Draft House of Lords Reform Bill - Draft House of Lords Reform Bill Joint Committee Contents



National Assembly for Wales

Letter from Rosemary Butler AM, Presiding in response to Lord Richards letter of 17 January 2012:

I am grateful to you for your invitation to express, on behalf of the Assembly, any views about the proposals set out in the draft Bill. You will appreciate, of course, that the tight timetable referred to in your letter means that it has not been possible for me to carry out the kind of soundings that I would normally have wished to carry out, or to refer the issue to one of the committees of the Assembly for inquiry and report, which would have been the ideal.

I am sure that your Committee will also appreciate that my views are solely directed at the possible impact of the bill on the Assembly as an Institution. The political parties represented in the Assembly will have their own views on the proposals generally. I cannot, as Presiding Officer, speak for them.

My views are based on the continuing importance, under current constitutional arrangements, of the working relationship between the House of Lords, as one of the two houses of Parliament, and the Assembly.

Even where Bills considered by Parliament do not deal directly with devolved subjects, they almost always contain provisions whose impact on Wales, including indirect impact on devolved subjects, are of significant interest to Assembly Members.

The coming into force of Part 4 of the Government of Wales Act 2006, extending to the Assembly legislative competence in relation to the whole of the devolved fields of government, is relatively recent. It is therefore unclear to what extent Westminster will still be legislating, with the agreement of the Assembly, on devolved matters. But based on the Scottish experience there is bound to be a significant volume of such legislation, with the result that the House of Lords will continue to be scrutinising provisions on some matters relating to Wales that would normally be the subject of Assembly legislation.

Subordinate legislation is sometimes made jointly by United Kingdom Ministers and Welsh Ministers and may be subject to parallel scrutiny by the Assembly and by Parliament, through the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

Section 109 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 provides a mechanism by which the extent of the legislative competence of the Assembly may be amended by Orders in Council which require the approval of both houses of Parliament.

You will also be aware that the Secretary of State for Wales has established a Commission, chaired by Paul Silk, to consider issues to do with the financial arrangements for devolved government in Wales as well, in due course, as more general issues relating to the powers of the Assembly and the Welsh Government. It seems very likely that there will therefore be the need, at some stage, to further amend the Government of Wales Act 2006 to give effect to recommendations arising out of that process.

All these factors demonstrate that under current constitutional arrangements the good governance of Wales involves a continuing partnership between the Assembly and the House of Lords which, in turn, demands that House of Lords be constituted in a way that acknowledges the particular needs of Wales.

Although the current constitution of the Lords does not do so in a systematic way, there is nevertheless an obvious pool of knowledge of, and expertise in, the affairs of the Assembly amongst the current membership of the House of Lords. One current Assembly Member, Lord Elis-Thomas and three former Assembly Members, Lord German, Lord Wigley and Baroness Randerson, sit in the Lords and you, yourself, of course, have huge knowledge of these matters through your chairmanship of the Commission whose recommendations led to the 2006 Act under which we now operate.

Whilst the preponderance of the members of the House would, under the proposed reforms, be directly elected, so that a proportionate level of representation from Wales would automatically be achieved, the same would not necessarily be true of other classes of members. The 12 Lords Spiritual would, by definition, be drawn exclusively from England. In theory, the same could also be true in relation to the 60 appointed members.

If an effective partnership between the Assembly and the House of Lords is to be ensured then there is a strong case for seeking to ensure an appropriate level of Welsh representation amongst all classes of membership of the House of Lords. This would require the process for appointing members including, perhaps, the membership of the proposed House of Lords Appointments Commission, to have regard to the needs of Wales.

How this aim might be achieved is a matter which the Committee may wish to consider. It would be going beyond my remit to put forward any detailed suggestions. But I believe that there are precedents for this kind of safeguard, for example in paragraph 10(4) of Schedule 12 to the Constitutional Reform Act 2005, in relation to membership of the Judicial Appointments Commission, whose selection panel:

"must select persons for appointment as lay members (including the chairman) with a view to securing, so far as practicable, that the persons so appointed include at any time at least one who appears to the panel to have special knowledge of Wales."

May I thank you once again for the opportunity to express a view on behalf of the Assembly in relation to the work of the Committee. I look forward with interest to reading the Committee's report in due course.

25 January 2012


 
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