in which
there may be devolution for the regions in England; there
may be further devolution within countries like France
at a European level; there would be the realignment of
the new level with parts coming in. The purpose of this
group is to try and find a system that will best suit
Wales, based on current trends but obviously looking ahead
so that it fits well in ten to fifteen years' time –
in five minutes! |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: I am going to tease you
a bit, if I may. I was intrigued and rather impressed
at the seminar in Aberystwyth when the Commission was
also asking quite wide-ranging questions of this kind,
in particular about the progress of devolution in England.
I thought, "Gosh, you have got enough of a task in
a way trying to solve the Welsh question without taking
on the English question as well", and now in effect
you might be taking on the European question. |
| Seriously, although you might want to have
a sort of watching brief on those developments, I cannot
myself see that any of them strongly impact on the work
of this Commission. There may or may not be regional assemblies
in England. I do not think that makes any difference at
all to the kind of devolution settlement that you might
want or need here in Wales. |
| LORD RICHARD: But if you had PR for the
Commons – a very big "if" – then it
would have a profound effect on the likelihood of an interrelationship
between administrations and governments in London and
Cardiff. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: If there were PR for
the Commons – a big "if" and a much
bigger "if" than regional government in England
– it would increase the likelihood of there being
coalition administrations in Westminster. |
| LORD RICHARD: And there would be less likelihood
of a crunch. Crunch is coming. You have given us a wonderful
picture of the education people in London and Cardiff
being absolutely hunky-dory, and like this,
and tears being shed about Miss Morris's resignation and
so on. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Forgive me, I think there
would still be likelihood of crunch. I look at Germany,
which uses the same PR voting system for the Federal Government
and for the Länder and it is not at all uncommon for there
to be a conservative-led coalition governing in Bonn
– we should now say Berlin – and for there to
be several SPD-led governments in the Länder. |
| LORD RICHARD: It is a less acute problem
though, is it not? Anyway, worrying about PR for the Commons
is an aside. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Forgive me for saying
so rather strongly, but I would be deeply dismayed
if this Commission allowed itself to be seriously distracted
by possible developments in England or expansion of the
European Union or PR at Westminster, et cetera. I genuinely
cannot see how any of those things is likely significantly
to affect the fundamental questions that you are asked
to answer in relation to Wales about the powers of the
Welsh Assembly and the electoral arrangements and system
to support the Assembly. |
| TOM JONES: The way I was seeing that was
that the major legislation to deal with the environment,
for example, these days comes from Brussels. The ability
of the Assembly to represent the wishes of the Welsh people
in any discussions on that legislation may or may not
depend on the status or the authority of the Welsh representative
in those discussions, whether that representative was
feeding into a UK position which may or may not be different
because of the different variations within the UK scenario
or is able to actually play a more direct role within
Brussels itself. That is why I think that dimension is
important. If this is about representing the people of
Wales, whichever theatre they have to express their views
in and from where their legislation emanates, I would
have thought that is very interesting. |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Yes, but that is the
reality of modern government. Academics call it multi-level
governance. Exactly the same problems are experienced
again by the Länder governments in Germany which also
have responsibility for the environment but find that
increasingly legislation is made at the European level;
and the same is true of Scotland. |
| Coming to the last question you asked me
in your first intervention, which I think was "What
should be the model for Wales?" the simple answer
is: if you were to recommend that the Assembly should
have primary legislative powers across most of the fields
in which at the moment it has executive power, then the
obvious legislative model to follow would be the Scotland
Act. You would not be taking a dangerous leap in
the dark because the Scotland Act has been in practice
now for three and a bit years. So far, it is tried and
tested; so far it has worked pretty well, very well in
terms that there have been no legal challenges or legal
disputes between Edinburgh and London. But the Scottish
officials, in dealing with matters like the environment,
fisheries, agriculture or economic development are dealing
also with legislation that comes from Brussels. They have
identical powers in that respect to Ministers here in
Wales, which are simply powers to be consulted by the
UK Government before each Brussels meeting, whether it
is at working level or at ministerial level or, for summit
meetings, prime ministerial level. Those arrangements
in inter-governmental relations work pretty well. What
happens is that the British team of officials does consult
with the devolved administrations about the UK line and
that happened in consultation with the Scottish Office
and the Welsh Office before devolution. It now happens
in a more formal way and it happens sometimes under the
umbrella of the Joint Ministerial Committee. |
| TED ROWLANDS: You raise the issue of the
Scottish model in terms of legislative responsibilities.
Some people mentioned that a unicameral system has not
got the proper checks and balances when pursuing legislation.
In Scotland you have a one-chamber parliament which
passes legislation. How well has it been scrutinised;
how much has it been changed and amended as a result of
genuine democratic scrutiny; has it got the capacity to
be a legislative dictatorship in a way that Westminster
has not because of its two-chamber system? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: We have looked at this
and have done quite a lot of work on it. Whereas some
of my answers today have been tentative, on this I think
I can say pretty confidently that legislation in
the Scottish Parliament is scrutinised a great deal better
than legislation in the two-chamber Parliament at Westminster.
We also did some work on this before the Scottish Parliament
was created because, like you, I was concerned at precisely
the risk that a single-chamber parliament could become
cavalier without the check provided by a second chamber.
|
| For the then Scottish Office we did a piece
of comparative research which was entitled "Checks
and balances in single chamber parliaments". We looked
initially at six parliaments in other countries which
were single chamber; five of them had been two chamber
but had gone down to a single chamber at some point in
the last 50 years. Then, at the invitation of the
Scottish Office, we added another three. |
| I do know, having done that piece of work
for the Consultative Steering Group which was devising
the procedures for the Scottish Parliament, that they
took very seriously indeed the need for very rigorous
scrutiny during the legislative process. If, as I hope,
this Commission goes to Edinburgh, it is certainly one
of the things you should ask the members of the Scottish
Parliament about. I hope that you will be as impressed
as I have been at the quality of legislative scrutiny
there. |
| TED ROWLANDS: Is the research on your six
models available for us? Can it be made available? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: I could certainly send
that to you if it would be helpful and you would like
to have it. It is now slightly historic because again,
seriously, the model you should look at is the live model
of the Scottish Parliament because that is now a parliament
working under the Westminster umbrella with primary legislative
powers. |
| TED ROWLANDS: You recommended, I think
to the Lords, that there should be a Welsh Sewel? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Yes. I think that the
Scottish Parliament in effect at the moment does have
the best of both worlds in that it can pass its own primary
legislation, and indeed it has passed a lot, 44 Acts of
the Scottish Parliament so far. But it can also acquiesce
in Westminster passing legislation for it which does legislate
on matters devolved to Scotland. I cannot give you the
equivalent figure in Acts of the Westminster Parliament,
but the number of Sewel resolutions, which are the way
that the Scots formally agree to Westminster legislating
for them, runs at the moment to about 35. It probably
equates to round about 30 Acts of the Westminster Parliament
because some Bills have had more than one Sewel resolution. |
| VIVIENNE SUGAR: My question is about how
Whitehall works. One of the themes that has been identified
is this question of sharing the flow of information. One
of the difficulties of making the current arrangements
work is the different attitudes that different departments
have to thinking about consequences of it being an Assembly
and communicating things that they might be working on
in time for there to be proper input. |
| Is there anything that could be done to
improve that situation? Is it simply a question of
trying to wait for the culture to change, for reality
to be recognised, or is there something that could be
done quite quickly to transfer that? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: I have three brief things
to say. One is that before devolution, I think Whitehall
frequently overlooked the interests of Scotland and Wales.
I can say that from my own personal experience. I was
one of the Whitehall civil servants guilty occasionally
of doing that. I remember when I was in charge of quite
an important Bill realising much too late in the day,
because this was a criminal law Bill, that we should have
consulted the Scots. That sort of thing post-devolution
is much better. The interests of Scotland and Wales are
strongly represented through the devolved institutions,
and they have a much stronger voice in the business of
government. |
| In the first year or so of devolution,
some Whitehall departments were slow at learning the new
rules of the game, but they are getting better. We have
done now two rounds of interviews with officials in Whitehall
and certainly in the second round they themselves say
that they do consult more readily sooner. They are much
more sharply aware of the need to consult with Scotland
and with Wales. |
| I mentioned Scotland and
Wales because in the business of government, be it on
environmental matters or education policy or whatever,
there is a huge amount of traffic with both devolved institutions
and will continue to be so. |
| The last thing, coming to legislation,
is that so long as Wales is reliant on Westminster for
the passage of primary legislation, there is a set of
principles which I am sure you have been told about,
known in shorthand as the Rawlings Rules or the Rawlings
Principles, which were commended, and indeed adopted formally,
by the National Assembly in its review of procedure which
reported in January. I do not myself know what has happened
since to try to promote those principles because those
principles in effect are addressed to Whitehall. It is
not within the power of the Assembly, having adopted those
principles, then to deliver. Those principles are all
principles of good practice, which are addressed to people
preparing legislation in Whitehall. At some point I hope
someone is going to ask, maybe of the Secretary of State,
what has happened to the Rawlings Principles and is anyone
going to ask Whitehall departments to follow them? |
| TED ROWLANDS: You said, again in reference
to the Lords, that the consequence of transferring the
primary legislative powers to the Assembly would be an
expected reduction in representation at Westminster, 33
to 30. The Secretary of State is withering or in fact
in the end being terminated and a Minister for the Union
put in the place. Could you elaborate on this concept
of the Minister for the Union? |
| PROFESSOR HAZELL: Can I take a step back
briefly? In very broad terms, I think before devolution
Scotland and Wales were privileged in three respects.
They had their own territorial Secretaries of State in
the British Cabinet, which no other region of England
did. They were over-represented in the number of MPs in
the Westminster Parliament by comparison with England,
and incidentally by comparison with Northern Ireland.
They received proportionately larger public expenditure
per capita than did England. |
| I have long argued that post-devolution
all three of those privileges should come up for review.
On the first, the territorial Secretaries of State, I
do not think it is right that Scotland, Wales and Northern
Ireland should continue to have a separate voice in the
British Cabinet now that they have a separate political
voice through the devolved assemblies and the devolved
governments. |
| Of the three offices, that of the Scottish
Secretary, is the most obviously redundant. In a logical
world, that office – I am talking offices not individuals
– would be the first to go. But politics is not always
logical and this will be determined as much by politics
as by logic. But in logical terms, I think if after ten
years of devolution we still have three territorial Secretaries
of State, then for me devolution will in part have failed. |
| So long as Wales is dependent upon Westminster
for the passage of primary legislation, there is a very
important function to be played by a Secretary of State
in the British Cabinet in promoting Welsh legislation.
It does not necessarily follow that that person has to
be a separate Secretary of State for Wales. In arguing
that the separate territorial Secretaries of State should
go, I am not arguing for the removal of the function,
which is a vital function, that within the British Cabinet
there should be someone responsible for maintaining close,
good effective working relations with the devolved institutions.
There is such a person in the Federal Government in Canada.
He is called the Minister for Federal, Provincial Relations,
but he is not the Minister for Quebec; he is not the Minister
for Alberta. He is the Minister for a function called
Federal Provincial Relations. That is the concept which
I meant to try and capture by giving this portmanteau
title of Minister for the Union. I am not hung up about
what precise label we give to this Minister charged with
inter-governmental relations. I am just saying that in
time I hope the separate territorial Secretaries of State
will become merged. |
| LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much indeed.
We found that very helpful. We look forward to receiving
the various documents you are going to give us. |
|
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