1. What discussions has the Counsel General had with the Lord Chancellor on the devolution of justice? OQ58814

Thank you very much for the question.

My ministerial colleagues and I have made the Welsh Government's position on the devolution of justice very clear to this Lord Chancellor, his predecessors and many other UK Ministers, and most recently Lord Bellamy, the Under-Secretary for justice, this Monday. It does remain deeply disappointing that the UK Government will not seriously engage with this question.

Diolch yn fawr, Cwnsler Cyffredinol. We've had the tenth Lord Chancellor in 12 years; I think beforehand we had 10 in half a century. But the opinion polls consistently suggest that, after the next general election, there'll be a Labour Lord Chancellor in Westminster. As was highlighted yesterday, in the 2017 Labour Westminster manifesto, it supported full devolution of justice. In 2019 that commitment had disappeared. The recent Brown report recommends the devolution of youth justice and probation. Now, whilst I welcome any further devolution to Wales, the Thomas report made strong and persuasive arguments against piecemeal devolution. The recommendations of the Brown report will only shift the jagged edge slightly, and the underlying issues of the justice system in Wales, which is with the worst in western Europe, will still remain. Therefore, Cwnsler Cyffredinol, is the Welsh Government still committed to the full devolution of justice, and will you make your views clear to Labour in Westminster?

Well, what I can say is that the position of the Welsh Government remains the same. We support the recommendations of the Thomas commission, and we also support, specifically within that, the devolution of justice and the devolution, in particular, of criminal justice. What I can say is that the devolution of youth justice and probation will be very significant steps forward.

I think you have to be careful about taking out of context aspects of the Gordon Brown report, which of course is a report that was commissioned by the UK Labour Party. It does say within it, I think, some very, very important messages. Firstly, it says that:

'As a matter of principle, devolution to Wales should be constrained only by reserving those matters which are necessary to discharge the purposes of the UK as a union'.

It also says there is absolutely no reason why matters that are devolved in Scotland, including new powers proposed, could not also be devolved to Wales. And he specifically refers to the recommendation for the devolution of youth justice and probation. But I think the most—. In many ways, the most important part of this section of the report is that he also says

'that the Welsh government has established a Commission to examine various constitutional issues, and its work is ongoing. Once the report...is received, we expect a Labour Government to engage constructively with its recommendations.'

I think it is really important that that report recognises what we said very early on when we talked about the establishment of the independent commission, that it would be in this place that we would decide what the future of Wales should be, that it would be in this Senedd and for the people of Wales to decide what that should be. And whilst that commission is there, I think it's important that that report makes that deference to the fact that there is that commission, and the recommendations and views that the commission comes up with are ones that we as a Senedd will then consider. We'll decide ourselves what is important and we'll then aim to engage constructively for the devolution or for the changes and reforms that we consider are necessary in respect of Wales, based on that commission's recommendations.

I'm very interested to hear what you have to say on this, and I just want to raise with you the concerns that we've heard about the disjunctive nature of the criminal justice system at the moment. For example, when we had the legislative and constitutional committee, chaired by Huw Irranca-Davies, meeting with Lord Bellamy, he was highlighted the importance of the Visiting Mums project, as if this was something funded by UK Government, when in fact it's funded by the Welsh Government. Equally, we've had some concerns raised by evidence we've heard from the Magistrates' Association. We don't have any control over the Magistrates' Association, and the holes through which people in the criminal justice system fall, particularly women, where we are determined not to send people to prison unless it's absolutely necessary, indicate that we really have got to push hard on this one, because it's a completely dysfunctional situation at the moment.

Well, thank you for those comments, and I don't disagree with the points that you've made. Many of them are points that we've made very much within our 'Delivering Justice for Wales' paper, and of course the recent research by Cardiff University, the publication, The Welsh Criminal Justice System: On the Jagged Edge, I think is really important.

What is important in terms of the engagement that we do have with UK Government over the Thomas commission is of course that they are supportive and they've accepted the points about the disaggregation of data that we actually need to have the breakdown of data for Wales, because in order to formulate policy you actually need to know what is happening. I think we were all, weren't we, absolutely astonished and shocked, I think, by some of the data from Cardiff University, that per 10,000 of the population 14 in prison would be white and 79 would be from coloured or ethnic backgrounds. That is an absolutely shocking set of figures, and the disaggregation of information enables us to understand why that is, why we have a higher imprisonment of Welsh citizens within the justice system, and things that we need to understand. And it goes exactly into the reasoning as to why we want the devolution of justice. What is important, I think, about the Gordon Brown report—and of course I will look forward to, eventually, the full report from our own independent commission—is that there are no doors closed.