COMMISSION ON THE POWERS AND ELECTORAL ARRANGEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WALES

MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS

of the

EVIDENCE OF:

NAZ MALIK, DIRECTOR

ALL WALES ETHNIC MINORITY ASSOCIATION (AWEMA)

held at

Committee Rooms

County Hall, Haverfordwest

on

Friday, 11^TH April 2003

LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much for coming, Mr Malik. What we have been doing for all witnesses is to ask them, first of all, to identify themselves for the sake of the record and then, secondly, to perhaps give us a presentation of some five or ten minutes just to open up the discussion and then we can follow whatever issues the Commission might want to.

MR MALIK: My name is Naz Malik, I live in Swansea and I am the Director of the All-Wales Ethnic Minority Association which has the acronym AWEMA. I hope you have received the document which we submitted. I am sorry it was a little bit late but it was a bit rushed. Perhaps if I can just start off by saying that the total perspective of our organisational presentation is a black one, if you like, in the sense that we wanted to focus on issues to do with black minority ethnic communities in particular because we rather suspect that there will not be that many organisations that might give that view, so it was important from our point of view that we actually took the equality aspect and did a presentation on the basis of equality generally but with a focus on race and ethnicity as such.

We are beginning to get rather concerned that although the Government of Wales Act has an Equality Clause with section 120, it is not really cut out to mean what it is supposed to mean or what we thought it meant. We are beginning to be told by the Assembly that section 120 in fact is just supposed to mean that the Assembly needs to have due regard to the principle of equality of opportunity but that it is not supposed to promote equality of opportunity, which means rather more to lawyers and barristers than it does to me, but I thought that what the Equality Clause should have meant is that the Assembly will function on the basis of what the needs of all the communities are, so that is a rather worrying sign which has only just emerged.

If you look at our document, what we have tried to do is give an overview so that you can follow our logic and what we have actually done is at the front of the document we have stated our conclusions under each of the headings that you have provided with your consultation document followed by our recommendations, so that you can see what conclusions and recommendations we are arriving at but then to give it some kind of substance or some kind of context we have proceeded to give a commentary under each of the headings and then state using that commentary what our conclusions are. We felt that it would be better to take that approach for you to know where we were arriving at rather than where we were coming from and then you could perhaps see where we were coming from.

In general terms it seems there is a big issue on representation, which should reflect the kind of multi-cultural society that we are, and we feel that at the moment the Assembly certainly does not reflect that and that bitter experience is beginning to show that if one relied on political parties then we are not going to deliver some kind of equality of representation or some kind of reflection of the society in which we live. It is our view that while the Commission is deliberating that the Commission can actually promote and help and come up with mechanisms that would direct the minds of the political parties to ensure that there is some kind of representation, and if there were a mechanism that the political parties had to adhere to or work towards, it makes representation rather easier than if it were left to their own devices or it was left to good practice. I do not know if you have had the time to read it. I do not particularly want to start going through the document, but I would be quite happy to follow it up by questions and answers if you like.

LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much indeed. Can I start off by asking you a question of clarification. On page 6, paragraph 4), the one that starts: "AWEMA believes that there is a case for increasing the number of Members if additional powers were conferred on the Assembly ...". What I do not quite understand reading the rest of the document in the light of that sentence is are you saying that the number of Members should only be increased if powers are increased or are you saying that an increase of powers is one of the circumstances which would justify it?

MR MALIK: No, I think elsewhere in the document we say that and I really cannot remember where it is. If you look at paragraph 1) there we strongly urge the Commission against maintaining the status quo, so we are really starting off from that point of view but that was addressing a different question.

LORD RICHARD: It seems to be a contradiction in paragraph 4). You also repeat the wording of paragraph 4) later on in the document. I cannot put my finger on it. It is the "ifs" that I find difficult.

MR MALIK: I think there may be a contradiction in the sense that we are not arriving at a definitive recommendation, we are not saying that that is how it must be, but I think you will probably find that the reason why it seems that it is a repetition is because our recommendations have simply been lifted from the main body of that text, if you like, so you will see that where the document actually talks about the size of the Assembly with the acquisition of further powers, that those recommendations in fact are at the end of that part of the document.

PAUL VALEIRO: I am getting a bit confused there. If you look at page 12, recommendation 4) it seems fairly clear "if at least ten per cent of the AMs", so this would only be its recommendation then. That seems to be fairly clear to me.

MR MALIK: It does sound confusing but that comes under "The Size of the National Assembly - with no change in functions" but the recommendation that Lord Richard is speaking about I think comes from the document that starts on page 13 - "The Size of the Assembly - with the acquisition of further powers", and recommendation 4) is the same one as it is on page 15, if you like. It has simply been cut and pasted at the front of the document so that you can see the way we were going to actually approach that. What we did not want to do was say what the definitive number should be or what should happen. I think our starting point is that given the amount and the volume of work that the Assembly is doing, we think that the status quo does not need to remain anyway. In that sense it is a contradiction in terms, I agree with you, but it is not meant to be.

PETER PRICE: If you take either paragraph 5) on page 6 or on page 12 the one clause referred to in paragraph 4), both of them refer to having a mechanism in the electoral system which would, taking the language on page 6, take account of the Marginalised Equality Strands - that is race, minority religions, and minority languages.

MR MALIK: Yes.

PETER PRICE: You have talked today again about having a mechanism. What mechanism is the question, because we have heard evidence of different electoral systems from other people, we have heard evidence focusing rather a lot on the figure of 80 Members instead of the present 60. Suppose that we were moving to plucking a figure of 80 Members and you took either a constituency-based system or a regional list-based system, how in either of those systems would you guarantee that representation which you are seeking?

MR MALIK: I think one of the points that we make is we are somewhat agnostic about what the mechanism should be. What we want to look at is what it should deliver. I think the most important thing that we state in our document is that what needs to happen is that whichever mechanism is arrived at or is used it has got to be tied into the political parties. For example, if you were to say that of the 80 or 100 or whatever it was, that five of those Members should come from a list that looks at equality strands, for argument's sake, the responsibility for fulfilling those equality strands should come from within the political parties, so would the political parties, as they have done in the case of women and having all-women short lists to deliver more women into public institutions and democratically elected institutions, have a similar mechanism? A similar mechanism cannot be worked with ethnic minorities because the spread of population is not as even as it is with women throughout the country where it shows that in general terms there is a 50/50 uniform spread. Where that happens it is possible to have an all-women short list but what we cannot arrive at is a mechanism which says that the ethnic minorities must have ten per cent of the seats because there is not a uniform ten per cent spread throughout the country.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Could I interrupt you again. It is a sort of factual point which ran through my mind when I was reading your paper. You refer to 8.7 in Cardiff as being the number of minorities.

MR MALIK: In percentage terms, yes.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Minority ethnics. Because I am ignorant, I would like to know what are the percentages and what are the actual figures for the whole of Wales for the different ethnic groups?

MR MALIK: The 2001 Census has produced figures. If you look at the figures in total it works out at 62,000.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Out of, roughly speaking, three million?

MR MALIK: Yes.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: And the 62,000, how did they sub-divide?

MR MALIK: If you took it on a uniform basis throughout Wales it is 2.2 per cent, if you took it on the basis of what percentage there is in Cardiff, Cardiff has 8.4 per cent, Newport has 4.8 per cent, Swansea has something like 2.2 per cent. Of the 22 local authorities in Wales I think there are four that have less than one per cent, so 18 of the 22 local authorities have more than one per cent within the population. That in itself should suggest what the problem is. The problem is we cannot, in all honesty, turn round and say that ten per cent should be in West Wales because there may not be the number of people available or the number of people who might have an interest in that. So the mechanism that one needs to come up with has got to be somewhat different from the one that has been used for all-women short-lists or other processes.

LORD RICHARD: The all-women short list mechanism, if we can call it that, is an internal party thing?

MR MALIK: Yes.

LORD RICHARD: Presumably on the ten per cent you want to force the parties to go in that direction?

MR MALIK: To an extent, yes.

LORD RICHARD: You want a law, in other words, that says in any party organisation when it comes to elections that the Conservatives and the Lib Dems and the Plaid and the Labour Party should have at least ten per cent, on your figures, of ethnic minority candidates?

MR MALIK: I am not too sure that I am recommending legislation for that.

LORD RICHARD: How else would you do it?

MR MALIK: I think it is in your gift to come up with the mechanisms. The issue here is whether there is some kind of inequity? In the new politics we talk about inclusivity, in the new politics we talk about including people from all community groups, and yet when we actually look at the institutions that are being established, those institutions do not deliver or do not reflect the kind of society and community in which we live, and if it does not deliver that what we now need to start doing is to examine at how we actually arrive at a solution which does reflect the kind of society in which we live. Whether it is by legislation or whether it is by recommendation or whether it is good practice, I do not think we have arrived at a solution ourselves because we can see what the problem is.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Mr Malik, in the Government of Wales Act section 120 goes a long way. If we are not going to legislate for forcibly having a minority of ethnic minority Members, what it says is: "the Assembly shall make appropriate arrangements with a view to ensuring that its functions are exercised with due regard to the principle that there should be equality of opportunity for all people." That is a pretty ringing endorsement of the general principle. Then secondly, sub-section (2) says: "Each year the Assembly shall publish a report containing a statement of the arrangements made and an assessment of how effective these arrangements were." That gives a very big handle to people who are interested within the party and as constituents to say, "What are you doing about this and if you are not doing it ..." I have not seen one of these annual reports by the Assembly but they presumably are being produced and they would provide a very good lever, so to speak, to bring pressure to bear on Members of the Assembly?

MR MALIK: If I could direct you to page 9, point number 7) under "Policy Developments", we actually talk about the Equality Clause there as well. It requires the Welsh Assembly government and indeed the National Assembly for Wales to have a consideration of equality in all its deliberations - exactly what you are saying is in section 120 - but our dealings with the National Assembly have just revealed something different. The day before yesterday we had a meeting with the Equality Policy Unit. We are now being told that the legal advice that is being given to the civil servants is that does not mean to say you need to promote equality. Forget racial equality for a minute, let's just talk in terms of equality on its own. There seems to be a difference of legal opinion, if you like, that is beginning to emerge from within the Assembly where the advice that is being given suggests that you do not need to promote equality, you just need to give due consideration to equality, and the advice that the Assembly Members are being given, or certainly the civil servants are coming up with, is that the Assembly in the last four years has gone rather beyond its powers, its powers do not include promoting equality. This is in the context of negotiating with the four equality organisations in this case, the ones I have mentioned - Stonewall Cymru, the Wales Women's Coalition, Disability Wales and AWEMA.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: Two questions. The first is that the Assembly lawyers are just lawyers and lawyers are fallible human people and they may have come to a certain view but in the long run it would be a court that would decide, would it not?

The second point I put to you is that since this Act was put on the statute book, the Human Rights Act has been put on the statute book, and that will give a much larger aperture for legal argument. I am afraid I have not got the Human Rights Act with me but it will give a much wider opening even than section 120 of the Government of Wales Act.

MR MALIK: It does not address the issue of representation though?

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: No, it does not.

MR MALIK: We need to be quite clear about what section 120 does. I think it is Article 13 perhaps you are referring to which has brought about the Human Rights Act. We are beginning to find the limitations of the Human Rights Act now as well.

SIR MICHAEL WHEELER BOOTH: When you talk about representation, you get into the very tricky area of telling electors who to elect ---

MR MALIK: We do that now anyway, do we not?

LAURA McALLISTER: There is another point to mention, that the only legislation that has come through relating to candidate selection has dealt purely with the gender issue, sex discrimination of the actual candidate, et cetera. I wanted to ask a rather more fundamental question, if I could, because we seem to have leapt straight ahead into issues of how to ensure that the Assembly is more representative of the black and ethnic minority communities. I just wondered if we could step back a little bit and if I could ask you a very basic question which is: if your goal as an organisation is to ensure that the black and ethnic minority communities have their agenda fairly represented, how pivotal or how fundamental is it that you have a percentage from your groups represented in the Assembly? I think you know what I am asking. What I am asking is it more important for the agenda of the Assembly generally to be pushing this equality agenda regardless of whether there are black and ethnic minorities there, or is this ten per cent quota, or whatever you decide it is, or whatever we decide it is, the key to unlocking the equality agenda? Do you have to have the two together? Can you have one without the other? Does the elected body have to be a microcosm of the society it represents or can it act as an agent of all of the different groups?

MR MALIK: I think you touch on a very important point. I think the important point is not so much percentages and quotas, it is the knowledge and experience. If you look at the document, the theme that we started with is even with the current Members that are there, there is not the depth of experience and knowledge of all community groups even within the constituencies. I do not think any one of the Assembly Members, or indeed for that matter Members of Parliament, can claim to have the knowledge and experience and understanding of the various community groups that they represent. I think the important thing here is that for us to have good legislation and good governance that experience and knowledge has to be present. I rather suspect that if I had to cast my cross on somebody's name, to use a personal example, if my wife were standing (as opposed to somebody else who was a black person but did not have a clue about of the range of issues that she perhaps has an understanding of) I would be more inclined to put a cross against her name knowing that she has got the knowledge and experience, and yet she is not black. So the important starting premise is is there enough and adequate knowledge and depth of experience? Our starting point is that there is not. What we are saying is for good legislation to come about, for good governance to come about we have got to come up with mechanisms that provide us with the means, if you like, of that experience and knowledge being present in the Assembly, and we think that the present system does not deliver that.

LAURA McALLISTER: Could I follow that up. Would you accept a scenario then whereby the equality agenda of the Assembly was sufficiently robust in relation to black and ethnic communities but there were no elected AMs from the black and ethnic communities, or do you think having elected representatives is a way of ensuring that there is a better engagement from the community that you represent with the devolution project?

MR MALIK: I can see the point that you are making. The point one would make in the opposite direction would be that one should be able to say if all 60 Members were all black or all from the ethnic minorities, would the white community feel that their views were being represented? I rather suspect that they would be rather vociferous in the view that it was impossible. I would put the same argument to you, I do not really think it is possible. That is one point, but I think more important is the point that we really need to make or the issue that we need to deal with is the issue of role models. We also need to deal with issues of sending strong and powerful messages. In sending strong and powerful messages what are we saying to the society that we are in, that it is inclusive, that it is representative, that it includes all sections? If you cannot see it, let alone know it and feel it in the policies that are being established and developed, if it is not there hitting you in the face, then I do not think that institution has got the confidence of all sections of society that it seeks to represent.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: I wanted to broaden it out to put representation to one side for a moment if we could and to talk about the role of the Assembly generally in promoting equality. I am not sure I understand the point that you made on page 9 about the Equality Clause and the argument about the interpretation of section 120. Are you saying that you are dissatisfied with the progress that the Assembly have made? Are you saying that you are dissatisfied with some of their policies, that they are not robust enough or ambitious enough or whatever, or are you saying there is an issue of powers? If it is about the powers of the Assembly to do something, which powers need to be transferred and from where in order for the Assembly to do what you want?

MR MALIK: Taking the powers first, if I may, it seems to me that there is no real understanding. Even if you took section 120, four years on it seems that suddenly even the Assembly officials do not understand whether they have the power or not because the comment that was made to us is that the advice is promoting equality as not a devolved power.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: Could I just interrupt you. I thought that all public organisations now had a duty to promote equality and in fact the Prime Minister was the first one to sign up to a charter and so on and so forth?

MR MALIK: That is right and I think some of the civil service lawyers do not seem to have heard that speech. I do not know, I am simply saying to you what we were told the day before yesterday.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: Could you give us a concrete example of a power to do what? Is there anything specific to illustrate it?

MR MALIK: I think we would have to take it across the board, across the spectrum in issues of health, in issues of education, in issues of housing, the full range of issues that the Assembly deals with. If in dealing with those issues all it has to do is "have due regard" to equal equality of opportunity, I do not know what that means if it does not mean that you have got to promote equality of opportunity. If they are saying that by promoting equality of opportunity they are going beyond the powers that they have, then the whole thing collapses. It means that all 16 subject areas are being run by bureaucrats where the budgets are predefined as to what is going to happen in education, health, economic development, and so on. If there is not that power to promote equality of opportunity then I think we have got a fundamental problem with where the National Assembly stands and what powers it has.

Just to finish the point, if I may. I think there is a contradiction which we are beginning to grapple with as well. The Race Relations Amendment Act places a responsibility, a specific duty on all public authorities to promote race equality, so the word "promotion" is not being used in terms of equality of opportunity as contained in section 120 and yet there is a contradiction suddenly and we have asked for clarification as to what that means. Does that mean that the only thing the Assembly can do is promote race equality in everything it does but can ignore all the other equality strands? I do not know.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: The Assembly has the power to grant aid for refuges for black and ethic minority women fleeing domestic violence, it has the power to fund special teaching of English as an additional language, it has the power to provide clinics for people suffering from sickle cell anaemia. I am trying to think of all the public services for which the Assembly has policy and funding responsibility and how there might be a special impact on people from black and ethnic minorities. What more power does the Assembly need to have in addition to what it has got the power to do already? It sounds to me that you want the Assembly to be more proactive, to be doing more, to be doing it faster, than an actual transfer of a section of an Act that at the moment only the Minister for the Department of Trade and Industry in London can implement or only the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister can implement. Can you keep going with this theme for me to help me understand?

MR MALIK: I certainly can, and with the greatest of pleasure. What we are beginning to realise is that the last two or three engagements with the Assembly are beginning to show that in the consultation documents when we have responded on BME issues that the recommendations that we have made are not having an impact and are not being mainstreamed into the policies that are emerging. The question we want to ask now is does the Assembly have the power to promote that kind of work? You mentioned the establishment of the refuges, which was very welcome, and that has only happened in the last two years as well, it has only recently happened. The question that we now have to face is if we are being told that the Assembly does not have power to promote equality in the broader sense, does that mean that the funding for the refuges (which has taken years to become established) is suddenly beginning to be threatened? I think those are questions that we need to face and we need to find out whether we do have the power or not. This kind of question arose over the issue where the four organisations receive a small grant of £50,000 a year over a period of three years and we were being told that we should really start looking in terms of sustainability and seeing where the funds should come from. We said, "Okay, fair enough, we can face that kind of question", but the question we wanted to pose back to them was how serious were they about equality? That of course is when it all came out, when we were told that, "We do not have to promote equality in Wales, we just have to give due regard to equality." I was very grateful that this information emerged only two days before I was coming here. I let it be known to them that I would raise this as an issue. Is it a devolved power? I do not think it is but this is what we are beginning to be told.

LORD RICHARD: What do your lawyers say?

MR MALIK: This only happened the day before yesterday. I rather suspect that if it is splitting the words, if we are saying "due regard", the question I would ask lawyers, of which I am not one, is what does "due regard" mean. Does it mean we have got to have a policy and once we have got a policy we can shelve it or does mean that it has got to translate into some kind of action? Then how does it contradict the Race Relations Amendment Act which specifically states that you have to promote race equality? We have not really taken it to this stage because it has only emerged in the last two days.

LORD RICHARD: The point that has just been put to you is that you are talking about the issue of an increase in the powers of the Assembly. What you are talking about here is a clarification of section 120 of the Act as to what certain words in that section mean, "due regard" and the implications of it. You are not actually asking for the Assembly to be given more powers but to exercise the powers they have already got more effectively.

MR MALIK: Yes, I would pose that comment the other way round, if I may. Although we are asking for clarification, if the clarification then suggests or then definitively establishes that the Assembly does not have the power to deal with issues of equality ---

LORD RICHARD: It depends what you mean by "deal with"?

MR MALIK: By that I mean does it have the power to have policies that can be implementable, which have an outcome, which have an effect and better the lives of people from disadvantaged communities, of which people from BME communities are one? If they do not have that power I think that power should be devolved without any kind of hesitation. The way we want to try and approach it is to see for the people living in Wales how they are affected by the policies, and if they are affected by the policies they should have a say or they should be part of the decision-making process of those policies. If they do not have the power we are going back to the pre-1999 days, if you like, which were rather frustrating where if you had a problem in Swansea you had to go and deal with it in Westminster, which made issues rather remote.

I am just reminded about what happened with Nelson Mandela in Robben Island where he was in prison for 27 years. If he wanted a blanket because it was cold he would negotiate with the guards to have an extra blanket rather than go back to Pretoria as to what the next instruction should be. I think on a similar basis what we are really arguing here is do we have the power? If we do not have the power we believe that it should be devolved. What we are also finding (and we look to this in the evidence that we have given) is that particularly where black people are concerned there is this further marginalisation because if the Assembly is going to turn around and say, "We do not have the power, it is nothing to do with us guv’" kind of thing and then we go back to mainstream government departments and they turn round and say, "We have devolved all these powers, you have got an Assembly of your own, go and see them", we are being doubly disadvantaged, if you like, and that is also beginning to happen through the Home Office.

TED ROWLANDS: I think section 120 places an obligation on the National Assembly, and by its very nature it is a section of an Act of Parliament that if you found as an organisation that in any of its programmes it was not observing or not in any way ensuring minority interests were fully upheld then you would have a very good case and you could use the strength of that piece of legislation. Can you give us an illustration in any of the National Assembly/Welsh Assembly government programmes where you do not think the issues of equality have been properly addressed? If you give us specific examples we can then test whether section 120 has strength or does not have strength.

MR MALIK: This again is something that we look to in our document. What we wanted to look for was a strategic approach towards race and ethnicity from the Assembly.

TED ROWLANDS: In housing or in health, have you got an example or illustrations of where minority interests are not being upheld or in any way are not being regarded?

MR MALIK: I was just going to say to finish off I would rather put it the other way round in a slightly positive sort of way. Other than the housing department of the National Assembly I think all the other departments are failing to take the issues of race and ethnicity seriously. That is our experience. Our experience with the housing division is they have got a housing action plan that is being implemented throughout Wales. They have taken very seriously the issue of race equality training and they have commissioned the production of a training manual which will place a requirement on all the RSLs or all those who deal with issues of housing that all of them are properly trained over the next two or three years on issues of race equality.

TED ROWLANDS: That is a very positive one and you have got no complaints?

MR MALIK: Extremely positive.

TED ROWLANDS: What about education?

MR MALIK: Non-existent. Even asking for ethnic minority reporting in education is a huge problem. I am glad you picked the issue of education because one of the things that emerges in research that has been done elsewhere in England - and that research is non-existent in Wales but we rather suspect that it is reflected here as well - is that black children, particularly from a Caribbean origin, perform very well in their primary schools but between primary school and A-levels they perform rather poorly and simply asking for some kind of monitoring to take place, we are in fact having a great deal of difficulty in having the principle established. We are saying that over the period of the next six years you need to do some kind of monitoring to see whether that applies.

TED ROWLANDS: Therefore you would say to the head of the education division, "In that case are you not obeying section 120 of the Act", and what would he say to that?

MR MALIK: I do not know. This is what we are saying. If this is what we were told two days ago, we are questioning the whole purpose of section 120, but we are taking it from the pure focus of the BME perspective, the black perspective. I rather suspect that if it applies to us it applies to all the other equality strands, which would be a great source of concern.

TED ROWLANDS: I was going to ask you about your alternative that you put to us in a recommendation on page 12 of an Assembly sponsored public body.

TOM JONES: I was going to ask about that. How realistic for one thing is it to rate a new body as an alternative to not having direct representation within the Assembly itself and how would that work differently to the Commission for Racial Equality, for example?

MR MALIK: I must say that when I was writing about the ASPB as one of the possible solutions I had to swallow politically very hard to put that down because we are creating another quango which is not something that I politically favour. We felt it was better to put it down for due consideration at the very least. I know there are political risks involved in that. If we were to say that the Assembly does have a responsibility on equality issues, then you either strengthen your Equality Policy Unit, which we are saying, and which we say in our submission is working on what we would describe as one of six cylinders rather poorly, you either do that or take the function completely out and say, "Look we have got to get a semi-independent body funded by the Welsh Assembly which looks at all the strands of equality with a particular focus on those strands of equality which are marginalised within the strands of equality." I do not think it would be a bad proposition, on serious reflection and setting aside one's political convictions. I think if we are going to do the work seriously and if we are going to make sure that equality is taken seriously and is applied seriously, then there has to be a dedicated division or a dedicated organisation that looks at it in the whole.

Our worry also is with the Single Equalities Body, which is also under consideration through the Home Secretary, there is no mechanism, even within the consultation document, which says that when the Single Equalities Body comes about that its powers or its functions will be devolved to Wales, so we will be back to square one with the problems we have with the Commission for Racial Equality.

TOM JONES: Are you making that recommendation to us?

MR MALIK: I am certainly making it as a recommendation to be considered, yes.

LAURA McALLISTER: What exactly? Is it a Single Equalities Body as an autonomous Welsh office under the control of the Assembly or do you want something different to that?

MR MALIK: I am saying where equality issues are going to be considered they have to be devolved and the responsibility has to lie with Welsh Assembly because I think it is important that if there are issues of concern that they are dealt with locally. When I say locally, I mean on a Wales-wide basis. What we would not be very happy with is for us to be told by the Assembly, "It is not us, guv’" and the others saying, "Go down and see the Assembly", which is a great issue for us.

TOM JONES: The evidence we seem to be getting these days, apart from the Children Commissioner, is that the Assembly sponsored public bodies are less independent, which is the word you have just used, the Assembly has more direct control of them, and therefore your other proposal of having a dedicated unit with some sort of standing forum or external body to check it would be a better alternative to creating a new body which would be non-elected.

LAURA McALLISTER: Except from what I understand you are saying that would rationalise the sub-offices of UK bodies. It would not be a new quango, it would be a Welsh office of the Equality Opportunities Commission which is controlled by Westminster not the Assembly and you would have a Welsh office of the Disability Rights Commission and so on.

TED ROWLANDS: SEB is going to bring all this together and therefore there would be a Welsh dimension to that?

MR MALIK: That is not the recommendation. It seems that the Home Secretary is not favouring devolution ---

LAURA McALLISTER: Is it your recommendation?

MR MALIK: It is our recommendation that whatever happens should happen within Wales and wherever the ultimate responsibility lies, the responsibility must lie with the Assembly and it should be the Assembly that is accountable on issues of equality.

TED ROWLANDS: I am dredging my memory on when the Bill was going through. I got the impression that the Disabilities Commission and the people involved in that were not keen to break that up because they wanted to establish genuine equality and disability rights across the United Kingdom.

LAURA McALLISTER: Ted is right, I happen to know. The disability agenda is slightly different to the other equalities agenda and the case that they are making, as I understand it, is that they feel disability would be marginalised in a Single Equalities Body which is why they were keen on a UK dimension, not for other reasons.

MR MALIK: The wonderful thing is if you talk to all the different equality strands they all think they are going to be marginalised. Interestingly enough - and this is something I was very surprised about - women, particularly from the Equal Opportunities Commission being the most prominent and the ones that have made the greatest advance, felt that if there were a Single Equalities Body it would be race equality that would hijack the entire show, if you like, and yet when you went to the CRE and those that work in race equality they all felt that if that were to happen then there is precious little gain that they have made and all that would be lost.

TED ROWLANDS: There are not many people in favour of this SEB at all?

MR MALIK: No, but we are going to have it because it is going to save some money.

TOM JONES: You also refer in your document to having the worst of all worlds so far as (a) you do not think the Assembly is delivering well enough and (b) since devolution the UK Whitehall ministries working in the non-devolved areas do not consult you properly. Have you got any examples of where you think that the Whitehall department took a consultation exercise and either forget to ask Wales-based organisations or presumed that the Assembly would provide and gather all the information from Wales?

MR MALIK: There are concrete examples.

TOM JONES: Can you give us some examples?

MR MALIK: Part of our funding comes from the Home Office as a Connected Communities Grant. One of its functions is to make the connections for communities with the mainstream communities, if you like. The funding was coming to an end and what we were told was, "You proved your worth, the Assembly should now be funding you", so we went to the Assembly and the Assembly said, "It is not our purpose, you really need to go to the Home Office." The Home Office is saying, "You have shown us your worth, you have shown what you can do and what needs to be done, surely you have proved to the local authorities and to the National Assembly that there is a need for the kind of work that you are doing?" but it took some serious representations to be made for that funding to be extended, which has been extended by six months. That is one example.

The other example is if you look at issues like these citizenship desks for immigrants seeking British citizenship. There was a huge consultation in the UK going on but there was a consultation in Wales as an after thought. Somebody suddenly decided, "Oh heck, we have not done anything in Wales yet, let's get down there." AWEMA was contacted and we had to put a consultation together for the appropriate department over a period of two or three weeks, whereas the others had been working at it for months. That is a second example.

There is a third example and that is for the delivery of international development. There is a strand of thinking from within the DFID that the BME communities need to be used to raise the capacities of the BME communities to be able to deliver on seven Millennium Developmental Goals between now and the year 2015, where the infant mortality rate needs to be halved and HIV/Aids needs to be tackled and so on, there are six or seven goals. A strategic grant body was being put together and Wales was not even considered in it until we came across it by chance and said, "Is anybody from Wales on your strategic grant and core group?" and we were told, "No, there is not and we had not even thought of it." We are faced with huge problems and we are beginning to be hit from both sides.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: In the Welsh Assembly government there is a Minister with specific responsibility for equality. It was Edwina Hart, it is now Carwyn Jones. It would be interesting to get his view on the issues that you have raised but also if you could update the Secretariat as this issue develops over the next couple of months so we get a clear understanding of whether it is powers, interpretation or political will.

MR MALIK: That is what we have said, that we will be writing to them to seek clarification. One would have to say that with Edwina Hart when she was the Minister for Equality she was doing a fantastic job and the gains that we have made I would say are largely down to her and her commitment. I do not think we have had the opportunity to see what Carwyn can do. He is a little bit hesitant when it comes to issues of equality. That is our experience so far.

PETER PRICE: On a point of detail you said a six-month extension. Was this from the Home Office?

MR MALIK: Yes.

PETER PRICE: The main thrust that I want to ask is how do you currently engage with the Assembly - ministerial level, AM level or civil service level? What are the mechanisms that you use?

MR MALIK: AWEMA as an organisation have a small secretariat of 12 full-time members of staff and there are three working volunteers as part of the secretariat and we have organised ourselves through subject and project committees. We have a committee on health, on education, on housing, on economic development. There is a project that we are working on which concerns the right to vote and citizenship and democracy, and what we, in fact, do is around the various initiatives or schemes or subject headings we invite particularly BME professionals within those fields to provide expertise to consultation documents that come from the Welsh Assembly, so we respond in writing to the consultation documents purely from a BME perspective because we feel that that is what we are there to do. So on the one level we engage with the civil servants on consultation documents and that is where we say it is not having any major impact where strategy is concerned. We do see senior civil servants. The Permanent Secretary has a BME advisory group which he meets with three times a year, sometimes four times a year, but that is on issues of employment and outreach work that the civil servants need to take, so we engage on that basis as well. We also try and organise regular meetings with the various AMs about surrounding issues within housing, culture, sport, economic development, education and health, and so we have met with the politicians. We get a good commitment from the politicians but it is not translating into any kind of meaningful policies.

LORD RICHARD: Mr Malik, thank you very much indeed. As you can see, you have promoted a stimulating and very interesting discussion. It has been very helpful.

MR MALIK: Thank you very much for the time.