Oral evidence: Pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Wales Bill, HC 962Tuesday 14 January 2014

Oral evidence, 14 January 2014.

Witnesses

Professor Richard Wyn Jones, Director, and Professor Roger Scully, Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff University, gave evidence.

Chair

Professors Wyn Jones and Scully, we have met you before, obviously, at various village halls, I think, in Monmouthshire. It is nice to see you both again. I am the Chair of the Select Committee. We are just going to start off, and apologies that we are a bit late, but we got into a bit of a discussion there. Could I start with Guto Bebb, please?

Guto Bebb

Good morning.

Professor Wyn Jones

Bore da.

Guto Bebb

We have heard a lot of evidence this morning which has highlighted the fact that, despite the significant differences between Wales and Scotland, a lot of the draft Wales Bill appears to be very similar to what has been proposed and implemented in the Scottish context. Do you think that is a weakness or a strength of these proposals, and can you explain your response?

Professor Wyn Jones

I think, in particular, that the position in the Bill on the lockstep is deeply problematic. It runs against all the evidence in Holtham, in particular, which I think everybody accepts is the authoritative source on this; it runs against the arguments in Silk and it renders the income tax power as pretty much unusable; to vary from England is pretty much inconceivable. Of course the thing that is radically different from the Scotland Act 2012 is the referendum provision, and I hope at some stage you will ask me for my views on that.

Guto Bebb

I am sure I will, but I wanted a wider response to this first question.

Professor Wyn Jones

In terms of the detail, it follows Scotland, and in ways which are unhelpful and not supported by the evidence that we have.

Guto Bebb

You have highlighted the lockstep. Are there any other areas where you would highlight the similarities being a concern?

Professor Wyn Jones

I would say personally that is the key element of this Bill. That and the referendum provisions are the really problematic elements in this Bill.

Professor Scully

I would broadly agree with Richard and, I suppose, maybe anticipating some later discussions. Personally, I am not particularly persuaded of the principal case for a referendum, although I think as to that argument things have moved on. If you think about practically what a referendum would look like, it starts to look very problematic in terms of who is going to be motivated to go out and campaign for what looks like a close-to-unusable power.

Guto Bebb

Just to clarify on the issue of the referendum, since both of you have raised it, I take it that it is not necessarily the principle of having a referendum on the devolution of income tax powers that is a concern; it is rather the fact that the powers for income tax variation as it stands in the current draft Bill would be practically unusable even if there was a yes vote in the referendum. Is that your real position?

Professor Wyn Jones

No, that is not my position, but I do not know about Roger’s. My own position is that I am against this on principle, and can I explain why?

Guto Bebb

Yes.

Professor Wyn Jones

The argument has been accepted by all parties that you need tax powers to make devolved Government properly accountable. Fiscal responsibility is an argument that is there in Holtham, in Calman and in Silk. It underpins the Scotland Act 2012. It has been accepted very widely. My question to you is, should responsibility and accountability be optional? Should those things be optional? I think no. That is my view. In principle, there should—

Guto Bebb

A response from me would be that the consent of the people is pretty important as well and, after all, the original devolution powers granted in Scotland did include a vote on the issue of whether there would be tax variation. So the principle of tax variation was part and parcel of the 1997 settlement in Scotland, but there was no such vote in Wales.

Professor Wyn Jones

There are basically three arguments put forward as to why we should have a referendum. The first is the so‑called Scottish precedent; the second is that there is a kind of fundamental constitutional principle here; the third is that the public somehow demand or expect it. In terms of the Scottish precedent, the fact is—and this is not a facetious point—that there is a precedent for almost everything in British constitutional history. In fact, Scotland offers two precedents on this issue. They had a referendum in 1997, a second question, which was the optional power to vary the basic rate. Calman changed the whole premise of that and said, “Actually, you should be forced to make decisions on income tax.” There was no referendum involved there at all. That was a very different argument, “It is not an option; you are being forced to do this to be responsible.” So I would say the Scottish precedent is much less compelling than people assume. In terms of the fundamental constitutional principle, is making an already existing layer of Government more accountable a breach? The Silk Commission ties itself into knots because it argues that there is a fundamental constitutional issue around income tax powers but not around minor taxes. They struggle. The argument they end up with is scholastic in the extreme. In terms of “Do the public accept it?” we have two bits of data on that: something in the Silk Commission, which is a very broadly framed question about devolving income tax powers completely, which is not there, and then there is also, of course, a majority there for a referendum on minor tax powers, which nobody is talking about. Then we have some evidence from just before Silk, trying to ask people. We assume that a lot of people would say yes to a referendum on anything. We do not want to have a referendum on everything, do we, so the key question is, is this an issue which is particularly important, which people feel particularly strongly about? The evidence that we have is no. The issue of shared income tax powers is not one that people have a very strong feeling for. In fact, there was not a majority for a referendum on that in the data that we collected.

Professor Scully

Can I follow up on one or two points there? In the UK in general we, frankly, have got ourselves in a little bit of a mess in terms of what are the sorts of issues on which we should have referendums and the sorts of things which should be properly left to representative democracy. We elect people, broadly speaking, to make the decisions. The House of Lords Constitutional Affairs Committee, a few years ago I think, published a very good report on this, the broad thrust of which was arguing that, essentially, there has been no principle in terms of when we hold referendums and not. It has been much more political opportunism. The Lords Committee was broadly suggesting that we should reserve referendums for major matters of constitutional principle, such as abolishing the monarchy, the Houses of Parliament or maybe setting up a devolved institution. Like Richard, I am not at all convinced that devolving income tax powers in the manner suggested by Silk is compelling. Given, as Richard said, that there are precedents for almost everything, we have in recent decades, for instance, established two wholly new systems of local government taxation in the community charge, poll tax and council tax without, I think, even the suggestion of a referendum on either. Is transferring partial responsibility over an existing tax from one level of government to another really more fundamental? I do not think so myself. Richard mentioned some of the evidence we have gathered. We even asked people about what we thought were blatantly ridiculous items to have a referendum on, such as the 5p charge on carrier bags. You still get over 30% of people saying yes, we should have referendums on that. If people are asked, “Do you want a say?” they tend to say, “Yes.” It does not follow from that, however, that they will want to take part, be interested and go out and vote in the referendum when it actually happens.

Guto Bebb

It is an interesting discussion that we can have. The demand for a referendum does reflect the loss of confidence in the political class as a whole and I think that is why people do generally say yes, they want a referendum because there is a feeling that they do want to take part and have an influence. Going back to the original question, in view of the fact that we are now debating or scrutinising the draft Wales Bill as it stands, is it your given position that you are opposed to a referendum, full stop, or would you prefer to see that referendum become a meaningful referendum because of the issue of the lockstep?

Professor Scully

My own view—and Richard may have a slightly different view—is that I am certainly not persuaded by the principal case for a referendum, and I thought the Silk Commission I report was intellectually a very impressive document until the couple of pages when they discuss the referendum, when the standard dives down dramatically—

Guto Bebb

That is where the politics came in.

Professor Scully

and then dives back up. I am not myself a diehard opponent of referendums, but there are probably more compelling things to have referendums on than this. My biggest concerns, frankly, are practical. As has been said already in the previous session by people who know far more about it than us, these look to be fairly unusable powers. In practice, who is going to go out and campaign for this referendum on either side, perhaps particularly the yes side? We may have at least one individual here. I suspect that, frankly, this referendum would make the March 2011 referendum look like a triumph of participatory democracy. I would not be at all surprised if you got turnout levels below 25%.

Guto Bebb

Just as a final question, is it your view that the powers envisaged to be transferred as a result of a referendum, as it currently stands, are so inconsequential that there will not be a referendum called?

Professor Wyn Jones

In order to unlock these powers, why would you bother? You cannot meaningfully vary the rates, so why would you bother? The only reason to bother is to make the borrowing envelope bigger. It is surely perverse to have a referendum that is practically about the size of a borrowing envelope. That is just perverse, in my view.

Glyn Davies

To some extent—especially Richard—you are giving an opinion in terms of the referendum, which is right. To challenge that opinion with another opinion, I have always thought that the view of the people is important, but I do not think a referendum is the right way to get it. Personally, one would be content if the parties that formed the next Government had made it clear in their manifesto that this is what they were in favour of. I personally interpret that as being the will of the people. If that had not been clear in the parties’ manifestos, the case for a referendum is much stronger, but that is obviously not a constitutional thing; manifestos are not constitutional documents. So this is an area with a lack of clarity, but I do think to move forward to this without the view of the people in one form is quite a dangerous thing to do.

Professor Wyn Jones

That would seem to me, Glyn, to be a sensible way of doing this if one wanted to do it. What I was trying to get at very briefly, Chair, is that the justifications that are being offered for a referendum seem to me to be very weak.

Chair

We had better move on to dual candidacy, and we will try and come back afterwards if there is time.

Mr Williams

Professor Scully, you have very consistently argued the case against the ban on dual candidacy. I recall you both came before the Select Committee at the time of the Government of Wales Bill in 2006. You have reiterated your opposition to the ban. Can you remind the Committee why you have taken such a strong stance against the ban?

Professor Scully

As I articulated in the written evidence that I submitted, the arguments against dual candidacy are flawed both in principle and have problematic practical implications. I know some people feel very strongly against dual candidacy and I do not challenge the sincerity of their views, but I do believe that they are based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the electoral system that was introduced for Assembly elections. In particular, the argument is made that defeated candidates at the constituency level have been rejected by the electorate and, therefore, they should not be able to enter the Assembly. But the proportional variant of AMS that we use for Assembly elections that is used in quite a few other countries around the world now is a voting system whereby parties, through the list seats, are compensated if they have been relatively unsuccessful in the constituencies. Parties who have been, in a sense, if you want to put it like that, rejected at the constituency level still get some representation in the Chamber, and it is difficult to see a strong principled reason why what applies to parties should not also apply to individual candidates. The other reasons why I am opposed to a ban on dual candidacy are, first, it creates potentially perverse incentives, which I do not think legislation ought to do. For instance, if you have separate constituency and list groups of candidates, the list ones then effectively acquire an incentive for their party’s constituency candidates to lose—and, indeed, one or two people here know about that directly. That is not a sensible sort of incentive to build into a system. Also for the voters, if you particularly favour a list candidate now, you maybe would want to vote against that party at the constituency level. But I think there is a third reason that is specific to Wales. Having a very small Assembly of 60 Members, various people, including my colleague here, have argued that that is insufficient. Having such a small body, we need to do everything possible to maximise the quality of the representation within that body, having, in particular, so few people to do the Committee work and all the various roles other than leadership and ministerial. We have a relatively small number of people spread pretty thinly and we need to do everything possible to make sure that those people are of the maximum quality. The New Zealand inquiry into this system articulated the case very well that dual candidacy can help parties not ensure but make more likely the election of the people who those parties believe are their strongest candidates. In Wales, that is something we should be doing.

Mr Williams

We will come on to the size of the Assembly in a minute. You touched on international work. Can you remind us of other examples where such a ban exists? I seem to remember one country that was used remorselessly—unsuccessfully as it happened—at the time of the Government Wales Bill, but can you remind us of those international precedents?

Professor Scully

There are two variants of these mixed-member systems: mixed-member proportional, where the list seats are allocated in a way that compensates for the constituency results; and a mixed-member majoritarian, where there are effectively two separate elections. Among mixed-member proportional, Wales leads the world. We are the only sub‑state nation, region or country that has introduced a ban like this. I am aware that it was considered seriously in two Canadian provinces but not ultimately introduced. It was considered in two Canadian provinces, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick, I believe. It was also looked at very seriously in a very detailed review of this system in New Zealand but decisively rejected. The only examples that I am aware of where a ban has been introduced has been in the systems where you have ostensibly constituency and lists running as two separate elections. I am aware certainly of four national systems that have introduced a ban—South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the Ukraine, the last two of which are not particularly examples of good democratic practice.

Glyn Davies

Thank you for that.

Mr Williams

Moving on, you talked about the size of the Assembly. The draft Bill does nothing to change the size of the number of Assembly Members. I think Professor Scully has indicated, and many of us would agree, that it should. The size of the Assembly, Professor Wyn Jones—

Professor Scully

Richard has been involved in work on this.

Professor Wyn Jones

Yes. We published a report with the rather low‑brow title “Size Matters”, which looked at the size of the Assembly and I think has been the only serious attempt to look at the size of the National Assembly for Wales. There was no process. If you look back at the Labour party’s internal processes in the 1990s that led to the 60‑Member proposal—and of course the Assembly had very different powers in the early days anyway—there was no systematic look at the size of the Assembly and the implications of that. We tried to do that and tried to marshal as much international evidence as we could. Obviously, I would refer colleagues to the report for the detail, but the headline is that there are 42 Assembly Members to do all the work that is required in terms of scrutiny. That is a very small number in international terms and a low number when one considers, in comparative terms, the relative power of the National Assembly. Our best estimate of the right kind of size—I accept that people would have different views and it is not an exact science—is that around 100 Members would make sense in terms of the relative powers of the Assembly. Also, I would make the point that there is a context here of where do Welsh elected representatives sit? I think it is still on the statute book as a proposal that the number of Welsh MPs gets reduced—maybe I should not mention that in present company—but we also now have some leaks coming out of the Williams report suggesting a major cut of councillors in Wales. We have, in comparative terms, arguably too many MPs, certainly too many councillors—we can probably all agree on that—and we look light in terms of holding what is now a powerful Welsh Government to account in the Assembly.

Mr Williams

So the fact that the draft Bill leaves in place the current linkage between the size of the National Assembly and the number of Welsh MPs is unhelpful.

Professor Wyn Jones

In my view, yes, absolutely.

Mr Williams

Not least, as you say, if we were to go down the line in Westminster at some future point in terms of reduction of MPs, then the fears that have been raised in the past would be realised again. Do you have anything to add to that?

Professor Scully

No. On this issue, at least, I broadly agree with my colleague.

Mr Williams

Good. Finally, Professor Scully, you argue in your written evidence that it would be more appropriate for the National Assembly to be responsible for decisions about its own elections. As a good devolutionist, I agree, but why?

Professor Scully

In the long term, I am not convinced it is really appropriate for Parliament here to be deciding major matters on the electoral arrangements for another body with its own democratic mandate. I have also suggested, as part of that, that one might look to build in some sort of structures to ensure that any future changes to electoral arrangements command broad cross‑party support. As I mentioned in my written evidence, parties are inherently interested parties—interested actors—when it comes to electoral arrangements. That is unavoidably so. That being the case, I think it should be made difficult for politicians to change electoral arrangements. It should not be easy to change the electoral system in a way which may just happen to be more favourable to your own party. If at some point the power over setting the rules for Assembly elections is transferred to the Assembly, that should be done perhaps, but only with a sort of supermajority requirement imposed. My suggestion is that a pretty high majority—actually a three‑quarters majority—should be needed for any substantive changes in electoral arrangements. It should not be possible for one party, or a coalition with a very narrow majority, simply to change the rules to make things a bit more helpful to themselves. That goes for whoever is in power at whatever time.

Jessica Morden

Going back to dual candidacy, the famous example of this is Clwyd West where, in 2003, Alun Pugh gets in and all the other three candidates end up on the list. Clearly, that is ludicrous. How would you defend that particular result, where all three losers end up on the list?

Professor Scully

I would not myself attach that particular description to those individuals.

Jessica Morden

All right; that is a fair point—the losing candidates.

Nia Griffith

Could I just add to that?

Chair

Can we have an answer first?

Nia Griffith

If I could just ask this, it is on the same question. Essentially, on the impact assessment, a majority of the respondents would agree with what Jessica Morden has just said. They find it very difficult to conceive. They have said they would like to keep the ban in place. How does that play? It is the public perception.

Professor Scully

First of all, on Ms Morden’s question, Clwyd West was clearly an extreme example of the general phenomenon that dual candidacy allows for. It is, I suppose, a relatively exceptional instance of what the system is set up to allow. If parties happen to put particular individuals high on the list, parties being compensated for their relative lack of success in the constituencies, you can see those individuals being elected through the list. It is very unusual that they all happen to come from the one seat.

Jessica Morden

It was because it was a marginal seat, was it not?

Nia Griffith

A marginal—

Professor Scully

That is basically what the system exists to do. That is how the system operates internationally and was understood at the time of the 1998 legislation.

Guto Bebb

Would the concerns being expressed about Clwyd West have been mitigated if we had had an open-list system rather than a closed-list system? The problem with the closed‑list system is that it is very much in the hands of the parties, whereas people would have a feeling that they had voted for somebody on an open list. Would the open‑list system mitigate the concern that losers, for example, are still returned?

Professor Scully

As to an open‑list system where the list votes were cast perhaps for that particular individual on a party list, that would need to be looked at. That possibly complicates the system a little bit further. But, yes, if people really want to reject particular individuals, then an open‑list system clearly facilitates that. To move on to Ms Griffith’s question on what the people think about this and so on, I do not think we have yet really had any robust evidence on this. Sure, people write in with their views and so on. At the time of the 2006 Act, arguments were made by the then Government that certainly went well beyond the evidence on public attitudes that existed to support them. In terms of relevant evidence from the vast amount of survey work that we have done, we do not find that many people seem to be greatly bothered about this. The only two ways you could try and get at public opinion systematically would be, first, a fairly large amount of focus group work conducted by genuinely neutral parties putting the cases both for and against and walking people through the arguments on both sides. If you did that with a sufficiently large number of people, you might come to a clear view. The other sort of evidence one could use on public attitudes is that, if the public really objected, that would presumably hurt the parties that most use dual candidacy. In Scotland, it has been used heavily by the SNP and it is not self‑evident that that has harmed them a great deal. In Wales in 2003, dual candidacy was used by far the most by the Labour party and the Conservative party—the two parties who actually increased their share of the vote and their representation. So, again, it is not obvious that there is a major negative public reaction there if we look at the behaviour of the voters.

Chair

We are going to have to gently move on again, looking at the time. It is a related issue, so perhaps I could ask Professor Wyn Jones about this. We have dealt with dual candidacy, but we also want to ask about double-jobbing. Obviously, I have to declare an interest having been an AM and an MP for two years. My view is that there is no reason why that should not happen. You don’t get two salaries for it and I feel strongly that people should be able to go backwards and forwards. I think it was to the benefit of the Assembly that a number of—may I say?—mainly Labour and Plaid Cymru MPs became Members of the Welsh Assembly to give it some experience, if you like, when we started off. But anyway, this is not my evidence session. What do you think about that?

Professor Wyn Jones

I am not sure I have a professional opinion on this. I have a personal prejudice, which I am happy to share with you.

Chair

Tell us.

Simon Hart

Let’s hear it.

Professor Wyn Jones

If I was a voter, I would want somebody concentrating full time on a particular job, but my general position is that it is up to the electorate to decide. If the candidate is being up front, then the electorate is perfectly within their right to make the call either way. I personally have a view, but—

Professor Scully

I have one very minor point on this. It does, to some degree, get back to the whole issue of the size of the Assembly. Again, if we were only going to carry on having 60 AMs—the whole point being that we really need them to be working across a pretty broad range, so we need very high-quality people—we almost certainly need them there full time, working flat out. I dare say people who are double-jobbing for a while would do it with the best of intentions, but presumably their work as an MP would also be fairly arduous.

Chair

What about the fact that there is no ban on people being councillors or MEPs at the same time, or, indeed, in having outside work, just as many Members of Parliament manage to combine the role of MP and Minister, and a Minister presumably has a pretty big role, as does an MP. I absolutely do not see that it is impossible and I felt personally that I was able to carry out the role perfectly well in both places.

Professor Scully

The view I was articulating is my personal preference. There are lots of things I feel but I would not want to have laws passed to enforce them, and I think this would be one of them. I would not necessarily go as far as saying this should be absolutely prohibited in all circumstances.

Nia Griffith

Can I raise the issue of the actual legislation here, which has a six‑month limit? Do you see that as the most sensible and workable limit? I am taking an example now of supposing that somebody in 2015 who is currently an AM becomes an MP, which is quite likely because there are some candidates. If they then have to give up after six months, they would be causing a by‑election; whereas if there were a different limit, they could be in the 2016 Assembly election. What do you think would be workable in this legislation?

Professor Scully

If you are going to do this, possibly a slightly longer term to allow for precisely the sort of situation that you referred to would be sensible. To some extent, it might depend, in the long term, how long the gap is going to be between general elections and Assembly elections. If it is continuing to be 12 months, maybe a short extension of this period towards 12 months, or at least up to the point at which the Assembly is devolved and you have the campaign, would presumably be sensible.

Professor Wyn Jones

As I understand it, the timetables are now locked in, so it would make sense. That is a very good example of a problem you could avoid by having that as a year. That makes a lot of sense to me.

Jessica Morden

In the draft Bill, there is the mention of changing the term of the length of the Assembly from four to five years. Do you think that is desirable?

Professor Wyn Jones

I think it is probably inevitable. I do not think it was particularly desirable. We are only now starting to work out some of the implications of extending the Assembly term. For example, the affordability of the Welsh Government’s commitment around higher education for that extra year is going to be very difficult indeed. But once they moved this place to a five‑year fixed term cycle, it was inevitable that that would happen in Wales. It is very important to avoid having devolved and Westminster elections at the same time.

Jessica Morden

Why is that? What is wrong with having elections on the same day, which would save a lot of money, thereby reducing the cost of politics and increasing turnout?

Professor Wyn Jones

It is about accountability. It is about making sure that you are trying to focus on the level of Government which is responsible for whatever particular issue that you have feelings about. There is a real problem in the Welsh context—and it does not work very well for MPs—in terms of how the electorate attribute performance. I am not sure if you are aware of this, but when things are going well, the electorate think it is all down to the Welsh Government, even in non‑devolved issues. Then in devolved issues, when it is going badly, they blame you guys. It is quite amusing, but it is not actually good for democracy. So trying to separate these is quite important.

Hywel Williams

Is there a Scottish example that we could look at as having simultaneous elections?

Professor Wyn Jones

I was saying that I do not favour simultaneous elections. I think it is important to try and separate out accountability. It is imperfect, but having it all on the same day makes it very difficult.

Glyn Davies

It seems to me an interesting point. Again, I am not wholly comfortable with changing to a five‑year term; I think a four‑year term is more suitable, generally. You sound as if you might agree with that.

Professor Wyn Jones

Yes.

Glyn Davies

Because we are having so many elections now—European elections, council elections and referendums—there are bound to be things happening on the same day. So why is it specifically different such that an Assembly and a parliamentary election cannot be held on the same day—or a month apart? The rules allow for them to be a month apart.

Professor Scully

Possibly a month apart would be the worst of all worlds in that both the voters and the campaigners would be just about getting over one election when they would have to launch straight back into the next. Whichever set of elections came second, the campaigners would get a very rough reception from the voters, “Not you lot again.” The voters need to have some time to recover from the first election. In the Welsh context, though, having a relatively weak Welsh news media, it is all the more important, if you are going to have an Assembly, that the election should be separate from the Westminster election because, otherwise in Wales, all issues related to the Assembly, its competencies and policy programmes of the different parties would get completely swamped by the agenda of the London‑based news media. It would raise some problematic questions about the legitimacy of the mandate of whoever was in power in Cardiff Bay. Just to go back to a point Richard was making and expand on it slightly, if I may—

Glyn Davies

So if it is six years, you would have got six years.

Professor Scully

We have gathered quite a lot of very systematic evidence on this in Wales, and it is a repeated finding year after year in surveys about the lack of clarity of attribution for policy responsibilities, with people for devolved or non‑devolved issues being overly likely to attribute good news to people in Cardiff Bay and bad news to people in London. It is amusing if you go and tell an audience of people in Cardiff Bay that, but it should not be like that. It is really quite unhealthy. If people in the devolved institutions are messing up, they should be held responsible for that.

Simon Hart

Just on a practical point, we have talked also about adjusting the number of AMs and MPs, so that will inevitably result in constituency boundaries that are not identical. Therefore, if you have concurrent elections on different boundaries, do you agree that that compounds the problem?

Professor Scully

That would be just one more complication. That would also make things rather complicated for a lot of the people who do the mundane work of electoral administration, which is an unglamorous but very important job, and we do not particularly need to make their job any harder.

Chair

We are running out of time a little bit so I am going to ask Geraint Davies to ask the next question quickly.

Geraint Davies

Professor Scully mentioned that when you ask people, “Do you want a say?” and it was in relation to referendums, they tend to say yes. Would you agree then that, if you say, “Would it be better, other things being equal, to decide things locally rather than over there?” they also say yes? Also, you mentioned that people at the moment tend to sort of blame Westminster and praise Cardiff. Do you think there are inherent problems and that we may end up with a situation where people have referendums where they vote for something that is not in fact in their interests because there are economies of scale, or whatever it is?

Professor Scully

I am not sure about that. If you ask people and they have not been thinking about it a great deal, “Do you want a say?” they tend to say yes. If you ask them about which level of politicians they trust most, it tends to be those who are a little bit closer to them physically, geographically. When it comes, though, to real referendums, asking people about their views, slightly different dynamics start to kick into play. First of all, a lot of people who said, “Yes, I want a say,” do not get interested at all and do not turn out and vote. Of those who do participate, there is pretty robust international evidence, with which I think British experience is consistent, that there is a reasonably strong sort of status quo bias to referendums. In other words, if people are unsure, they tend to vote for what they have now. To get people to vote for substantial change, you do generally have to make a reasonably compelling case.

Geraint Davies

I am just making the point that you sort of made the point that, other things being equal, the proposition of devolution is very attractive because it is always, “We will do more here,” even if in the outcomes it is not always as attractive.

Professor Scully

What we are finding from our public survey evidence is that it is more about attributions, particularly of blame. If you think things are going badly—and most people think lots of things are going fairly badly much of the time—who ultimately is going to be responsible for that, or who are you most likely to attribute blame to? People in Wales are disproportionately likely to attribute that to Government in London and to Westminster, and they have lower levels of trust in MPs than they do in AMs, even though I do not think there is any very detailed evidence that people know more about their AMs or whatever.

Geraint Davies

I think Professor Wyn Jones mentioned that he thought we should have 100 Members in the Assembly and that would be representing 3 million people in Wales, but, of course, there are nearer to 60 million across the United Kingdom. Do you think, from your point of view, it would be a good idea to have 20 Assemblies of 100 Members with devolved powers everywhere? Obviously, I appreciate that 20% of people in Wales speak Welsh, but, putting that to one side, in terms of the efficacy of government, do you think there is a case for more and more of these units, localised Welsh Assembly‑type Governments elsewhere?

Professor Wyn Jones

I am happy to discuss my views on how you govern the UK, but the point—

Geraint Davies

I am thinking of the cost and the overheads of administration as well.

Professor Wyn Jones

I am trying to make and the report tries to make is a different one. We have now in Wales a powerful Welsh Government. It has a large budget and extensive powers, and the question is, is it being held effectively to account and can 42 Back Benchers do that? I think the evidence suggests not. It is in the context of an already-existing Government: is that being held properly to account? It is not a general point about, “Should you have regional devolution in England?” or whatever. I happen to think not, but that is beside the point.

Geraint Davies

Why not? Why should they not have it?

Professor Wyn Jones

Because there is no demand at all in England for regional devolution—at all.

Geraint Davies

So it is about demand—not outcomes then. It is a political question.

Chair

We are probably getting slightly off argument, but it is a very good question and I find myself in some sympathy with my colleague here. If you do not think they should have regional devolution, do you not think they should have in England an English Parliament—the equivalent of the Welsh Assembly or Scottish Parliament?

Professor Wyn Jones

Personally, yes.

Chair

That is a great short answer. Can I turn to Simon Hart who has one final question?

Professor Wyn Jones

It is not a UKIP answer.

Simon Hart

It is a sort of “And finally” question, but I just wondered what you read into the rebranding of “Welsh Assembly Government” to “Welsh Government”. What does that mean to you and what does it mean to voters?

Professor Scully

My own view is that it is essentially recognising a fact on the ground. This has become customary usage. It is the term that has been adopted a little bit like, in the 2006 Act, the recognition of the effective de facto abolition of the body corporate and the establishment of a separate Executive and legislature. That had become an established fact on the ground and was recognised in legislation. I think this is fairly similar really.

Professor Wyn Jones

Just to add to that, we were talking earlier about attribution and who is responsible for what. Clearly, there was huge confusion in the early years of devolution and a lot of frustration that people were not recognising a difference between the National Assembly for Wales and what the Executive in the Assembly was doing. There was not that kind of awareness. We have seen since then a gradual attempt to make sure that people are aware there is a Government that is being held to account by the National Assembly. I think that WAG—the “Assembly” there—was probably slightly confusing. Therefore, “Welsh Government” probably makes it a little bit clearer that there is an Executive and a legislature.

Simon Hart

Is there any evidence that suggests that voters have cottoned on to that yet? I have to say, if our constituency caseload is anything to go by, there is precious little evidence that that has made any difference at all.

Professor Wyn Jones

There is some evidence that, over time, there is a little bit more clarity than there was, but there was complete confusion in the early years of devolution.

Simon Hart

So it is now only partial confusion.

Professor Scully

Yes. It is improving from a low base; I think that is the technical term.

Professor Wyn Jones

It is improving from a low base, yes.

Chair

We will end on that positive note. Thank you both once again. It was entertaining, interesting and useful, so we are very grateful. Oral evidence: Pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Wales Bill, HC 692 2