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

 MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS

 of the

 EVIDENCE OF:

 Wales Overseas Agencies Group

 held at

Caradog House, Cardiff

On

FRIDAY 11 JULY 2003

Participants

Lord Richard

Ted Rowlands

Dr Laura McAllister

Peter Price

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Vivienne Sugar

Stephen Thomas

Jon Townley

 Proceedings

Lord Richard

Thank you very much for coming.

Stephen Thomas

Thanks for the invitation.

Lord Richard

Could I ask you to introduce yourselves for the sake of the transcript and secondly if you'd like to open up the topics that you want to raise with us, then we will pursue the ones that we would like to.

Stephen Thomas

I am kicking off. I am Stephen Thomas from the Welsh Centre for International Affairs at the Temple of Peace here in Cardiff. Jon and myself are here to represent six international agencies named on the written submission of February, which I believe you have?

Lord Richard

Yes.

Stephen Thomas

In addition we will be covering briefly this morning points to do with development education and global citizenship which are very much part of the Assembly's remit. In that respect we reflect a much broader group of agencies involved in that work through Cyfanfyd, the Development Education Association for Wales, which has over 35 Members. We would like to go through in sequence the five points that were in the written paper. Clearly the Government of Wales Act and specifically its clause 34 and the Memorandum of Understanding that was drawn up in October '99 between the Assembly, the UK Government and Scottish Ministers accept the legitimacy of the involvement on international issues of the devolved bodies such as the National Assembly. The focus in the Memorandum of Understanding, the specific concordat that formed part of the Memorandum, was with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). That is quite rightly so. However, four years of experience on the part of our agencies really underlines that we feel it is time for review of certain aspects of the Memorandum. We note that it does make a commitment that it will be reviewed on a regular basis and specifically we feel that the Department for International Development should additionally be included as a specific concordatee. At present the relations between our agencies and the Department for International Development (DFID) and the Assembly are slightly ad hoc. There have been interesting developments over the past four years. But I think clarity and better co-operation could be brought about if there were a more formalised format for those relationships.

Lord Richard

Can you spell out the actual practical advantages of doing that?

Stephen Thomas

Yes. Much of the practical input that has happened over the past four years with the Department of International Development has been on development awareness raising, development education, consultation with groups such as ours in Wales. There are a certain number of pigeon holes within the National Assembly where different bits of that sit. The Education and Training Division within the National Assembly has done a lot to support that, especially with the sustainable development remit that is very much to the fore there. But there are other cases of joint events, the one we quote from last spring in Cardiff, where it would not have taken much co-ordination with the National Assembly to have - if not combine the two things, at least ensure that they were rather more symbiotic than they turned out to be. Whereas the Education Department in the Assembly is where much of the collaboration has been, we do feel there are other strands: just to throw one in here, the National Assembly has funded an international agency already in the form of Dolen Cymru, the Wales Lesotho link. This is a long established, 20 year old initially twinning operation between Wales and Lesotho, but now far more developmental in its work. It is interesting that the Assembly has put financial commitment to that organisation which has come I believe from the Youth Section.

Lord Richard

I can see the argument which says that you reduce the abrasions, if you like, by having two meetings on in the same city on two successive weekends. What are the positives of doing it? Are you talking about that it would be a good thing for the Assembly to organise their international affairs rather differently and rather better taking account of more relevant matters? What I don't understand, you see, is why you need a formal concordat between the Assembly and the DFID and what would go in the concordat.

Stephen Thomas

I believe the formality of a concordat would be useful because track records suggest that it was not foreseen at the time this was drawn up that there would be this quite detailed level of engagement with the Department for International Development. We believe that where there have been positive commitments and moves on the National Assembly side there are still various cubby holes where different people have a relationship with the Department for International Development and may not be fully aware of where others within the National Assembly's Civil Service also do.

Ted Rowlands

Do you know of an example of where something has been written or connected or done as a result of the FCO concordat?

Stephen Thomas

That's coming up under one of the next points.

Jon Townley

I'm the policy officer for Oxfam Cymru. This point follows on from the last one. We believe that the Assembly should have its own aid budget specifically set aside for International Development. The Assembly does quite a lot already: funding four Welsh teachers in Patagonia; it funds Dolen Cymru to the tune of £85,000; it has set aside a budget for £200,000 for an international conference on sustainable development next March and made a donation of £3,500 to a sustainable development village in Johannesburg during the world summit on sustainable development. A number of other devolved regions have their own aid budgets. The Basque country, which the Welsh Assembly Government is involved with through the network of regional governments, has quite a large budget but the Bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey also have small budgets set aside. There have been moves in Scotland – the former Scottish Secretary was championing the idea that Scotland should have its own budget and links with our sister organisation in Scotland suggest the Scottish Executive are pushing that forward. At the moment as I say money is being spent but not being done in a transparent way or an accountable way. We would very much like to see it out in the open as a commitment to that historic internationalism that Wales has.

Ted Rowlands

Could you answer the question then about what in the course of this FCO concordat has happened or been connected?

Stephen Thomas

Yes. It's most specifically in the European Union theatre that that has been the case. There is a couple of interesting compare and contrast examples that show where it's worked in the way that we think the concordat suggested it was going to, and that is the submission to the European Convention of a UK line on regional policy and regional governance by Peter Hain. But the paper that was being presented was essentially a joint effort by the Scottish Executive and the Welsh Assembly Government, being put forward in the name of the UK.

Lord Richard

That's a good thing. Not a bad thing.

Stephen Thomas

That's the positive example we are quoting where the distinctiveness from Wales is properly reflected. But there is also an example where there seems to have been advance and yet it's not quite as positive.

Ted Rowlands

That was done under the terms of the FCO Assembly concordat?

Stephen Thomas

Yes. If we take agriculture on the European level as an example, there seems to be fairness in that Scotland, Welsh Assembly Government, England and the UK Government consult, and take it in turns to present cases. But when it is the Welsh Assembly Government's minister that does that he or she is presenting the UK line and the Welsh distinctiveness is therefore much more sotto voce.

Lord Richard

That's inevitable. The EU is an association of member states, you can't have member States speaking in four different voices.

Stephen Thomas

No, not four different voices but where the emphasis perhaps reflects a more specific set of Welsh issues.

Lord Richard

That I understand. But surely the way to sort that out is before you get to establishing the UK position that the Welsh Minister from time to time will actually articulate. I have to tell you in all the evidence that we have had one thing that has been fairly immune from criticism are the European arrangements with the National Assembly. As far as I can see the Assembly are reasonably content with the way in which it works and feel that the Welsh voice is properly heard.

Stephen Thomas

We’re not denying that. That's why we're returning to point number one; if it has been a useful basis for effective collaboration on European and broader FCO things, let's put something in place for DFID which may be a useful spring board for greater understanding between the two agencies.

Lord Richard

Can I come back to Mr Townley's ideas for a separate aid budget for Wales. I can see the argument which says that will make it more transparent. I thought it was pretty transparent already, but perhaps not in a coordinated way. Do you see Wales through the Assembly having a Minister for International Development, then perhaps an aid budget from the Assembly administering aid programmes rather like a mini DFID?

Jon Townley

Not in the medium term future for sure. I'm not sure that would be something that Oxfam would want to see; a duplication in that way. Wales has a history of internationalism which we seek to capitalise on. A Minister with responsibility for International Affairs would be good. We did have the former deputy First Minister he was Minister for Wales Abroad for instance. That portfolio seems to have been lost. It's an interesting aside perhaps that this network of regional governments for sustainable development conference taking place in Cardiff next year, the Assembly has set aside a large chunk of money, yet there is no Assembly Committee that is scrutinising that. It does not appear to be accountable. We are very much in favour of them hosting the conference. We think it’s a good thing that it is happening. But it's not being considered by any of the Assembly's Committees, or the all partly group on International Development.

Dr Laura McAllister

Have you tried to determine where those kind of areas will fall now in the new allocation of portfolios? Have you sought information from the Assembly?

Jon Townley

Carwyn Jones is responsible for sustainable development, but it seems that Rhodri Morgan has taken the Wales Abroad portfolio. So he -- it's his Civil Servants that are dealing with the conference. So it's not being---

Dr Laura McAllister

There’s no Subject Committee parallel?

Jon Townley

No that's right.

Peter Price

Can I clarify what would be the purpose of the budget and what would be the kind of intention of having such a budget? What would be distinctively Welsh? Because you talked about not duplicating, not trying to duplicate what the DFID is up to. What is distinctive that it needs to be done by the Assembly?

Jon Townley

The Assembly has a unique duty to promote sustainable development, for instance. We have done quite a lot of work on the issue of sustainable development with the world summit on sustainable last year and the Assembly's involvement. There is for instance, this network of regional governance, where Oxfam is very keen to see governments of devolved regions from developing countries being involved. It’s very difficult for them to find the finance to do that. The Assembly Government to its credit funded someone from Ghana to come to the last network meeting which took place in San Sebastian. That's the sort of thing we would like to see the Assembly being able to do. As it is it was just done quietly without going through certain channels you know that if it had been debated in the Assembly probably somebody would have said it was ultra viries.

Lord Richard

It probably was, wasn't it?

Jon Townley

Probably was. Well, it shouldn't have been.

Lord Richard

Maybe, but then you go to the Act and see what is devolved and is not devolved.

John Townley

This is somewhere we would like to see the Assembly having more---

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

Under Section 121 of the Government of Wales Act they have a specific duty to have a scheme and to report annually. They said it cannot delegate this duty. Is that happening?

Stephen Thomas

A scheme on sustainable development, yes.

Jon Townley

Sustainable development means different things to different people. As far as we're concerned we would say that Wales can't be sustainable in isolation and therefore needs to be playing a part on the world stage and this network is a great example of how that would be done. We would like to see more of it happening, but there is an argument as to how much the Assembly can do in this field.

Sir Michael Wheeler-Booth

They are actually under a duty to do it. Because it's laid down in an Act of Parliament. As far as I am aware no other body in the UK has this similar duty and if it isn't happening they are in dereliction of their statutory obligations in a sense.

Tom Jones

The Act is within Wales.

Ted Rowlands

What is the power you think the Assembly should have? What is the nature of the power you are suggesting? They can spend money, they have been sending money, although you say whether it's ultra vires. Power to promote sustainable development, they can be put into that pigeon hole, if you like. You are suggesting they have a separate duty or power?

Jon Townley

To be honest I am not sure that that's what we are suggesting. I would like to see this area expanded and the budget itself would bring clarity. At the moment we are saying that the fact that the Assembly has a duty to promote sustainable development means it can do these things. That's not a widely held opinion. Most of the work has been about domestic matters. There is an argument to be had.

Lord Richard

In terms of aid policy, I don't quite understand how you can have a different approach say from England and Wales to the UK. What would be the difference?

Jon Townley

Not too much of a difference, the DFID has an enormous budget and is involved in very many countries. But there are specific links that Wales has, Dolen Cymru, a good example, Lesotho, where it would be proper in our view for Wales to be involved in a way that say the UK is not interested in being involved. Patagonia is another example where we have links.

Tom Jones

You have to have one or the other. Either you have to have devolved powers to deal with the Welsh interest abroad or you need to have a UK department in the non-devolved sphere being more sensitive to different parts of the UK. You could argue that the funding given to Dolen Cymru should have come from the DFID budgets to make the case to them, a percentage of their funding should go for particular Welsh interests. So we are caught in between the two in a sense.

Jon Townley

That's fair.

Lord Richard

Will you go on to asylum?

Jon Townley

Yes. The dispersal of asylum seekers into Wales has been handled extremely badly in our opinion and in the opinion of most of the agencies involved with asylum seekers. We currently have 2088 asylum seekers in Wales. Most of them arrived on coaches sent by the National Asylum Seekers Service, NASS, part of the Home Office. The agencies involved in housing asylum seekers are told that the coach will be arriving with 28 asylum seekers on it. That's all that they know. The coach will arrive. Maybe the people are Somalis, Iraqis, maybe half are children who require additional services. Then the agencies do their best to house them. Often they have to return to London to have their cases heard. If and when their cases are heard, say their request for asylum is successful they then have 14 days to get out of the accommodation they have been provided and to register for benefits and find themselves somewhere to live. There is a case this week of a woman whose appeal has been granted, she's nine months pregnant, living in a hostel at the moment. She's been told he has 14 days, she's about to give birth, she's been told she has to leave. There is a further issue of 45 asylum seekers in Wales---

Ted Rowlands

Leave temporary accommodation?

Participant

And benefits. So she's---

Lord Richard

She won her case?

Jon Townley

So she's off.

Lord Richard

Once she's won she's no longer an asylum seeker.

Jon Townley

Somebody else's problem. In fairness to the Assembly they have set up a Welsh Refugee Integration Forum to hopefully ease that transition.

Vivienne Sugar

You would be hard pressed to find anybody who didn't think that if the Assembly had been able to orchestrate the process they would have come up with something more efficient and humane than the way it’s being done now. But it is deliberate UK Government policy. It's part of the general approach to asylum seekers. It would be difficult to imagine entry into the UK being handled completely separately in Wales compared with England, compared with Scotland. What are the arrangements in Scotland and are they subject to the same problems that you are describing for asylum seekers in Wales?

Jon Townley

I'm afraid I'm not an expert by any means on the situation in Scotland. My understanding is the situation is worse in Scotland. There is a consensus in the Assembly, that asylum seekers should be treated better, in the way that there is not in England or in the UK. We would not want Wales to have separate arrangements for people seeking asylum. But I believe that the Home Office could say well, here we are, your allocation is 2088 people and the Assembly could then take it from there.

Vivienne Sugar

They have already been asked to do that and refused to do that and I don't know whether its formally been expressed but the argument is that the administration of asylum is part of the general policy of deterrence. So it's not a question of whether the Assembly, if it had powers could do things differently, it’s a question of whether it’s possible the power would be transferred because it would mean that a different system would exist in a different parts of the UK. I really can't see the UK government agreeing to that somehow.

Jon Townley

You may well be right. The situation is we believe that Wales would do a better job and therefore should. We would be more humane. It is just not right and the four main parties in Wales accept that. The Minister for Social Justice is today meeting with the relevant UK Ministers to press the case for a particular group of failed asylum seekers who are left without any funding at all, who can't be returned to their country of origin and who are completely destitute. Maybe that is part of the UK Government policy but if that is the case Wales should do something.

Peter Price

Is there any kind of half way house achievable whereby some kind of agency arrangement would confer on the Assembly the responsibility to carry out a wide measure of the organisation of how this is handled in Wales, but within an overall policy framework set for the UK and within budget constraint which is comparable to what is elsewhere? Is that a feasible answer or does it depend, inter alia, on more expenditure in order to do the job properly?

Jon Townley

I'm sure that the arrangement could be better. The existing arrangements could be made to work better. NASS is particularly poor at the dispersal of asylum seekers. If there were better liaison the situation would be more humane. You would end up with Somali asylum seekers going to areas where there are other Somalis, rather than ending up in Wrexham.

Peter Price

So it’s not actually at the level of within Wales how you handle it, the problem starts with NASS and the way that people simply arrive here without consideration of where in the UK they are being sent?

Jon Townley

Yes, that's right. There is not a Wales level of engagement.

Ted Rowlands

What evidence -- we received evidence on the Assembly's input into the International Immigration Asylum Act. Were you involved in any way through the Assembly on making representations about the nature of the Asylum Act?

Jon Townley

Not at the Wales level, no.

Ted Rowlands

Two issues were raised; the issue of the data gateways and also the question of accommodation centres. You were not involved in those issues at all?

Jon Townley

No.

Lord Richard

Anything else on asylum? Europe.

Stephen Thomas

I think we've said what we have to say about Europe in response to Mr Rowlands' point, unless there is anything further?

Lord Richard

Do you feel Wales gets a fair crack of the whip as far as Europe is concerned?

Stephen Thomas

I think it reflects fairly what is agreed in the Concordat and that is good.

Lord Richard

Not doing badly on the regional side

Stephen Thomas

On the financial front. True, yes.

Ted Rowlands

Have you a draft of what type of Memorandum you would like to see being established within the Assembly?

Stephen Thomas

No. We would be interested in being sub-contracted to do something of that nature.

Lord Richard

Electoral reform.

Stephen Thomas

Simply one point again arising from our agencies' experience over the first four years of the Assembly. Even with the current powers that it has we feel that the level of real scrutiny that is needed is not necessarily fully done – that Assembly Members have been stretched between Subject Committees, Regional Committees, all party groups and other such commitments. Certainly if there were additional powers to be conferred on the Assembly we feel even more so that more Members would be needed.

Lord Richard

Can you tell us a bit about your experience with the Assembly in the last few years? What sorts of things have you been trying to do and how successful and what sort of reception you get?

Stephen Thomas

Right. Our experience in terms of individual contact and advocacy or lobbying work with particular Assembly Members has been very positive. The whole issue of ease of access has been shown to be there. Where we have been less successful is in trying to put forward in a coherent way to a group of Assembly Members what some of our campaigns are, what some of the issues that we deal with are that have a direct overlap with the Assembly's remit. We have set---

Lord Richard

Such as?

Stephen Thomas

We have set up an all party International Development Group which has had some interesting meetings and has had some follow up action. One specific example there is on fair trade and the Welsh Assembly Government's procurement policy to do with its coffee and tea, following some sort of fair trade principles. So that is a specific thing that is within the wheels.

Lord Richard

Can I ask you about the mechanisms. Do you go and see Rhodri and put this to him? Or what level do you input into the Assembly machine?

Stephen Thomas

No, on that one we didn't do it at that level. We convene an all party group and a smattering of Assembly Members from the various parties come. The fair trade issue happened to be again when Mike German had that Wales Abroad portfolio and expressed a wish there be something concrete to be followed up. Rhodri Morgan has taken part in one of the other all party groups reporting pack to other AMs on the Johannesburg summit and the follow up.

Jon Townley

We produced a manifesto for the Assembly election. We had a launch in the Assembly. We held hustings meetings in constituencies and launched it at each of the four party conferences. So we try every means possible to get to Assembly Members. In the last week we held an all party group meeting, I organised a lunch time launch of a document on gender and participation. The problem for both times was that there were at least three, if not four other events going on at the same time, group meetings, Chairs of Committee meetings. In our view there are not enough Assembly Members to go round to engage with us properly.

Lord Richard

How many do you want? Apart from more.

Jon Townley

Well, the Wales Overseas Agencies Group has said 20 additional. That would be more.

Lord Richard

Is this on election? Or are you just given the nod?

Stephen Thomas

We have suggested that the list system might be the most appropriate to extend to a further 20.

Lord Richard

So the existing list system but larger?

Stephen Thomas

Yes.

Ted Rowlands

You don't share the disquiet that has been expressed particularly since the last election on the list system arrangement?

Stephen Thomas

I don't think that we feel that it’s perfect by any means, but if there were to be reconsideration of the form of proportionality used then that may be positive. But we feel if there were to be an extension in numbers of representatives it should be through some form of proportionality rather than changing the first past the post electorate.

Lord Richard

Good. Thank you very much indeed. Unless there are other any points you want to put?

Stephen Thomas

No, thanks for finding us the time.