APPENDIX T
WELSH AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
Memorandum to the Liaison Committee
1. This Memorandum is our second Annual Report,
consisting of an update on the work of the Committee since the
publication of our first Annual Report (First Special Report of
2000-01, The Work of the Committee Since Devolution (HC
81)) in December 2000.
The Committee's work programme in 2001
2. The year began with the publication on 15
January of the Committee's Third Report of Session 1999-2000,
Social Exclusion in Wales (HC 365). We held a very
successful press conference at the Dusty Forge Community Centre
in Ely, Cardiff, which was attended by the Secretary of State
and the First Minister, among others. The Report was the subject
of a debate in the House on 5 February 2001, on a Motion tabled
by Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales on an Opposition Day.
3. The Committee's first inquiry of the 2000-01
Session, Wales in the World: the role of the UK Government
in promoting Wales abroad (First Report, Session 2000-01,
HC 38) ran from October 2000 to March 2001. We held six session
of oral evidence, three of which were in Wales. The inquiry focused
on the Government's work to promote Wales in three broad areas:
trade and investment; tourism; and culture, language and sport.
This was an opportunity for the Committee to examine an area which
is almost entirely reserved, although the Report did contain a
number of recommendations on matters which fall largely within
the responsibilities of the National Assembly. The Assembly responded
to our recommendations, for which we are grateful (Second Special
Report, Session 2001-02, HC 311).
4. The Report concentrated heavily on the tourist
industry in Wales and it became apparent as the publication date
approached that the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Wales
was having a major adverse impact on the industry. We travelled
to North Wales to re-visit some of the people involved in the
tourist industry to whom we had spoken during the course of the
inquiry. We held a public press conference at Port Meirion to
launch the Report, at which we also canvassed views on the handling
of the foot and mouth crisis. Following these meetings, we wrote
to the Secretary of State for Wales to relay to him some of the
concerns we had heard.
5. During the remainder of the Parliament,
we pursued a number of issues through smaller inquiries. We took
evidence on job losses in the steel industry in Wales from
the Chairman and acting Chief Executive of Corus Group plc on
two occasions, focusing on the company's plans to scale down its
operations in Wales, which involved the closure of several steelworks,
or parts of steelworks. We took evidence from the Post Office
about Post Office closures in Wales; this also followed
on from the recommendations we made in Social Exclusion in
Wales about the importance of tackling financial exclusion
and the role of the proposed Universal Bank (ibid, paras.
83 & 84). We also visited two Young Offenders Institutions
in England—Ashfield Prison and Young Offender Institution,
Pucklechurch, and Eastwood Park Prison, Young Offenders Institution
and Remand Centre, Falfield—to examine the situation of
young offenders from Wales who were serving their sentences in
England. We produced a short Report on the subject, Welsh
Young Offenders Held Outside Wales: Interim Report and Proposals
for Further Inquiry (Second Report, Session 2000-01, HC
511). This is a subject to which we hope to return during the
present Session, possibly in the context of a wider inquiry into
children and young people in Wales.
6. In December, we took evidence on farming
and food prices in Wales (Minutes of Evidence taken before
the Welsh Affairs Committee on 4 & 11 December 2001, HC 427).
This was a follow-up to our Second Report of 1997-98, The Present
Crisis in the Welsh Livestock Industry (HC 447), in which
we recommended that the Office of Fair Trading should examine
the role of the supermarkets in the food chain and the retail
pricing of meat (ibid, para. 40). The Competition Commission
has recently completed a Report on Supermarkets (Cm 4842),
which went some way to meeting this recommendation and we took
evidence from them, as well as from organisations representing
farmers on a number of issues relating to livestock farming, meat
pricing, the role of farmers and supermarkets in the food chain
and farming in Wales under a devolved agricultural policy.
7. On 18 December, we took evidence on the
Children's Society in Wales, following their decision to close
their operations in the country. We were joined beforehand for
informal consideration of the possible lines of questioning by
Ann Jones AM, Chair of the Assembly's North Wales Regional Committee
and a member of the Health and Social Services Committee, who
has taken a close interest in this subject. We had invited members
of two Committees: Health & Social Services and Equality of
Opportunity, including the Assembly Minister for Health and Social
Services. We found this to be a very productive exercise which
provides another model for methods of joint working with the Assembly
(see The Work of the Committee Since Devolution, para.
30).
Relations with the Wales Office
Departmental Report
8. After the election, we took evidence from
the Secretary of State and Wales Office officials on the Wales
Office Departmental Report and other Departmental Matters
(Minutes of Evidence taken before the Welsh Affairs Committee
on 23 October 2001, HC 298). Although this was an interesting
session, which shed some light on the operation of the Wales Office,
we are not convinced that the small size of the Office—44
staff, with running costs of around £2.3 million—justifies
a full-scale evidence session on the Departmental Report each
year. As the Secretary of State pointed out during the meeting,
his is essentially a "political office" with few executive
functions. We will consider next year whether there is a better
way to approach the scrutiny of the Wales Office's performance
and budget, perhaps by means of written evidence alone.
Government Responses to Reports
9. We commented in our first report to the
Liaison Committee that the Government was slow in producing responses
to our reports; only one of seven responses published in the 1999-2000
Session was on time and one was more than six months late. We
noted that the need to co-ordinate responses with the Assembly
and the small size of the Wales Office staff had both contributed
to these delays and expressed our hope that there would be some
improvement in the future. We have received two Government responses
since then: on Social Exclusion in Wales (Second Special
Report of Session 2000-01, HC 378) and Wales in the World (First
Special Report of Session 2001-02, HC 270). Whereas the first
of these was only one week late, the response to Wales in the
World arrived six and a half months after the Report was published.
The Secretary of State wrote to the Chairman to apologise for
his failure to provide a response on time and we subsequently
raised it with him in the oral evidence session on the Departmental
Annual Report (ibid, QQ. 28-30). It appears that the Wales
Office initially believed, mistakenly, that a response would not
be required following the election, and that the comparatively
small size of the Department also contributed to the delay. The
Secretary of State has assured us that this will not happen again.
Relations with the National Assembly for Wales
10. We have continued to enjoy good relations
with the National Assembly for Wales. We held meetings with the
Assembly's Panel of Committee Chairs on 15 January and 29 November,
at which we discussed the future work programme of the Committee
and how it could be co-ordinated with the work of the Assembly
and its committees. We have also discussed other matters of mutual
interest, such as how we handle recommendations on matters falling
within the Assembly's responsibilities and access arrangements
for AMs at the Palace of Westminster. We are grateful to the Presiding
Officer for his efforts to make us feel welcome at Cardiff Bay
by allowing us to use our Palace of Westminster passes to gain
access to the building; we regret that it has not yet been possible
to establish reciprocal arrangements for AMs at Westminster.
11. On 28 and 29 November we held a series
of meetings with individual Committees of the National Assembly:
- · we gave evidence to the Assembly's
Committee on Equality of Opportunity on our Report on Social
Exclusion in Wales;
- · the Chair and three other members
of the Environment, Transport and Planning Committee gave
evidence to us on the outcome of their consultation exercise on
public transport in Wales, in connection with our inquiry into
transport in Wales; and
- · we held an informal meeting with the
Agriculture and Rural Development Committee to discuss
three areas where the work of our two committees had the potential
to overlap (Objective 1, broadband cabling and transport).
This was the first time that representatives of a
NAW Committee had given evidence to us and the first time we had
given evidence to a Committee of the Assembly. All three meetings
were very productive and, although we will continue to look for
more co-operative models of joint working with Assembly committees,
we believe that the practice of them appearing as witnesses before
us and vice versa is one way forward.
12. The National Assembly has also provided
us with written evidence to our inquiry into Transport in Wales
and a response to our Report on Wales in the World. As
we noted in our first Annual Report, we are always happy to receive
a response from the Assembly to our Reports, either as part of
a Government response or as a separate document, but we are not
in a position require them to provide one. We have also received
informal briefings from Assembly officials on broadband cabling
(including officials from the Welsh Development Agency) and Objective
1 funding (including officials from the Welsh European Funding
Office). We are most grateful to them and to the First Minister
for giving his permission for these briefings to take place.
Legislative scrutiny
13. We have taken note of the recommendations
of the Liaison Committee concerning pre-legislative scrutiny in
Shifting the Balance (First Report of the Liaison Committee,
Session 1999-2000 (HC 300), paras. 61-63), as well as other recent
developments in this area such as the Report of the Hansard Society's
Commission on the Scrutiny Role of Parliament and the Leader of
the House's recent Memorandum to the Modernisation Committee (HC
440, Session 2001-02, paras. 16-25). The Welsh Affairs Committee
is in a peculiar position with respect to draft legislation, especially
bills which extend to Wales only or England and Wales bills with
particular significance in Wales—because they make different
provision for Wales and England, for example, because they impinge
on the powers of the Assembly, or because the circumstances in
Wales mean that the impact of the legislation in practice will
be different from that in England. When such a bill is published
in draft, it might reasonably be assumed that one or more of the
Assembly's committees will examine it. This is the intention with
the draft NHS (Wales) Bill which the Government plans to publish
this Session, for example. When a bill which extends to, but has
no particular special significance for, Wales is published, it
falls in the first instance to the relevant departmental select
committee to consider it.
14. Nonetheless, we believe that we have an
important role to play in considering primary legislation as it
relates to Wales. Before the general election we commissioned
a memorandum of evidence from the Government on this subject and
it is something to which we hope to return during the course of
this Session. It may be that, if we are to engage in systematic
examination of bills which relate to Wales, we will need additional
resources to do so. We also hope to find time to examine any draft
legislation which relates to Wales, provided that this will not
involve simply duplicating work which is already being done by
the Assembly or by another departmental select committee.
Martyn Jones
Chairman of the Welsh Affairs Committee
15 January 2002
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