7. What assessment has the Counsel General made of whether the legislative consent process is fit for purpose? OQ58836

Thank you very much for the question. Primary legislation that can be made in Wales should be made in Wales. There may be occasions when it is sensible and advantageous for provision within the Senedd’s legislative competence to be made in UK parliamentary Bills, but this must always be with the Senedd’s consent.

I thank the Counsel General for that response. I agree with your opening sentence: that legislation for Wales should be made in Wales, and there should be a full stop there. I've been an elected Member of this Senedd for 18 months now, but already—and it pains me to say this—I am losing confidence in the devolution process as it's currently being implemented here at the moment. It is entirely clear to me that the settlement we have is entirely unacceptable.

As a member of the Local Government and Housing Committee, we've received a number of LCMs, and then a supplementary LCM, a second supplementary LCM, a third and so on and so forth. These LCMs relate to legislation for England that have an influence on Wales, but there's very little time available for us to scrutinise these. This is legislation that's going to impact upon the lives of the people of Wales, but we have some quarter of an hour here and there to scrutinise and to ask questions, never mind the fact that the people of Wales have no input whatsoever. It's entirely unacceptable, and we cannot continue to operate in this way. It's a perfect recipe for poor legislation. So, in the absence of independence for our nation, we must have a clear devolution settlement, and England must also have its own Parliament with clear separation between who is responsible for what, with no ambiguity. Does the Counsel General therefore share my frustration, and what steps is this Government taking to resolve the situation?

Thank you for that. Of course, this is something I've commented on on a very regular basis before the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee and in questions in this Senedd, because the effective engagement by UK Government, Welsh Government and devolved Governments over legislation is fundamentally important. The failure of that to operate as it should and in accordance with the devolution memoranda and so on is one of the biggest obstacles to having an efficient, effective and scrutinisable legislative process. When information is not shared, when drafting is not shared in good time, it not only creates considerable pressure on those who then have to analyse and understand it, it also is, in my view, an absolutely enormous waste of resources that could well be used in other ways.

We have been pressing for a more consistent and more effective system of engagement. We've had promises, of course, and we get the assurances that that will happen. Of course, we do have a new inter-governmental arrangement that is still not properly up and running, but that may improve the situation. But I believe that there is a need for more substantive constitutional reform. I think that constitutional reform has to include the justiciability in one way or another of Sewel, the entrenchment of Sewel, in a way, because many of the problems that emerge through these processes are, of course, Sewel-related ones.

In terms of the LCM process, of course, we don't have any significant control over that, because we have to operate in accordance with Standing Orders when legislation arises. If it impacts on the Senedd, or on the functions of Welsh Ministers, then, of course, it has to be considered with regard to its impact on this place, but also in terms of the exercise of our powers and whether we should give consent to any of those items. That, obviously, involves a very tortuous process of negotiations and discussions over legislative amendments and so on, a back-and-forth process. It is wholly inefficient. It is a whole waste of resources in the way these things are actually done.

Again, I'm sorry I keep referring to it, but I was very impressed with some of the recommendations and analysis that appear in the Gordon Brown report, which actually would give that justiciable status to Sewel, but would also create a specific constitutional structure in terms of inter-governmental relations with a justiciable disputes procedure. If that existed, that would be a very significant step forward in dealing with the points you raised. There was nothing new, in fact, in those things—these are things we've been saying in various forms for quite some time—but they are things that need to be addressed, and until they are addressed, the dysfunctional structure we have at the moment will continue.

Finally, question 8, Huw Irranca-Davies.