National Assembly for Wales

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Image:NAW logo.png The National Assembly for Wales (or NAfW) (Welsh: Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru) is a devolved assembly with power to make legislation in Wales, and also is responsible for most UK government departments in Wales. The assembly building, known as the Senedd (the Welsh word for parliament or senate), was opened in March 2006 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

The Assembly was formed under the Government of Wales Act 1998, by the Labour government, after a referendum in 1997, ( also supported by Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats), approved its creation.

1 Powers and status
2 Enhanced Powers: The Government of Wales Bill
3 Official Opposition Party in the Welsh Assembly
4 Opposition to the Assembly
5 Ministers
6 Permanent Secretary
7 Electoral system
8 History
9 References
10 See also
11 External links

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Powers and status

Image:Welsh Assembly Building.jpg The National Assembly consists of 60 members, 40 of whom are elected to represent constituencies, with the other 20 being elected by the Additional Member System. Members use the title AM (Assembly Member) or, in Welsh, AC (Aelod y Cynulliad).

The Assembly is run by the Welsh Assembly Government, led by First Minister, Rhodri Morgan.

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 debating chamber, known as the Senedd, has recently been built.

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.

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 USA.

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 prescreptions 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 residental 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.

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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 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 which hold constituency seats.

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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.

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Opposition to the Assembly

Pre-1997, the Conservative Party was against the formation of a Welsh National Assembly. Some within the party, including senior members such as Kenneth Clarke, and many younger party members are still opposed to the Assembly's existance. David Cameron has stated that he will work with, and not against the Welsh Assembly.

Many cite the fact that it is majoritively the English taxpayer proping up the Welsh Assembly and paying the salaries of those whom work there.

A more legitimate argument, however, is cited in the Act of Union 1707. This Act states that there shall be one parliament for the United Kingdom. The current Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly have the powers of seperate parliaments, therefore breaking the Act of Union. If the current government had made alterations to this legialation before the creation of the assemblies, then the creation of the two new legislatures would have been legal (although so would the independence of the two countries. Some argue that due to the fact that primary legislation can not be passed in these legislatures, they are not truely breaking the Act of Union 1707.

The establishing of the Welsh Assembly is also be viewed as federalisation, such as in the European Union, which many in the mainly centralised United Kingdom are opposed to. Eurosceptics have compared it to the "Divide-and-conquer" technique used by the Romans.

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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

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Permanent Secretary

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

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Electoral system

Under the Additional Member System Template:Ref, 40 of the AMs are elected from single-member constituencies on a First Past the Post (more accurately termed single-member district plurality or SMDP) basis, the constituencies being equivalent to those used for the House of Commons. The remaining 20 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), each of which returns four members, under the d'Hondt method.

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.

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History

The assembly was established following a referendum on 18 September 1997. The Labour Government's proposals for devolution were passed by a majority of just 0.6 percent of the 50 percent of the Welsh electorate who took part. The endorsement came 18 years after Welsh voters defeated similar proposals by a majority of four to one.

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, which was represented in the British Cabinet by a Secretary of State who often did not even represent a Welsh constituency at Westminster.

Some politicians (Mainly from Plaid, the Welsh nationalist party) had argued from the Assembly's creation that its powers were limited and confusing. 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 WestminsterTemplate:Ref. It also recommended changing the electoral system to the single transferable vote (STV) which can produce more proportional representation Template:Ref.

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,Template:Ref 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. 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, although recent polls suggest that a large majority of the Welsh supported full legislative powers. 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. 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. [1] and on March 1st 2006 St. David's Day Her Majesty The Queen opened the new Assembly building. Unfortunately, in the same week the expensive waterfront building was found to be leaking through the roof into the public areas.

**Party political make-up of the Assembly**
Party	Seats			Current Assembly (elected in 2003)
Party	1999	2003	Now	Current Assembly (elected in 2003)
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 Peter Law	N/A	N/A	1*

* The current number of Labour Party AMs is 29, after Peter Law stood against the Labour candidate in Blaenau Gwent in the General Election 2005 and was automatically expelled from the party.

Plaid Cymru changed their party colour from GREEN to YELLOW on February 27th 2006

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References

Template:Note National Assembly for Wales, Organization Cabinet Members, Welsh Assembly
Template:Note Electing the Welsh Assembly. Electoral Reform Society information regarding Additional member system elections. Retrieved 9 December 2005
Template:Note The Richard Commission. Richard Commission Website, includes copy of Commission report. Retrieved 9 December 2005
Template:Note Electoral Reform for Wales. Electoral Reform Society response to rejection of Richard Commission recomendations. Retrieved 9 December 2005
Template:Note 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