Examination of Witnesses (Questions 86-99)
RT HON
PAUL MURPHY
MP AND ALAN
COGBILL
29 JANUARY 2008
Chairman: Secretary of State and Mr Cogbill,
welcome. When you and I were together towards the end of last
week I was not expecting to be pressing you in this new capacity,
nor you to be sitting there! On one of your very first outings
we welcome you very much. I think we have a couple of interests
to mention.
Julie Morgan: I am married to the First
Minister in Wales.
Jessica Morden: I am Paul's PPS and so
will be remaining silent!
Q86 Chairman: You have found yourself
suddenly in the job of Secretary of State for Wales. Is there
a job?
Mr Murphy: First of all, Chairman,
and members of the Committee, I am delighted to be here. If you
were shocked about what happened last week then you can imagine
what I must have felt like! It is a great pleasure to be back
in a job that I did from 1999 to 2002. It is a considerable pleasure
to come before this Committee. You and I have talked over the
years about how significant a Committee this is and this is the
first time that I have had the opportunity to contribute towards
your deliberations. Yes, there is a job. It is a question, incidentally,
that I was asked constantly in 1999 all the way to 2002. The fact
that there was a job then and there is a job now and there has
been a job in between indicates yes there is. I think it is an
integral part of the devolution settlement. When people voted
for devolution in 1997 they voted for the package, which included
the position of the Secretary of State for Wales, enshrined as
it is, as few others are, in legislation by name. In addition
to that, the Wales Office has been an integral part of the settlement
too. I think the first important point to make is that when people
voted for devolution they did not vote for separation, they voted
for devolution within the United Kingdom and in Wales they only
just voted for it at all in 1997 so they saw it as part of the
settlement. I think the chief role of the Secretary of State post-devolution
is in a sense a personal one, it is about relationships, it is
about ensuring that the devolution settlement develops, but also
that it is as smooth as it possibly could be between Cardiff and
London. It is representing Welsh interests within the Cabinet
of the United Kingdom Government, it is representing Wales and
its interests throughout all the Whitehall departments, but it
is also representing the United Kingdom Government in Wales too.
A lot of the job that I did when I held the position before and
I am sure I will do as well now is to ensure that the policies
of the United Kingdom Government are explained in Wales and it
is also a symbol of the partnership between ourselves and the
Welsh Assembly. I am convinced that the awareness of Welsh matters
in Whitehall is the job of the Welsh Secretary. It also means
that we give proper scrutiny through the Wales Office to legislation
which affects Wales, but we will probably come on to that in future.
I am convinced that the job is a part of the settlement and is
an important part of it.
Q87 Chairman: This job was done as
a part-time activity by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
until last Thursday. Does your appointment to it in a different
way, with sole responsibility, mean that the job is now going
to change?
Mr Murphy: The job has changed
since the second Government of Wales Act anyway in that the methods
of Orders in Council, LCOs as they are termed, which will incrementally
transfer power to the National Assembly, mean that there is a
different type of role for the Secretary of State compared to
when I was in the job so far as the legislation is concerned.
Your question revolves more around times rather than the functions
of the job. Peter Hain was a very assiduous minister, very hard
working. He held my job initially on its own, but at that stage
I believe he was dealing with European matters too. He then held
a number of Cabinet posts together with the post of Secretary
of State for Wales and undoubtedly it was a very hard job because
of having to do all that. In my own case, I am not doing this
job as a standalone because the Prime Minister has asked me to
do other things. Perhaps I can take this opportunity to outline
it to the Committee so your question is answered more fully. In
addition to the job of Secretary of State for Wales I have now
been appointed the Minister for Digital Inclusion, which involves
a lot of cross-departmental work, and in addition to that I have
been asked to chair the Cabinet committee on data security, which
is something that of course is of enormous interest to Members
of Parliament after what happened before Christmas.
Q88 Chairman: This Committee has
reported on it recently.
Mr Murphy: I shall look forward
to reading the report. In addition to that, I have to chair the
Cabinet Committee on Local Government and the Regions, which is
very interesting in a comparative sense, to look at how regional
activities and possible government might occur in England. It
is still a job which is important, but you can combine, as the
Prime Minister has asked me to do, other jobs with it within Government.
Q89 Chairman: Mr Cogbill, you are
described as Director of the Wales Office but of course you are
part of the Ministry of Justice. What does that mean in practice
about the role and status and your relationship with the rest
of the Ministry of Justice?
Alan Cogbill: I suppose the first
thing to say is that I am accountable exclusively to the Secretary
of State for Wales in all matters which ministers will take an
interest in. What it means is that the Wales Office as an associated
office of the Ministry of Justice comes within a much bigger administrative
pool, which means that, for example, we can look more broadly
at bringing people into the Wales Office and we can look to the
Ministry of Justice for all kinds of corporate services which
it would be very difficult to sustain for an office of fewer than
60 people, i.e. the IT, financial systems and that kind of thing.
Q90 Chairman: What are your current
staff numbers and budgeting in broad terms, so we can understand?
Alan Cogbill: In broad terms,
we have currently 55 people. We are looking to recruit just a
couple more at the moment.
Q91 Chairman: So almost exactly the
same size as the Scotland Office?
Alan Cogbill: Yes, and the spend
is about 5.5 million a year.
Q92 Chairman: Do you have many dealings
with the Scotland Office part of the Ministry of Justice on matters
of common interest? Do you ever find yourselves engaged in discussions
with them?
Alan Cogbill: Yes, quite a bit.
Since last year the Ministry of Justice has had a new Director
General looking at handling devolution and strategy across all
the devolved countries of the UK and we have periodic meetings
which involve both the head of the Scotland Office and me so that
we can see how developments are running in the different countries,
and before that we used to come together on a fairly frequent
basis, more or less formal basis, just to share the problems,
see the trends and see if there were any common factors that we
wanted to have in mind.
Q93 Chairman: Do you make common
cause?
Alan Cogbill: Well, yes, to this
extent. I have as my main building a listed heritage building,
which is a bit of a headache in some respects. The maintenance
and refurbishment of that is a little project for which, as it
happens, I have been able to arrange for some people in the Scotland
Office to help us. They happen to have someone who has the necessary
skills and we can use that, and those kind of working arrangements
happen quite a lot.
Q94 Julie Morgan: My questions are
to the Secretary of State. You mentioned the changes to the jobs
since the 2006 Act, and one of the Wales Office's stated main
objectives is to ensure that the changes to the constitutional
settlement which flow from the Government of Wales Act are implemented
and operate smoothly. How do you propose to do that?
Mr Murphy: I think it is back
to relationships again in the first instance. I think one of the
important jobs of a Secretary of State is to be able to have a
good relationship, we are necessarily a part of them, because,
as you know, we are in coalition in Wales at the moment, but a
good relationship in Wales with all ministers in the Assembly
Government in dealing with these new proposals of how we deal
with the transfer of powers incrementally. The first thing to
do is to ensure that when the Welsh Assembly Government decides
to ask for a transfer of functions that there is a good ability
to be able to talk about those things between ministers here in
London and ministers in Cardiff. Secondly, I think, the process
itself is now beginning to bed in. It had a bit of a bumpy start,
but all processes do. It is not the easiest process to understand,
but I think it has really got going over the last number of months.
I think it is working rather smoothly in terms of relationships
between the ministers, in terms of the Welsh Select Committee,
which has a responsibility to give prelegislative scrutiny to
these new orders, to its equivalent committee in Cardiff. What
we have not tested yet, of course, is how the matters will be
debated here in the House of Commons and the House of Lords, because
it has not yet come to that stage, but I think that the initial
teething troubles that were experienced on that process of devolving
these different functions are gone and I think things have improved
quite a lot on that.
Q95 Julie Morgan: So you are confident
that this can go forward smoothly?
Mr Murphy: I have no doubt that
the process will be one that people will get used to and that
it will be smooth. It is also a question, of course, of dealing
with the other government departments in Whitehall, some of whom,
of course, were not in the past used to dealing with a devolved
administration. I think that is getting much, much better than
it used to be when I was a minister in the Wales Office before.
People are understanding the role of devolved administrations
differently, they understand it is a very important role that
they have, and in our case, of course, because English and Welsh
matters are more linked than Scottish and English are for all
sorts of reasons, it is important that those relationships do
flourish, and that again is part of my job. When Mr Beith asked
me about what my role is, it is also a role in liaising with other
Cabinet ministers in the United Kingdom Government on matters
such as the ones you have just described: handling the process
of transfer, for example, is one of them.
Q96 Julie Morgan: You have only been
in the job a few days, I think, but has it struck you as being
different from when you were in the job the last time?
Mr Murphy: Yes, it is different,
first of all, in the sense that the processes are different. When
I was dealing with legislation from 1999 to 2002 there were perhaps
one or two, at the most, Welsh bills going through the legislative
process in Parliament. They would be bid for by the Welsh Assembly
Government through me, through the system, and that is all we
would deal with, except perhaps some parts of bills which had
Welsh matters in them as well. Now it is very different. It has
resulted in the second Government of Wales Act. The other thing,
of course, is that we have a different political landscape in
Wales than we did when I was Secretary of State before, obviously,
with the advent of coalition politics that we have now got in
Cardiff, and so that clearly is different as well. People have
not changed an awful lot; most of the main players are the same.
Wales is a relatively small place and I think, in many ways, one
of the great advantages of devolution has been the accessibility
of governmentpeople know each other in a different waysomething
I experienced when I was the Northern Ireland Minister well. I
think that that is beneficial and it means that you can talk to
people in perhaps a different way than in an English context because
England is so very big.
Q97 Julie Morgan: We have just seen
the Secretary of State for Scotland, Des Browne. How do you think
your relationship with the Welsh Assembly Government and the Welsh
Assembly would be different than the relationship in the Scottish
context?
Mr Murphy: I think the roles were
different anyway, as it were, from the beginning. The perception
of people in Scotland about devolution has always been different,
but in Wales there was a much smaller majority. In the referendum
in Scotland for devolution, it had its own Parliament in the past,
it has got a separate legal and judicial system, a different educational
system, different police forces and so it is a different place
altogether, and the relationship between a First Minister in Scotland
and then in Wales is different for those reasons alone. I also
think there is a question of size. Scotland is bigger and it has
more politicians. I do not think there are really good comparisons
to be made between the two places, because these are different
devolution settlements, just in the same as Northern Ireland.
We have that type of devolution, asymmetrical devolution, in this
country, and I think actually we benefit from it, and there is
no reason, in my personal view, for example, why eventually we
cannot have regional government in England which, like in Spain,
is different from place to place.
Q98 Dr Whitehead: Do you have a sense
of the management of devolution from Whitehall in addition to
the bilateral arrangements you have described between Whitehall
and Wales? Is there a strategic overview of devolution which is
on-going as a result of the process and do you have a role in
this, or will perhaps you have a role in this in the future?
Mr Murphy: There would be trouble
if I did not. I think certainly that the change I have seen since
I have come back is that from an official's point of view particularly,
of course within the Ministry of Justice there has been established
this new unit, so to speak, which deals with the overall policy
of management of devolution, which I think is a good thing because
it gives an extra reason why it is that Whitehall departments
must now understand devolution generally and understand the differences
between Scottish, Welsh and, indeed, Northern Ireland devolution,
and I think that is a good development. I do not think it can
ever replace the bilateral arrangements, though. Because I am
a Welshman representing a Welsh seat, I go home to my constituency
and I am going home to the area that I am responsible for in government
here in Westminster, and also (the point I made to Mrs Morgan
just now when we were talking about the need for personal relationships
between politicians) to soothe things through. In a way all my
ministerial life for the last nearly nine years now, on and off,
has been about that type of politics, about dealing with people
personally to overcome difficult areas and problems that we might
have, and I think that is as much applicable to Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland in different ways. So, as important as the
central unit is in the MoJ, and I do think it is very important
and I will be having meetings with the relevant officials over
the next few days, it will not replace, nor can it replace, the
political bilateral relations which the Wales Office, Scotland
Office and Northern Ireland Office actually represent.
Q99 Dr Whitehead: Do you think the
Secretary to the MoJ and perhaps the Cabinet Office, which also
has a role in this, and, of course, the individual offices for
Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland, do have, or should have,
a collective view of reviewing how the machinery of devolution
works and whether it works well or less well apart from the particular
devolved administrations and governments that it is dealing with?
Is there, in your view, as it were, a Whitehall barometer of success
of devolution which needs to be managed and do you think, perhaps,
that might be managed in one centre rather than the different
centres there are at present altogether?
Mr Murphy: It depends what you
mean by the success of devolution, I think. In terms of the machinery
of government and how the British Government deals with the devolved
administration, I think there is a very important need constantly
to monitor that. There is no problem at all with that. I think
when it comes down to assessing the political advantages and disadvantages
of devolution, they are essentially political questions and people
have different views, obviously, about that, very diverging views,
but devolution is also about allowing the devolved administrations
to get on with governing Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland
and sometimes it is quite difficult to let go, I guess, over the
years, if you have been dealing with government. It is particularly
difficult for members of Parliament to understand that; it is
difficult for me. I have been a member of Parliament for 21 years
and certainly for the first half of that it was the old Welsh
Office system where you could go to the House of Commons, ask
the Welsh Secretary questions, have an input into the health and
education service and all the rest of it, and that has changed
and we have to accept that. In the same way, incidentally, I think
that colleagues in the Assembly and in the Scottish Parliament
have to accept that these, too, as MPs, still have a role in the
governance of Wales. But that is a political question which, I
think, in a sense, is different from the point that you were making,
which is the machinery of dealing with devolved administrations
constantly needs looking at because it is changing all the timethe
landscape is changing. I think, certainly initially, in the late
1990s Whitehall was not really ready for devolution in the way
that it should have been and there was sometimes a constant battle
with Whitehall departments to get them to understand the significance
of what was happening in Cardiff and Edinburgh and, indeed, to
understand and appreciate that sometimes, even in the same party,
that they might be going down different roads. I think that has
changed a lot and, I suppose, in answer to the question you asked
about what has changed the last few years, the awareness within
government departments about that still needs attention but it
is different from what it used to be.
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