Just a quick post to draw your attention to Wales First - a new group calling, like Cymru Yfory, for a “Yes” vote in the upcoming referendum on primary law-making powers for the Assembly.

Wales First has launched a blog and a Facebook group that has already attracted over 1,300 members!

Last week’s report on the Affordable Housing LCO by the Welsh Affairs Select Committee (WASC) was bound to cause controversy, suggesting as it did that the scope of the powers to be conferred on the Assembly should be limited to preclude it from being able to legislate to abolish tenants right to buy completely and that the LCO should not be allowed to proceed if this were not done.

Their logic for doing so might at first sight seem reasonable. The report states:

Proposed Orders should be drafted so as to transfer only those powers which are required and for which a clear purpose has been established. The same considerations apply to granting to the National Assembly for Wales the ability to abolish the Right to Buy/Right to Acquire. We recommend that the proposed Order be revised so that this power is specifically excluded from its scope.

What the Committee is saying is that since WAG has stated that it has no current intention to abolish the right to buy completely, but rather to just allow local authorities to apply for its temporary suspension in areas of extreme pressure, then the Assembly has no need for the power to abolish right to buy and so it should be excluded from the scope of the Order.

What such an approach amounts to however is to use the process of making LCOs as a way of determining the content of Assembly Measures - something which is constitutionally a matter for the Assembly alone. By limiting the scope of LCOs to those specific areas where the present Assembly Government currently plans to legislate, the Welsh Affairs Select Committee is confusing the competence to legislate over a particular Matter (which is the business of LCOs) with the policy objective that the Assmebly will legislate to achieve (which is the business of Measures). Future Assmebly Governments would find themselves powerless should they wish to pursue a different policy in this area, and would have to repeat the LCO process to get its hands on new powers.

The 2005 Government White Paper, Better Governence for Wales, specifically states that the aim of the post 2006 settlement is to eliminate the problems caused by the Assmebly having powers which ‘are too fragmented to enable the Assembly Government to implement its policies as effectively as it should.’ Yet, those problems are already being repeated, with many Matters in Schedule 5 already being too narrowly defined.

The Committe’s recommendations also goes contrary to the principles set out in Devolution Guidance Note 16, which sets out the principles that should be adhered to when conferring powers through LCOs. Paragraphs 20 and 21 of DGN 16 couldn’t be clearer. They state:

20. … UK Government Departments should maintain a clear distinction between the scope of legislative competence in the proposed Order and the detail of any Measures likely to be brought forward as a result of the Order being made. The contents of likely Assembly Measures are a matter for the National Assembly, and discussions should not focus on them.

21. Legislative competence conferred by the Order will be enduring. It should not therefore be the aim to make an Order which is drafted so tightly that it would only allow the delivery of the Welsh Assembly Government’s immediate objective. Orders will normally have sufficient flexibility to allow the delivery of other policy aims in the future within the subject area.

What the Welsh Affairs Select Committee wants to do runs completely contraty to these principles. If, as expected, the Assembly rejects the WASC’s recommendation and approves the LCO as it was originally proposed, then the decision on whether to proceed to lay the LCO before Parliament will lie with the Secretary of State for Wales. If a dangerous precedent is not to be set, we must hope that he will follow his governemnt’s own guidelines when reaching that decision and not be swayed by MPs desire to limit the Assembly’s scope for action now and in future.

The content of a leaflet distributed in some areas of Gwent by David Davies MP’s True Wales group gives a valuable insight into the likely tactics of opponents of devolution as a referendum comes closer. In a word: lies.

Untruth Number 1. The leaflet bears the headline ‘Exposed! £9,000,000 Independence Black Hole’, and then suggests that moving to ‘full law-making powers’ (which Wales would not have anyway, even after a referendum) as a step on the journey to indpendence. The referendum is not about independence, but about giving Wales the powers to make laws in the 20 policy fields where it already has some powers.

Untruth Number 2. The leaflet claims that the All Wales Convention is a publicly-funded Yes Campaign ‘tasked with travelling around Wales… to persuade you to give the politicians more powers.’ WAG and Sir Emyr Jones Parry, Chair of the Convention, have repeatedly stated that the job of the Convention is to listen to people around Wales and decide whether a move to primary law-making powers is neccessary. The Convention will emphatically not be campaigning for a Yes vote.

Untruth Number 3. True Wales claim that giving the Assembly more powers would lead to at least 20 more AMs. If only that were the case! The Assembly seriously needs more members in order to effectively carry out its functions, but there is no prospect of this happening anytime soon, whatever the result of the referendum.

What we would really like to hear from opponents of further powers is a persuasive argument for why the current arrengements are the best constitutional settlement for Wales. The fact that they show no sign of attempting to do, and are instead having to resort to scaremongering and misinformation, suggests that they can’t think one either.

Below is a press release isued today by Tomorrow’s Wales

Tomorrow’s Wales welcomes debate on Yes Campaign

Looking ahead to today’s debate on a Yes Campaign tabled by Peter Black AM, Tomorrow’s Wales – the movement established in 2004 to campaign for the implementation of the Richard Report – has welcomed the fact that the issue is being discussed by AMs, but says that there is no need to wait for a Yes Campaign before making the case for primary powers.

A spokesman for the movement said:

“While Part 4 of the government of Wales Act 2006 does not go as far as we would like, we firmly believe that it constitutes a vast improvement on the current settlement and are fully supportive of the One Wales government’s policy of holding a referendum by 2011.”

“If that referendum is to be successful, and if the misinformation that is already being spread by devolution’s enemies is not to win the day, we believe it is vital that supporters of a Welsh parliament with primary legislative powers start making the case for that at once. The question of when a Yes Campaign should be launched and how it should be constituted is one that needs to be discussed. However, the current absence of a formal Yes Campaign does not prevent those who support further devolution from putting forward the arguments for it, both to the Convention and the public at large, and we urge them to join Cymru Yfory in doing so.”

Former Secretary of State Peter Hain’s intervention in the debate on whether a referendum on further powers should be held before 2011 has attracted much comment in the blogosphere, including here and here.

His contribution is extraordinary on many counts, especially so his assertion that “without a significant shift in public opinion, it is very clear to me that a referendum before or in 2011 would be lost”. This is a strange conclusion to come to given that successive opinion polls and academic research have shown that a majority in favour of turning the Assembly into a proper law-making Parliament has existed since as far back as the turn of the century.

Mr Hain doesn’t believe a referendum should be held until the middle of the next decade, despite the fact that new evidence of how the Assembly’s currently limited and uneven powers preclude it from legislating in the best interests of our country comes to light all the time.

The most recent example came only last week when the Assembly passed the Learner Travel Wales Measure. While the Measure makes many important changes to the arrangements for the provision of school transport, the fact that it was unable to carry out the wishes of campaigners – supported by AMs of all four parties – to make seatbelts compulsory and ban the use of double-decker buses was a direct result of the limited system of devolution we currently have.

Such problems would not arise if primary law-making powers were devolved to the Assembly following a successful referendum, and it is difficult to see how anyone can come to a reasoned conclusion that the current settlement is the preferable one.

Peter Hain’s comments were made in a latter of evidence he has sent to the All-Wales Convention. Cymru Yfory will soon be sending our own evidence to Convention outlining why we think a move to primary law-making powers is both necessary and possible, and we’re sure many other organisations and individuals will be doing the same.