The
National Assembly for Wales ( ) is a devolved assembly with power to make legislation in
Wales
. The Assembly comprises 60 members, who are
known as
Assembly Member,
or AMs ( ). Members are elected for four year terms under an
additional
members system, where forty AMs represent geographical
constituencies elected by the
plurality system, and twenty AMs
from
five electoral regions using the
d'Hondt method of
proportional
representation.
Following a
referendum in
1997, the Assembly was created by the
Government of Wales Act 1998.
Most of the powers of the
Welsh Office
and
Secretary of State for
Wales were transferred to the Assembly. When first created, the
Assembly had no powers to initiate
primary legislation.
However, following the
passing of the Government
of Wales Act 2006, the Assembly now has powers to legislate in
some areas through Assembly
Measures, though still subject to the veto of the Secretary of State or Parliament
.
History
Road to the Assembly
Official logo of the National
Assembly
The establishment of the
Welsh Office
in 1964 effectively created the basis for the territorial
governance of Wales. The
Royal
Commission on the Constitution (the Kilbrandon Commission) was
set up in 1969 by
Harold Wilson's
Labour Government to investigate the possibility of devolution for
Scotland and Wales. Its recommendations formed the basis of the
1974
White Paper Democracy and
Devolution: proposals for Scotland and Wales, which proposed
the creation of a Welsh Assembly. However, voters rejected the
proposals by a majority of four to one in a
referendum held in 1979.
After the
1997
general election, the new Labour Government argued that an
Assembly would be more democratically accountable than the
Welsh Office.
For eleven years prior to 1997 Wales had
been represented in the UK
cabinet by a Secretary
of State who did not represent a Welsh constituency at Westminster
.A second referendum was held on 18 September
1997 in which voters approved the creation of the National Assembly
for Wales by a majority of just 6,712 votes.
The
following year the Government of Wales Act was
passed by Parliament
, establishing the Assembly.
In July 2002, the Welsh Assembly Government established an independent commission, with Lord Richard (former leader of the House of Lords
) as chair, to review the powers and electoral arrangements of the National Assembly in order to ensure that it is able to operate in the best interests of the people of Wales. The Richard Commission reported in March 2004. It recommended that the National Assembly should have powers to legislate in certain areas, whilst others would remain the preserve of Westminster. It also recommended changing the electoral system to the single transferable vote (STV) which would produce greater proportionality.
In response the UK Government, in its
Better Governance for
Wales White Paper, published on 15 June 2005, proposed a more
permissive law-making system for the Welsh Assembly based on the
use of Parliamentary Orders in Council. In so doing, the Government
rejected many of the cross party Richard Commission's
recommendations. This has attracted criticism from opposition
parties and others.
Recent polls suggest that a majority of the Welsh support full
legislative powers. over 80% of people in Wales want a new
parliament according to a new survey published in 2008 and Assembly
members are willing to extend further powers to Cardiff Bay from
Westminster.
Enhanced powers: The Government of Wales Act 2006
The
Government of Wales Act
2006 received
Royal Assent on 25
July 2006.
It confers on the Assembly legislative powers
similar to other devolved legislatures
through the ability to pass Assembly
Measures, although legislative competence
requests will be subject to the veto of the Secretary of State for Wales,
House of
Commons
or House of
Lords.
The debating chamber in the
Senedd
The Act reforms the assembly to a parliamentary-type structure,
establishing the
Assembly
Government as an entity separate from, but accountable to the
National Assembly. It enables the Assembly to legislate within its
devolved fields.
The Act also reforms the Assembly's electoral system. It prevents
individuals from standing as candidates in both constituency and
regional seats. This aspect of the act was subject to a great deal
of criticism, most notably from the
Electoral
Commission.
The Act has been heavily criticised.
Plaid
Cymru, the Official Opposition in the National Assembly from
1999 - 2007, attacked it for not delivering a fully-fledged
Parliament. Many commentators have also criticised the Labour
Party's allegedly partisan attempt to alter the electoral system.
By preventing regional Assembly Members from standing in
constituency seats the party has been accused of changing the rules
to protect constituency representatives. Labour had 29 members in
the Assembly at the time, all of whom held constituency
seats.
The changes to the Assembly's powers were commenced on 4 May 2007,
after the
election.
Buildings
Senedd
The
debating chamber in Cardiff
Bay
, the Senedd
(English:Senate), was designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership and built by
Taylor Woodrow, with environmental
and MEP design by BDSP Partnership. It uses traditional
Welsh materials such as slate and
Welsh
Oak in its construction, and the design is based around the
concepts of openness and transparency. The Timber ceiling and
centre funnel, manufactured and installed by BCL Timber Projects
(sub-contracted by Taylor Woodrow) is made from Canadian sourced
Western Red Cedar.
The Senedd houses the debating chamber ( ) and Committee Rooms. It
was officially opened by Queen
Elizabeth II on
St. David's Day, 1 March 2006.
The Senedd, home to the National
Assembly for Wales
The Senedd is designed to be environmentally friendly: it uses an
Earth Heat Exchange system for heating; rainwater is collected from
the roof and used for flushing toilets and cleaning windows, and
the roof features a wind cowl which funnels natural light and air
into the debating chamber below.
Tŷ Hywel, Pierhead Building and Cathays Park Buildings
The
debating chamber was initially based in Ty Hywel
, next to the
site of the present building. The offices of Assembly
Members are still in this building which is connected to the Senedd
by a
skyway.
The National Assembly for Wales Commission
is also responsible for the Pierhead Building
, which is the location of "The Assembly at the
Pierhead" exhibition, and is the Visitor and Education Centre for
the National Assembly for Wales as well as housing a small
giftshop. The exhibition (currently still in the process of
being updated following May's election) provides visitors with a
unique opportunity to access the most up-to-date information on
who's who, what's happening and how the Assembly works. Cathays
Park consists of two buildings; the older building contains offices
for the First Minister for Wales and senior civil servants, whilst
the newer building is a large modern building built as an extension
to the older building.
Elected officials
After each election, the Assembly elects one Assembly Member to
serve as
Presiding
Officer ( ), and another to serve as a deputy.
Lord Elis-Thomas,
Plaid Cymru AM, has been Presiding Officer since
the Assembly was created, and was re-elected to the position on 9
May 2007. Rosemary Butler AM was elected as his deputy. The
Presiding Officer also acts as Chair of the
National Assembly for Wales
Commission.
Permanent officials
As with the
Scottish Government,
the permanent administrative and support staff of the Welsh
Assembly are UK civil servants with the same constitutional status
as their colleagues in the Wales Office and other Whitehall
departments.
Powers and status
The National Assembly consists of 60 elected members. They use the
title
Assembly
Member (AM) or
Aelod y Cynulliad (AC). The executive
arm of the National Assembly for Wales, the
Welsh Assembly Government, has
been a coalition between
Labour—led by
First Minister,
Rhodri Morgan—and
Plaid
Cymru—led by
Deputy First
Minister,
Ieuan Wyn Jones—since
June 2007.
The
executive and civil servants are mainly based in Cardiff's Cathays Park
while the Assembly Members, the Assembly Commission
and Ministerial support staff are based in Cardiff Bay where a new £67 million Assembly Building, known as
the Senedd, has
recently been built.
One important feature of the National Assembly until 2007 was that
there was no legal or constitutional separation of the legislative
and executive functions, since it was a single corporate entity.
Compared with other
parliamentary
systems, and arrangements for devolution in other countries of
the UK, this was highly unusual. In practice, however, there was
separation of functions, and the terms "Assembly" and "Assembly
Parliamentary Service" came into use to distinguish between the two
arms. The Government of Wales Act 2006 regularised the separation
when it came into effect following the 2007 Assembly
Election.
Initially, the Assembly did not have primary
legislative or fiscal powers, as these powers were reserved by
Westminster. The Assembly did have powers to pass
secondary legislation in
devolved areas. Sometimes secondary legislation could be used to
amend
primary legislation, but
the scope of this was very limited. for example, the first
Government of Wales Act gave the Assembly power to amend primary
legislation relating to the merger of certain public bodies.
However, most secondary powers were conferred on the executive by
primary legislation to give the executive (i.e., Ministers) more
powers, and the Assembly has had wider legislative powers than
appearances might suggest. For example, the Assembly delayed local
elections due to be held in 2003 for a year by use of secondary
powers, so that they would not correspond with Assembly elections.
In 2001 the UK parliament used primary legislation to delay for one
month local elections in England during the
Foot and Mouth Disease
epidemic.
The Assembly gained limited primary legislative powers following
the 2007 election and the passage of the Government of Wales Act
2006. These laws are known as
Assembly
Measures and can be enacted in specific fields and matters
within the legislative competency of the Assembly. New matters and
fields can be devolved by Acts of the UK Parliament of by
LCOs approved by Parliament.
While in principle the Assembly has no tax-varying powers, in
reality it has some very limited power over taxes. For example, in
Wales, as in England, the rate of
Council
Tax is set by
local authorities,
but since the Assembly largely determines the level of grants to
local councils, it can influence the level of local taxation
indirectly. It also has some discretion over charges for government
services. Notable examples where this discretion has been used to
create significant differences from other areas in the UK
include:
- Charges for NHS prescriptions in Wales — these have
now been abolished.
- Charges for University Tuition — are different for
Welsh resident students studying at Welsh Universities, compared
with students from or studying elsewhere in the UK.
- Charging for Residential Care — In Wales there is a
flat rate of contribution towards the cost of nursing care,
(roughly comparable to the highest level of English Contribution)
for those who require residential care.
This means in reality that there is a wider definition of "nursing
care" than in England and therefore less dependence on means
testing in Wales than in England, meaning that more people are
entitled to higher levels of state assistance. These variations in
the levels of charges, may be viewed as
de
facto tax varying powers.
This
model of more limited legislative powers was partly due to the fact
that Wales has had the same legal system as England
since 1536, when it was merged with England.
Ireland and
Scotland were never merged by
England, and so always retained some distinct differences in their
legal systems.
The Scottish Parliament
and the Northern Ireland Assembly both
have deeper and wider powers.
The Assembly inherited the powers and budget of the
Secretary of State for Wales
and most of the functions of the
Welsh
Office.
It has power to vary laws passed by Westminster using secondary legislation. Peter Hain, who represents the Welsh constituency
of (Neath
) in the
Westminster Parliament is currently the Secretary of State for
Wales.
Devolved areas
The National Assembly for Wales has the competence to make
Assembly Measures for the "Matters" in the
20 "Fields" outlined in Schedule 5 of the
Government of Wales Act
2006.
Those fields are:
Measure making competence is limited to specific Matters identified
within each Field. Matters can be added to each field by
Legislative Competency Orders
(LCOs).
The National Assembly for Wales also has matters to legislate which
governs the body itself, mainly the costs of passing
Assembly Measures and the register of
interests.
Members, constituencies, and electoral system
Under
mixed member
proportional representation, a type of additional member system, forty of
the AMs are elected from single-member constituencies on a plurality voting system (or
first past the post) basis, the constituencies being
equivalent to those used for the House of
Commons and twenty AMs are elected from regional closed lists using an alternative party
vote. There are five regions
Mid and West Wales,
North
Wales,
South Wales Central,
South
Wales East and
South
Wales West (these are the same as the pre 1999 European
Parliament constituencies for Wales), each of which returns four
members. The additional members produce a degree of proportionality
within each region. Whereas voters can choose any regional party
list irrespective of their party vote in the constituency election,
list AMs are not elected independently of the constituency element,
rather elected constituency AMs are deemed to be pre-elected list
representatives for the purposes of calculating remainders in the
d'Hondt method.
Overall
proportionality is limited by the low proportion of list members
(33% of the Assembly compared to 43% in the Scottish
Parliament and 50% in the German Bundestag
) and the regionalisation of the list
element. Consequently the Assembly as a whole has a greater
degree of proportionality (based on proportions in the list
elections) than the plurality voting system used for UK
parliamentary elections, but still deviates somewhat from
proportionality. The
Single
Transferable Vote system had been considered for the Assembly
by the
Labour Party as early as
1995-96, but according to the evidence given to the Richard
Commission by
Ron
Davies, a former
Welsh
Secretary,
To date there have been three
elections to the Assembly, in 1999,
2003 and 2007.
Elections
There have been three elections to the Assembly, in
1999,
2003, and
2007.
Current composition
Following the
2007
election, no party held a majority of seats in the Assembly. On
Friday 25 May 2007, Rhodri Morgan was renominated unopposed as
First Minister, the Queen then confirmed his appointment. Talk of a
Plaid-led "Rainbow Coalition" with the Tories and the Liberal
Democrats came to nothing. Instead a Welsh Labour-led "
Red-Green" coalition between the Welsh Labour
Party and Plaid Cymru was formed. The deal was ratified by a
special party conference of Welsh Labour members on 6 July 2007 and
a National Council of Plaid Cymru members on 7 July 2007.
See also
References
External links
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