1. Will the Counsel General provide an update on measures being taken to ensure that the judiciary is fully aware of the growing differences between English and Welsh law? OAQ53490

The Welsh Government engages regularly with the Lord Chief Justice’s office to inform them of matters of policy and legislation affecting the judiciary. These include any proposals that affect the administration of the courts, the criminal law, or the operation of the judicial system.  

I'm grateful to the Counsel General for that response. Of course, we do have a peculiar anomaly, do we not, in that we have a Parliament that makes laws but we have no distinctive judiciary to enforce those. I believe, in fact, that we're the only Parliament or regional Parliament in the western world where that is the case, and, obviously, the Counsel General won't be surprised to hear me say that we believe, on these benches, that the long-term solution to that is the full devolution of the justice system.

But with regard to the situation currently, the Counsel General will be aware that, already, incorrect decisions have been made as a result of judges not understanding the difference between English and Welsh law. He will be aware that there were a couple of cases last year, for example, relating to the provision of care services. Can the Counsel General assure us today that he will remain vigilant in ensuring that particularly new members of the judiciary receive appropriate training as part of their core training to ensure that they do understand that they are now delivering two separate, distinct types of law in many fields—in all the devolved fields—to ensure that we don't go through the costly and, in the case of those care cases, very distressing process of incorrect determinations being made as a result, frankly, of ignorance on the judges' part?

Well, the Member identifies a very serious question and it is a challenge that arises by having primary law-making powers but not a separate jurisdiction and not having the justice system devolved to Wales. The Government has agreed a protocol with the Lord Chief Justice's office, which involves providing early notice of the content of legislation and the anticipated date of it entering into effect, and the impacts of that on existing legislation, and there are monthly meetings between the office of the Lord Chief Justice and Welsh Government officials in order to ensure that information flow remains current. The statutory responsibility for training the judiciary has been devolved by the Lord Chief Justice to the Judicial College, and our hope, of course, and our aim, is to ensure that the Judicial College has sufficient advance notice of the content of the legal changes that we make here in Wales in order for that training to be deployed.

There is a continuing debate about who should be financially responsible for the training of the judiciary in areas of law where there is divergence, and our position as a Government is that, as justice is not devolved, that is a responsibility of the UK Government. However, on a practical basis, clearly in some areas, for example housing law, where there's been significant change, there have been pretty extensive discussions between officials and the Ministry of Justice on how that can be translated into practical changes to core procedure, and so on. So, that does happen from time to time when there are particular issues of significant change.