1. Will the Counsel General make a statement on the work of the Commission on Justice in Wales? OAQ52084

Thank you for the question. The First Minister has established the Commission on Justice in Wales to provide an expert, independent, long-term view. The commission’s work is well under way and a call for evidence has been issued. I urge everyone with an interest to contribute.

Thank you for that response. Could you outline what the Welsh Government has decided are the potential implications of the commission? I understand that work is ongoing at the moment, but do you have any idea of what you expect out of this commission? For example, would you wish to devolve criminal justice in the future, for example? One of the problems, from my point of view is—and I think I've raised this in the past—that, if there were to be devolution of justice to Wales, there would be a situation, if new prisons were built, where prisoners from elsewhere, namely England, would be placed here in Wales. How realistic is it, therefore, to devolve justice if you have one regime in operation for Wales and those other prisoners came from another regime? Have you looked at the implications of the reality of the situation in those terms?

Well, as regards the recommendations of the commission, I don’t want to pre-empt their work, but the purpose of establishing the commission was to ensure that experts could discuss and that very broad evidence would be included in the analysis and it would give an opportunity for those voices to be heard.

The Member makes a specific point on the devolution of justice, and I’m certain that she heard the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services’s statement, saying that although we’re waiting for the outcome of the work of the commission, it’s important, too, to develop a different vision on how the criminal justice service could work in Wales. Because the criminal justice service—part of it—has been devolved, and so there is a mixture of powers that we would need to secure in order to ensure that they collaborate in an appropriate manner.

The Member also alluded specifically to the question of prisons, and what I saw in the Cabinet Secretary’s statement was a new approach to looking at powers and the way in which Welsh Government could influence these issues. It was also said that we would need further discussions with the United Kingdom Government before taking any decisions on a prison in Baglan. I know she’s been campaigning and that David Rees, the Aberavon Member, has also been campaigning on this, and the Government is very aware of that.