Assembly petitions reforms outlined

As attentions turn to the Fifth Assembly, a Petitions Committee review
has recommended a number of improvements to the petitions system.
(Pic : National Assembly of Wales)

(Told you so.)

The National Assembly's e-petitions system, launched in 2007, has become one of the main ways the public and organisations influence decisions made on our behalf.

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Local Democracy petition given short shrift by AMs

LA! LA! LA! LA! WE ARE NOT LISTENING! LA! LA! LA! LA!
(Pic : Carmarthenshire Planning)

When it comes to rotten boroughs in Wales, there's one that stands head and shoulders above any other and that's Carmarthenshire, which is being run in a manner similar to Saudi Arabia; there's a token elected body but an unelected monarch calls the shots.

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Armed Forces School Visits Debated

(Pic : Education Business Partnership West Berkshire)

In June, the Assembly's Petitions Committee published a report (pdf) into armed forces recruitment, following a petition from Cymdeithas y Cymod – which garnered more than 1,000 signatures – calling for the military to be banned from visiting schools for recruitment purposes.

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Kickstarting Welsh Hearts

Petitioners have asked the Welsh Government to consider widening
access to, and awareness of, public defibrillators.
(Pic : zoll.com)

(Owen : Some work is being undertaken on the house over the coming week which may/will result in my internet connection being disrupted - possibly for several days, maybe longer. So if I don't post on my usual schedule that'll be the reason why.)

Following hot on the heels from their previous report, last week the National Assembly's Petitions Committee published a report (pdf) into a petition submitted by nurse Phil Hill which secured 78 signatures. He submitted the petition whilst working on master's degree research into attitudes towards public defibrillators.

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Should the military recruit in Welsh schools?

(Pic : The Telegraph)

Last Friday, the National Assembly's Petitions Committee published a report (pdf) on a petition submitted by Cymdeithas y Cymod, which gathered a total of 1,074 signatures online and offline.

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Carmarthenshire Goes Rogue

I don't make a habit of returning to things that haven't concluded, but I'll make an exception in Carmarthenshire Council's (CCC) case, as the local authority continues its downward spiral into chaos.

The fallout from two critically damaging Wales Audit Office (WAO) reports continues – I don't need to tell you to follow the Carmarthenshire blogs and South Wales Guardian there – with an extraordinary general meeting of CCC due to be held on 27^th February to discuss them.

The opposition Plaid Cymru group seek to table motions of no confidence in senior officers and members of the Executive Board - which decided to award the pension payments and indemnity in the first place.

The recent intervention of Keith Davies AM (Lab, Llanelli), who's joined calls for Mark James to be suspended, is significant because – as Carmarthenshire Planning has said – he's the first senior Labour figure to voice that opinion and could – as Y Cneifiwr has said – give some Labour councillors a "green light" to back a motion of no confidence or abstain.

I don't know much about internal Carmarthenshire politics, but judging by the numbers it's likely any motions of no-confidence will need at least 10 votes from Lab-Ind, or abstentions, to succeed. Easier said than done.

I'm sure many councillors would've wanted an immediate extraordinary meeting, but it was perhaps the right decision to give the debate some breathing room, even if it extends the headlines for several weeks.

You would've expected suspensions of the senior officers involved too because of the seriousness of the judgements. It's the sensible thing to do – to protect the officers as much as the reputation of the council - but CCC are delicate little flowers and are never, ever, ever wrong!

The formal responses from CCC have been quite astonishing and have read like North Korean news bulletins.I expected a rebuff, but not to these levels.

Caerphilly took it on the chin, but unfortunately it's since descended into an unedifying "tu quoque" bun fight between Labour and Plaid Cymru. It looks like Pembrokeshire are dilly-dallying – though the former Council Leader, John Davies, has been big enough to admit they were wrong. Neither have reached anywhere near the same levels of petulant delusion as Carmarthenshire.

It's an old trick Fungus used at Manchester United – make "your side" (Labour & Independents) think the whole world's against you and it'll create a siege mentality where everyone will pitch together and dig in to win whatever the cost. Fungus was also often described as a Stalinist. And, as history has taught us, sometime an autocrat can get you to do what they want just by being in the same room and looking at you.

The Legal Advice

Aside from the publication of the WAO reports themselves, preliminary police involvement and the intervention of Keith Davies, the biggest development since has been the publication of two pieces of legal advice CCC received in relation to the indemnity funding. As far as I can tell there's been nothing relating to the pension payments, though Pembrokeshire Council are due to debate that later this week.

The first set of legal advice from 2008, by James Goudie QC (pdf), suggests the 2006 Order didn't override clauses in the Local Government Act 1972 (Section 111) which grants local authorities any and all powers to discharge their functions – what West Wales News Review described as a "Get Out of Jail Free Card".

Basically, if CCC want to ignore the 2006 Order, they believe a certain interpretation of the 1972 Act and how the 2006 Order relates to it gives them the power to do so.

As far as I can tell though, that would only be the case had Wales voted no to devolution in 1997.

The auditor said the 2006 Order provided a statutory code to Welsh local authorities outlining precisely when a Welsh local authority can indemnify officers in libel defences, explicitly prohibiting their use to undertake a claim.

Last time I checked, Carmarthenshire was in Wales and the National Assembly has responsibility for most aspects of local government within Wales. What the Welsh Government says in that regard, goes.

Although James Goudie QC disagrees with this, he says in no uncertain terms that "the restrictions in the 2006 Order and the Welsh Assembly Guidance on the bringing of defamation are a weighty factor against granting an indemnity" and that "it will be extremely rare for such a decision by the Council to be reasonable."

The broad conclusion of the 2008 legal advice was, therefore, "even if you can do it – don't". A common sense cautious approach could've interpreted it as advising against awarding the indemnity quite easily.

The Executive Board were apparently told there was unequivocal support in favour of granting the indemnity – which was bullshit, as there in black and white in the legal advice itself.

The second set of advice, from Timothy Kerr QC (pdf), is retrospective and doesn't add anything new. It's basing the lawfulness of the indemnity, largely, on the (for now) successful outcome at the High Court and on similar grounds to the Goudie advice (Section 111 powers).

The outcome isn't important. The lawfulness of the indemnity when it was originally granted is. Therefore, the 2008 advice trumps anything after it.

The WAO reports were written with full knowledge of both sets of legal advice and other unpublished correspondence, so I doubt the publication of the advice damages the credibility of Anthony Barrett's reports at all. It's now CCC's word against the WAO and will almost certainly head for the courts unless "something else" happens.

When it comes to matters of public finance, I know whose unqualified opinion I believe carries more weight.

Carmarthenshire : Rogue State?

We deal with upstart rebel territories a bit differently nowadays.
(Pic : themiscollection.com)

CCC are not only thumbing their nose at the WAO, Anthony Barrett, the opposition, the media, Carmarthenshire's council taxpayers and pretty much everyone who disagrees with them, they're also challenging the Welsh Government's authority.

By resorting to a justification based on the 1972 Act, they're effectively saying the 2006 Order isn't worth the paper it was written on. I hope Lesley Griffiths, the First Minister, AMs and civil servants in Cathays Park can see that. Their rather timid response to date shows they perhaps don't.

If CCC are given an opportunity to overturn WAO reports in relation to remuneration and indemnities, it could lead to challenges under the 1972 Act provisions to all sorts of Orders issued by the Welsh Government. It undermines both the devolution of local government, and the mandate Welsh Ministers have from the Welsh electorate to make regulations in that area.

That's before considering the serious damage it would do to the Wales Audit Office's reputation.

Carmarthenshire are, in effect, trying to seize control of some aspects of local government finance from the Welsh Government via a loophole that shouldn't even be there.

In less-enlightened times, if a local fiefdom were undermining the authority of the central government and its public servants in such an insolent manner, legions of knights would now be crossing the Loughor and heads would be put on spikes.

We're no stranger to this. Senior officers in Carmarthenshire are in danger of joining the long list of shit heel petty princes who paid the price for getting ideas above their station, having little care for the damage it could do Wales as a whole.

Councillors have been left in a tough position. Many will be swayed by the legal advice, but if they focus on the first set alone, and fully comprehend it, they'll realise the case for awarding the indemnity was likely to have been exaggerated beyond recognition.

I even feel sorry for Executive Board members. They still have to go for their own incompetence, but they've been done up like kippers by people they surely trusted. The sillier ones will still trust them, and will be standing there alongside the officers when the inevitable happens one day.

This is in danger of becoming a national embarrassment, and because of CCC digging their heels in, is more serious than it otherwise would have been.

A failure to, at the very least, suspend those involved temporarily means Carmarthenshire may as well be considered a rogue local authority that's become a law unto itself, needing to be brought to heel in the same way Anglesey was.

This isn't just about the credibility of CCC now, but about the credibility of Welsh local government and some of our most important public institutions.

When it rains....

I doubt anyone will have noticed this, but another sign of both the implosion within CCC's bunkers and contempt they hold the National Assembly and Welsh Government has come from an unexpected source.

The National Assembly's Petitions Committee recently discussed a petition to list the former ground of Llanelli RFC and Scarlets - Stradey Park - which has been eyed up for a controversial housing development (since under construction, apparantly).

The petition itself was closed after Culture Minister, John Griffiths (Lab, Newport East), said no more could be done (pdf).

Here's edited version of what was said at the Committee meeting last week on this petition :

(Chair) William Powell AM (Lib Dem, Mid & West Wales) : We....received a response from the Minister for Culture....and from Carmarthenshire County Council....I think it would be fair to say that we found a degree of churlishness from the local authority. I have had sight of e-mails from the local authority officers that fall some way short of courtesy to the team that supports this committee and to us. I think we should put on record that that is regrettable. Possibly, we might wish to bring these matters regarding the curt and somewhat inappropriate tone of the correspondence to the attention of the leader or chief executive of Carmarthenshire council.

Joyce Watson AM (Lab, Mid & West Wales) : I think courtesy is the least that anyone can expect. Are you telling me that what is printed here—I read this a few times—is what you received? Was this it?

(Clerk) Mr George : No, this was the second response that we received. The first response was shorter than this.

William Powell AM : I believe that it was, ‘No, no and no’

Joyce Watson AM : That sounded -

Mr George : I went back to say that the response was likely to be put before the committee and, maybe, they wanted to reconsider. We then got this response instead.

Joyce Watson AM : ....I move that we write to the leader of the authority, Councillor Kevin Madge, and to the chief executive.

William Powell AM : Mr Mark James.

Joyce Watson AM : We should simply say that, in our opinion, it is not normally the way we receive correspondence from those that we ask questions of. For as long as I have been on this committee....I have not seen anything so brief, so blunt and which lacks complete engagement, quite frankly.

William Powell AM : It may, at the least, flag-up some sort of training need and the need for people to be called to account.....it would be useful for us to write to the chief officer and the leader of Carmarthenshire....just to flag up that matter, because it shows a discourtesy to the committee, to our team and, indeed, to the petitioners to have adopted such a tone.

It's unclear precisely who sent the "No, no and no" response, though the Head of Planning at Carmarthenshire Council is Eifion Bowen. You can read a tidied-up of CCC's curt and disrespectful response to both a National Assembly Committee and more than 4,000 petitioners here (pdf).

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A oes heddwch?

The Temple of Peace is more likely to be used for exams or to film Doctor Who nowadays,
but will its original vision find new life one day in a Wales Peace Institute?
(Pic : BBC Wales)

On Wednesday, the National Assembly debated a Petitions Committee report into a proposed Welsh Peace Institute. The report itself (pdf) was published in October 2013.

The original petition calling for a Wales Peace Institute received over 1,500 signatures, though it took four years from receipt of the petition to get this far. In the process, the Committee received more than 50 representations to their consultation, which they claim is the most responses they've ever had.

The Committee made only one recommendation - that the Welsh Government work to bring interested parties together to flesh out what such an institute would do and how it would work.

The Report's Findings

The report cites three other examples of "Peace Institutes" across Europe, the
Flemish one being all the more poignant considering the anniversary this year.
(Pic : centenarynews.com)

The petitioners provided some outline of what they wanted an institute to do, backed by Plaid Cymru MEP, Jill Evans.

They envisage :

• A "relationship" with the National Assembly in order to judge how their actions impact human rights, in addition to Welsh and UK defence and foreign policy. They want the institute to become a "non- partisan authority on peace issues".
• A single reference point for information and education about peace, conflict resolution, disarmament etc. and developing links with other peace institutes and international agencies (like the UN) which deal with human rights.
• Freedom to seek independent funding by commissioning research, as well as becoming a consultee with respect to the National Curriculum.

The petitioners explicitly say they're not expecting state funding, they simply want a look into how practical it would be to set the institute up. The Committee say that without that extra detail they found it hard to come to a conclusion, and could've contributed to the length of time it took to get through the Assembly.

The Welsh Government's initial response focused on the academic side of things, like university research and collaboration. The petitioners saw the proposed institute's role being much broader, taking research into "peace studies" out into the public sphere.
The report cites three examples of other "Peace Institutes".

• Flemish Peace Institute – Established in 2004 after powers relating to licensing the arms trade were devolved to the Flemish Parliament (could you imagine Westminster doing that!?). The remit was broad and covered international relations, polemology ("war studies") and peace in society. The Institute is fully financed by the Flemish Government and can also seek external funding.
• International Catalan Institute for Peace – Established via a Catalan law in 2007 following a public campaign. Its remit broadly covers conflict resolution and research relating to it. It's fully funded by the Catalan Government and has to publish an annual report to the Catalan Parliament. It's governing body includes Catalan MPs.
• Peace Research Institute Frankfurt – Established by the Landesrat (State Parliament) of Hesse in 1970, its funding comes partly from both the Hesse State Government and the German Federal Government. It undertakes research and practical work, and is the "leading adviser in Germany" to the German Government on some aspects of policy.

The Committee say there are three main things they can take from the other Peace Institutes.

• Political Independence – Many of the institutes stressed the importance of being arms length of their respective governments, but despite this there have been suspicions that such organisations are "leftist" (in my opinion, those suspicions are sometimes valid). This was overcome by trying to include more conservative politicians in discussions and undertaking academically rigorous research.
• Funding – All three stress that structural funding is more important receiving funding on a project-by-project basis. The Frankfurt institute even suggests funding could be based on an endowment (donations by individuals to a trust, with or without restrictions on how it could be used) in order to ensure independence. The Committee say it would be "difficult to assess how much a Welsh Peace Institute would cost", and that the Welsh Government would be reluctant to foot the bill.
• Regional Parliaments – All three were established by regional parliaments, which aren't responsible for defence or foreign affairs. So there shouldn't be any reason Wales couldn't establish such an institute either, in principle, as the same applies here.

Many of the consultation responses came from individuals and religious groups - Welsh non-conformist churches have a history of pacifism, for example. Many organisations believe a peace institute would be "desirable" – including the Welsh Refugee Council, their reason being that it would provide an independent voice for refugees and asylum seekers.

However, Higher Education Wales rejected the idea, saying many universities already have research programmes into peace that were "held in high regard".

The Committee concluded that although they can't map out what such an institute would look like, they "support it in principle", believing it could help "add value to the Assembly's work and wider civic society".

The Assembly Debate

The Welsh Government rejected the idea of a Welsh Peace Institute, but
broadly supports the concept of peace within public policy.
(Pic : Flakt Woods)

A large chunk of the Assembly debate itself (available here) went over many of the points raised in the report, so there's no need to go into much detail.

Christine Chapman AM (Lab, Cynon Valley) said that while peace, human rights and things like foreign policy aren't devolved, there's room for the Assembly and Welsh Government to get involved in this. She said that there's no need to "replicate exactly what they (other peace institutes) do", though there's no reason peace couldn't become a "cross-cutting theme" in Welsh public policy.

There was lots of support, including from (as you might expect) Bethan Jenkins AM (Plaid, South Wales West), Julie Morgan AM (Lab, Cardiff North) and Simon Thomas AM (Plaid, Mid & West Wales) – the latter needing some help in the cause of peace at the moment.

Support also came from unexpected quarters – Janet Finch-Saunders AM (Con, Aberconwy) for instance, who recalled hopes that the horrors of the First World War would create a culture of peace that, as we now know with the benefit of hindsight, didn't materialise.

There were dissenting voices. Nick Ramsey AM (Con, Monmouth) said he didn't support a Welsh Peace Institute, though – slightly strangely – the rest of his speech set out a backhanded case for one, and that "any discussion about peace is a good one to have in the long term".

Minister for Communities & Tackling Poverty, Jeff Cuthbert (Lab, Caerphilly), responded on behalf of the Welsh Government by saying any further work should be "undertaken by an independent body", effectively rejecting the Committee's recommendation, albeit not rejecting the idea of peace playing a role within public policy completely.

This echoes the Welsh Government's official response (pdf). The First Minister said despite the fact he "wholeheartedly supports the promotion of peace on our society", there was too little detail as to how such an institute would work, noting that the petitioners hadn't agreed on what an institute would do, so the case for it was "inconclusive".

He also believes any further work needs to be done by the petitioners themselves – not on behalf of the Welsh Government - as any formal Welsh Government involvement could give the petitioners false hope that an institute could be established.

Peace in our time?

There's a long tradition of pacifism amongst radical and religious groups in
Wales. But this idea looks as though it's - barring more detailed
proposals - going to rest for now.
(Pic : indymedia.org)

It's not over, but it could be a while before anything gets done. I don't want to stick the boot in, but this account from Caerau Greens perhaps indicates the size of task ahead, as there appears to have been some sort of disagreement between the alliance of peace groups which backed the petition in the first place.

Any further work will probably have to be undertaken by the Assembly's Cross-Party Group on Human Rights in order for a serious proposal to be put forward.

Arguments that resort to violence as the first option are almost always on shaky ground, and far from being a sign of weakness, seeking peaceful resolutions to difficult problems is often the harder option and possibly, in some cases, a sign of strength.

However, the very concept of a world free of violence is depressingly out of reach.Violence is something that happens, is a natural behaviour and is sometimes necessary.

• See also : Defending Wales Parts 1-10

I'd support an independent Wales being a "neutral state" (more here) – which is very different from a pacifist state - oppose NATO membership (for practical rather than ideological reasons), and believe Wales should only get involved in various adventures abroad either in self-defence, as part of a mutual defence agreement, or under an internationally-agreed mandate - after all attempts at negotiation have failed.

Any future Welsh troops should be taught "soft" military skills - like dealing with natural disasters, disarmament, negotiation skills and humanitarian issues - as much as "hard" military skills.

If Wales is going to make a serious go at this, it should be linked to a university/universities and produce credible academic research – not just on international relations, but things closer to home like domestic abuse, alcohol-related violence, extremism, cults, football hooliganism, Carmarthenshire Council, organised crime and bullying.

That could be very useful for the Welsh Government, AMs, social services, schools and the police. Some Welsh universities are already doing that – Aberystwyth for the international side of things, Cardiff for things like alcohol-related violence, and Prifysgol Cneifiwr for Carmarthenshire.

A Peace Institute could bring all that together under one umbrella and link it to wider civil society instead of it being stuck in an academic bubble. I think that's what the petitioners were aiming for.

I have to agree with the First Minister though that this needs a clear "vision" to be credible, instead of becoming a "club" for committed activist groups who are perhaps just as motivated by politics and individual causes as promoting peace generally.

An interesting and novel idea, but the case perhaps just wasn't strong enough.

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