Submission of Evidence to the Richard Commission by Kirsty Williams AM, Chair, Health and Social Services Committee

The Committee’s report recommending a statutory Independent Children’s Commissioner for Wales was published in 2000 with all-party support in the National Assembly. The need for a Children’s Commissioner and primary legislation was not accepted initially by the UK Government. The fact that we succeeded in having interim provisions incorporated into the Care Standards Act 2000, followed by the Children’s Commissioner for Wales Act 2001, is due to efforts of Jane Hutt, the Assembly Minister, and the Secretary of State for Wales.

Paragraph 29 of the Committee’s report recommended that the Commissioner’s powers should extend to policy and services affecting children in Wales, but for which responsibility had not been devolved. The UK government did not agree to this, although there was a concession that the Commissioner could make representations to the National Assembly on non-devolved matters. This followed the spirit of s33 of the Government of Wales Act.

In December 1999 the Committee decided to examine the case for abolishing charges for eye tests, an initiative that had been included in the election manifestos of Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrat Party. Committee members from these parties would have wished to pursue this, or at least to have been able to consider extending free eye tests to a wider range of categories than at present.

The Committee’s work was hampered by lack of clarity about the statutory powers on entitlement to free eye tests (S38 of the NHS Act 1997). At the time the Committee did not have access to legal advice independent of the Office of the Counsel General. This has since been addressed by the appointment of the Counsel to the Committees.

Legal advice was that it was not possible to abolish charges for eye tests under current primary legislation and so the Assembly did not have the powers to consider the issue.

The UK Government issued the draft Mental Health Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny in June this year. The Committee considered the draft at a special meeting in September, and took evidence from a number of interested professional and statutory bodies and voluntary organisations. The majority of the Committee concluded that while there was a need to update current legislation to reflect human rights law and modern clinical and care practice, the draft bill would not achieve that.

The majority of the Committee also felt that provisions to deal with the small number of people with a serious personality disorder should not be included in a mental health bill. Separate legislation should be drawn up to protect them and society.

Although there were some good points in the draft bill, the evidence presented to the Committee was almost exclusively opposed to it. The opposition came from service users, their families and carers, voluntary organisations, mental health professionals and the legal profession in Wales. Their objections were on the grounds that the key provisions of the bill conflicted with the aims of the Mental Health Strategy and the National Service Framework in Wales. These have been developed in consultation with the stakeholders and are based on agreed principles of empowerment, equity of access and service development. The draft bill would have undermined this approach.

Members of the three minority parties took the view that the draft bill should be withdrawn, but that if there was a will for it to proceed in England, Parliamentary time should be sought for a separate bill in Wales. We now know that the bill has not been included specifically in the Government’s legislation programme for the current session of Parliament.

The Committee’s experience with this bill demonstrates the value of pre-legislative consultation, but also how Whitehall can still drive policy, without adequate, early consultation with the National Assembly. Much abortive work could have been avoided if the Assembly, as opposed to the Assembly Government, had been consulted at an earlier stage in developing the proposals.

There are too few Assembly Members to allow committees to meet on a weekly basis to ensure that both the policy making and scrutiny roles are given adequate time. At present many members are on more than one subject committee, which makes it impossible to timetable more frequent meetings.