............and the wise man built his house upon the rock

Last Wednesday in the Assembly we had the debate on the new standing orders which will come into operation after the next Assembly Election in May.
Following the Government of Wales Act, the Asembly has to have a new set of standing orders and I have been our Group's representative on the committee which has had to draw them up.

The committee first met some nine months ago and has had a total of 30 meetings in order to complete this daunting task which involved much background reading and reference to other documents including the Government of Wales Acts, current Standing Orders of the Welsh Assembly, the Standing Orders of the Scottish Parliament, the Beecham Review and the Report of the Power Commission.

There was always a threat hanging over our heads
that failure to agree to settlement in drawing up these standing orders would result in the Secretary of State for Wales, Peter Hain having to write them for us !

This would have been incredibly embarassing for the Assembly as an Institution although I suspect that some Labour AM's would not have minded it too much !

Below is an extract from my speech to Plenary of last Wednesday , and as the Committee held most of its meetings in private, I hope this will give readers an idea of what it was all about !




As this Assembly might expect some of our meetings have been stormy where opinions expressed have been forthright and strong.

It would be true to say that there have been issues over which members were
prepared to 'die in a ditch' and not 'budge and inch on'; but there have also been compromises and give and take.

In essence, this Committee has been about negotiation and about 'brokering
a deal'. Let's not pretend that these standing orders are going to suit every member of this Assembly. Undoubtedly, this is a fact which will stick in the craw of many.

Will these standing orders work ? The proof of the pudding will of course be in the eating, and it will be for the next Assembly to decide whether or not they have have borne fruit and if necessary, change or alter things accordingly.

There are some good things to have come out of our work :

there will be a Finance Committee which will ensure full budgetary scrutiny. When we witnessed this working on our visit to Scotland it was impressive. There, every piece of legislation has to be accompanied by a financial memorandum scutinised by the Finance Committee in detail. Representatives of affected organisations are invited to give input to the Committee.

In Scotland, it was clear that the FC represented the mechanism for certain criteria being
put into effect and informing hard and difficult decisions.
Interestingly, although the Committee had a majority of executive members, scrutiny was extremely robust.

The new Petitions Committee will give members of the public an opportunity of another avenue to raise issues of importance when other kinds of lobbying have failed.
The very act of lodging a petition highlights issues and creates media interest. This
Committee provides a vehicle which will give hearings to both minority and campaign issues.

I can think of many issues affecting my own region of Mid & West Wales - the reconfiguration of NHS services proposals in particular, where such a Committee would have been very well used over the past year.
Petitioners will be informed of admissability of petitions and all decisions must be recorded.

In drawing up these new Standing Orders, we have had to work within the confines and parameters of the Government of Wales Act. In relation to this, separation of the Executive and Legislative has been desirable and has had cross party agreement, but I still think that many AM's have been unaware of the burden that this will place on the Assembly. The fact is that the role of backbench members will be to scrutinise and approve legislation, yet this Act gives more power to the Government compared with those who hold them to account.

That is why I insisted that the Independent Members should have appropriate representation on the Business Committee as well as a right to vote.

The GOWA has provided us with parameters within which to work, but in my opinion, it is a weak piece of legislation which has also acted as a constraint and that is disappointing.

An example of this would be that it is
ironic that since the GOWA came into being, the Scotland Secretary has now fully responded to the Arbuthnott Commission on voting arrangements for the Scottish Parliament.
The response says that candidates should not be prohibited from standing in a constituency and on the regional list at the same election. Thus, remarkably, when compared to Wales, there are no plans to introduce any change in this area to the Scottish Parliament.

The Arbuthnott Commission concludes in its report that dual candidacy is a common and
accepted feature of mixed member proportional systems across the world; indeed, some candidates are expressly required to stand in both contests. It says it is important for democracy.

It is extremely sad to note that this would therefore seem to indicate that the parameters whithin which we had had to draw up our Standing Orders have been fundamentally flawed from the outset.

"Negotiating" means working around difficulties and blockages and I believe that this Committee has done that.
I hope that we have drawn up Standing Orders which will be simple and accessible to members of the public.
Unfortunately, I cannot predict how effective they will be !



Readers of this post will draw their own conclusions, but my view is clear.............

If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing properly. Unfortunately, the Government of Wales Act did not give us the wherewithal to achieve that.

A proper Parliament for Wales - which is
what I want (but not what Peter Hain wants), is worthy of better foundation building.