| I hope that the following short submission
is not too late for consideration. I did not make it earlier
as I did not think this matter fell within your terms
of reference, but a recent letter to me from the Rt Hon
Rhodri Morgan AM said that you are particularly interested
in the accessibility of secondary legislation made by
the NAfW.
My job is to ensure that the information used by Citizens
Advice Bureaux to advise the public is accurate for
Wales. This can be difficult when it is necessary to
work out the effect of a new SI which amends existing
regulations which themselves have had several other
earlier amendments. At present neither the Welsh Assembly
Government nor HMSO publishes a consolidated version
of regulations. Their implicit attitude seems to be
that although they make the regulations, it is up to
the public to work out precisely what they mean by having
to read back through all the earlier regulations.
Regulations made by the National Assembly for Wales
cannot be regarded as accessible in such circumstances
where it is difficult to work out what effect they have
because of the need to take into account several earlier
versions of the regulations. Regulations are made in
the public interest and it seems to me that the public
should have easy and ready access to them without having
to either do a cut-and-paste job with a number of earlier
versions of the regulations or paying out money to commercial
organisations which do provide a consolidated version
of the regulations.
Some legal encyclopaedias do publish consolidated versions
of regulations, but the expense is prohibitive for charities
such as ours (or indeed for a concerned individual member
of the public). Also it does not seem to me to be right
that our legislators should expect individuals and charities
to have to spend considerable sums in order to be able
to easily work out how new regulations effect the public.
I am also doubtful as to whether the legal encyclopaedias
take proper account of purely Welsh regulations, which
is my main area of interest: I recently had a free trial
of an on-line service from one of the major commercial
organisations and found that it was not up-to-date for
regulations from the NAfW.
I am writing to you because the absence of readily
and cheaply available consolidated regulations makes
it difficult for charities and the public to be certain
of the current state of regulations and, in my opinion,
is not consistent with the spirit of open government.
It seems to me that this is an area in which the Welsh
Assembly Government could, and should, take a lead.
Tom Saul
Swyddog Gwybodaeth/Information Officer
Cyngor Ar Bopeth Cymru/Citizens Advice Cymru
029 2037 6755
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