National Assembly for Wales

In its 1997 White Paper, A Voice for Wales, the Labour Government argued that the Assembly would be more democratically accountable than the Welsh Office.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} 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.[Evidence to Richards Commission] of Cllr Russell Goodway. 10 July 2003. Retrieved 9 July 2006.

On March 1st 2006 (St. David's Day) the new Assembly building in Cardiff Bay was officially opened by Her Majesty The Queen.

Powers and status

The Welsh Assembly Building

The National Assembly consists of 60 elected members, they use the title Assembly Member (AM) or Aelod y Cynulliad (AC).[The National Assembly for Wales], Civil rights - In Wales, Advice guide, Citizens Advice Bureau. Retrieved 13 July 2006.

The Assembly is run by the Welsh Assembly Government, led by First Minister, Rhodri Morgan.[National Assembly for Wales, Organization] Cabinet Members, Welsh Assembly

The executive and civil servants are based in Cardiff's Cathays Park while the Assembly Members, the Assembly Parliamentary Service and Ministerial support staff are based in Cardiff Bay where a new £67 million Assembly Building, known as the Senedd, has recently been built.[National Assembly for Wales and Welsh Assembly Government] in Guide to government: Devolved and local government, [Directgov], UK state website. Retrieved 13 July 2006.[Assembly Building]: Welsh government website. Retrieved 13 July 2006.[New assembly building opens doors]: BBC News, 1 March 2006. Retrieved 13 July 2006.

One important feature of the National Assembly is that there is no legal or constitutional separation of the legislative and executive functions, since it is a single corporate entity. Even compared with other parliamentary systems, and other UK devolved countries, this is highly unusual. In reality however there is some sort of day to day separation, and the terms "Assembly Government" and "Assembly Parliamentary Service" have been used to distinguish between the two arms. It is proposed to regularise the separation, and it is considered likely that the UK Parliament will pass the necessary legislation.

The Senedd, home to the National Assembly for Wales

Although the Assembly is a legislature, it currently does not have primary legislative or fiscal powers, as these powers had been reserved by Westminster. However, the position is set to change with the passing of the Government of Wales bill in 2006. The current legislative powers of the Assembly are therefore more limited than most other sub-sovereign state legislatures, such as the Scottish Parliament in the UK or state legislatures in the United States.

The Assembly does have powers to pass secondary legislation in devolved areas. Sometimes secondary legislation can be used to amend primary legislation, however the scope of this up to now has been very limited; for example, the Government of Wales Act gave the Assembly power to amend primary legislation relating to the merger of certain public bodies.

It is important to note that most secondary powers were conferred on the executive by primary legislation to give the executive, (i.e. Ministers) more powers. By inheriting these powers from ministers, the Assembly has sometimes surprisingly wider legislative powers than appearances would 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).

Whilst in theory the Assembly has no tax varying powers, the Assembly in reality has some very limited power over taxes. For example, in Wales, as in England, the rate of Council Tax is set by local authorities, however since the Assembly largely determines the level of grants to local councils, it can influence the level of local taxation indirectly.

In terms of charges for government services it also has some discretion. Notable examples where this discretion has been used and varies significantly to other areas in the UK include:- 1. Charges for NHS prescriptions in Wales - these are now considerably less than elsewhere in the UK. 2. Charges for University Tuition - are different for Welsh resident students studying at Welsh Universities, compared with students from or studying elsewhere in the UK. 3. 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 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, could also be construed to be de facto tax varying powers.

This model of more limited legislative powers is partly because Wales has had the same legal system as England since 1536, when it was annexed by England. Ireland and Scotland were never annexed by England, and so always retained some distinct differences in their legal systems. The Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly, (when it isn't suspended) 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, whose principal UK cabinet role is as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and who represents a Welsh constituency in the Westminster Parliament, retains a vestigial role as Secretary of State for Wales.

Richard Commission

It also recommended changing the electoral system to the single transferable vote (STV) which would produce greater proportionality.

Even though the Commission included a member of all 4 main parties, and reported unanimously in favour of legislative powers the UK government refused. In the White Paper, Better Government for Wales, published on 15 June 2005, the UK Government rejected Richard's recommendation to change the electoral system, whilst proposing a half-way house between the status quo and the National Assembly having full Scottish Parliament-style legislative powers. [Better Governance for Wales White Paper]. Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Wales in June 2005. Downloadable PDF. Retrieved 9 December 2005[Electoral Reform for Wales]. Electoral Reform Society response to rejection of Richard Commission recommendations. Retrieved 9 December 2005. The Government of Wales Bill has been introduced in the 2005/2006 session. Publicly it was stated that the lack of full legislative powers in the Bill was due to lack of support in Wales,^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} although recent polls suggest that a large majority of the Welsh supported full legislative powers.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} It is commonly believed that the Bill is a compromise between the pro-devolution Labour AM's and the anti-devolution Welsh Labour MP's, who feared that their number would be culled if the Assembly became a Parliament.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} Aside from powers, the Bill would create the Welsh Assembly Government as a separate body, and not (as at present) a committee of the Assembly.[Government of Wales Bill] as ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 8th December 2005

Enhanced powers: the Government of Wales Bill

The Government of Wales Bill was presented to the UK parliament and published on December 8 2005. It confers on the Assembly legislative powers akin to other devolved legislatures, although Assembly laws will be subject to the veto of the UK Secretary of State for Wales, House of Commons or House of Lords.

The debating chamber in the Senedd

The Bill contains provision to reform the assembly to a parliamentary-type structure, establishing the Assembly Government as an entity separate from, but accountable to the National Assembly. It will also enable the Assembly to legislate within its devolved fields as specified in schedule 5 of the Bill. Members of the UK Parliament will retain the power to veto Assembly laws (to be known as Assembly Measures).

The bill also reforms the Assembly's electoral system. It will prevent individuals from standing as candidates in both constituency and regional seats. This aspect of the bill has been subject to a great deal of criticism, most notably by the UK Electoral Commission.

The bill has been heavily criticised. Plaid Cymru, the Official Opposition in the National Assembly, has attacked the bill 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 has 29 members in the Assembly all of whom hold constituency seats.

Official Opposition party in the Welsh Assembly

The Official Opposition party in the National Assembly is Plaid Cymru - (English: The Party of Wales). The party's leader is Ieuan Wyn Jones.

Ministers

The First Minister is Rhodri Morgan. There are 8 other Cabinet members (Ministers):

Minister for Finance, Local Government and Public Services: Sue Essex

Minister for Assembly Business, Minister for Equalities and Minister for Children: Jane Hutt

Minister for Social Justice and Regeneration: Edwina Hart

Minister for Health & Social Services: Brian Gibbons

Minister for Enterprise, Innovation & Networks: Andrew Davies

Minister for Education, Lifelong Learning & Skills: Jane Davidson

Minister for Environment, Planning and Countryside: Carwyn Jones

Minister for Culture, Welsh Language and Sport: Alun Pugh

[National Assembly for Wales, Organization] Cabinet Members, Welsh Assembly

Permanent Secretary

The Permanent Secretary is Sir Jon Shortridge. He and other civil servants support the Assembly Cabinet.

Presiding Officers

The Presiding Officer (Speaker) of the National Assembly for Wales is Lord Dafydd Elis Thomas AM. His Deputy is Dr. John Marek AM.

Electoral system

Under mixed member proportional representation a type of additional member system[Mixed-Member Proportional Voting] in PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION VOTING SYSTEMS, [Types of Voting Systems]: PR Library created by Professor Douglas J. Amy, Department of Politics, Mount Holyoke College. Retrieved 8 July 2006.[Electing the Welsh Assembly]: Electoral Reform Society, information regarding Additional member system elections. Retrieved 9 December 2005. 40 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 20 AMs are elected from regional closed lists (rather than Open lists) using an alternative party vote.[The Welsh electoral system]: BBC News, 7 June 1999. Retrieved 7 July 2006. 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.Chapter 12: The Electoral Arrangements of the [Report of the Richard Commission]: Commission on the Powers and Electoral Arrangements of the National Assembly for Wales.. PDF document. Retrieved 8 July 2006. 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 Had we done that of course we would have had to have had a Boundary Commision and that process would have taken forever and a day and that would have frustrated our overall political timetable. So we had to settle on the existing constituency arrangements, parliamentary constituencies and European Constituencies.

To date there have been two elections to the Assembly, in 1999 and 2003. The 2003 election produced the first ever democratically elected legislature in the world in which 50 percent of the members were women.[Women win half Welsh seats]: By Nicholas Watt, The Guardian, 3 May 2003. Retrieved 7 July 2006.

Composition of the Assembly

Party political make-up of the Assembly

	Party	Seats			Current Assembly (elected in 2003)
		1999	2003	Now
	Labour	28	30	29
	Plaid Cymru	17	12	12
	Conservative	9	11	11
	Liberal Democrat	6	6	6
	Forward Wales	N/A	1	1
	Independent	N/A	N/A	1*

(Plaid Cymru changed their party colour from green to yellow on February 27, 2006.)

*Peter Law, Independent (formerly Labour) AM for Blaenau Gwent, died April 25, 2006. In the ensuing by-election on the 29 June he was replaced by his widow Trish Law.

Of the 60 members elected in 2003, 30 were male and 30 female, making it the first governing body in the world to have such representation. Following the Blaenau Gwent by-election in 2006 the Assembly has a female majority, 29 male and 31 female.

References

See also

• Welsh Assembly Election 2003
• Welsh Assembly Election 1999
• UK topics
• Members of the National Assembly for Wales
• Government of Wales Act 1998

External links

• [National Assembly for Wales] (official WWW site)
• [Welsh Politicians] Including those of Welsh descent in other countries

• [NAW: Constituencies and Electoral Regions] (map of the constituencies showing current members)
• [NAW: Who? - Elected Members] (list of members by constituency)
• [Government of Wales Act 1998]
• [BBC's Senedd guide]

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

---