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

 MINUTES OF PROCEEDINGS

 of the

 EVIDENCE OF:

 LORD LIVSEY OF TALGARTH, CBE

held at

 THE ROYAL WELSH SHOWGROUND, INTERNATIONAL PAVILION

 on

 THURSDAY 8 MAY 2003

 In Attendance

Lord Richard, Chair, Richard Commission

Lord Livsey

Paul Valerio, Richard Commission

Sir Michael Wheeler Booth, Richard Commission

Vivienne Sugar, Richard Commission

Peter Price, Richard Commission

LORD RICHARD: Could I start off by thanking you very much for coming? It is good of you to give us the time. What we have asked people to do is to briefly introduce themselves for the sake of the record, and then perhaps open up what you want to say for five-to-ten minutes or so. Perhaps we can then pursue what it is you would like to pursue, or we would like to pursue.

LORD LIVSEY:

Absolutely, thank you very much indeed Lord Richard. It is a privilege and a pleasure to be able to be here today. I do have copies of my submission, about nine copies actually. I do not know whether it is desirable that you have this now, but I do not particularly want to tediously go through it page by page. It might be helpful so you can see where I am drawing at.

I would hastily make the point that up to the point when I became an old age pensioner, in 2000-01 I had an office with five staff; I now share an office with five people and have a secretary two hours a week. If my representation on paper is not quite as comprehensive as some you have had, I apologise and I am sure the Committee will understand.

The contents of the document that I am submitting today are my own views, approached from a Welsh Liberal Democrat perspective. I say that because I have been completely dedicated to devolution and a Welsh Parliament since I was a teenager. The reason for this is my father died when I was the age of three. Basically he was an economic migrant from Wales, from Brecon, and died in the Middle East – in fact is buried in Basra as a result of contracting Malaria. So I had a pretty horrendous time through two Gulf Wars because I have never been able to see his grave.

I have relatives that emigrated from Wales to South Africa, America, and New Zealand. I know that is the experience of many Welsh families, particularly those associated with South Wales. I just feel that many of them migrated in the prime of their lives. There was an inadequate economy running in Wales and no way of having a direct influence as to how that economy was run.

What I have put forward is with that motivation behind me, which is a big one, my experience as an MP and campaigner during the 1979 and 1997 referendums, and also into the process of putting the Government of Wales Act on to the statute book in the House of Parliament in 1998, and the subsequent operation of the National Assembly for Wales. So I will work my way through this with some of my own comments, which may necessarily not be down on the paper.

First of all, the paper is split into five sections. There is an introduction, there is an analysis, there is a part on the powers, there is a part on the electoral arrangements, and there is a conclusion. It is laid out in that way, particularly the last three items, which relate directly to some of the questions that have been put in your documents. Like the Irishman, I would have said really, when asked how to get somewhere, ‘Well, I would not have started from here.’ But we are here and I have to go with that in mind.

Now, I will put a little bit of history in here because I think it is important. I do not want to dwell on it too long, but I do think it is very important to relate to how we got to the powers that are contained in the Government of Wales Act. On page one of my submission, in fact a lot of work went on between the opposition parties before the 1997 general election; in particular, the Cook-MacLennan Agreement between certainly the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. This was a much wider agreement than perhaps just the devolution of power within the UK. It covered reform of the House of Lords and many other aspects of the constitution.

Indeed, when the opposition won the election in 1997, these proposals that had been worked out prior to the election, both within the parties and in discussion as well, a proposal for a Parliament for Scotland and an Assembly for Wales and Northern Ireland came to the fore. We know precisely what has happened in Scotland with its primary legislative power.

It is certainly my belief that a lack of a constitutional convention for Wales prior to any legislation taking place, or to a referendum, severely constrained the situation in Wales. Both Alex Carlile and myself called four times for one between 1989 and 1995 – we were both at one time or another leaders of the Welsh Liberal Democrats – for a constitutional convention, but we could not get the other opposition parties interested in having a convention. I think the Scots – indeed, I have been living in Scotland for eight years and am very familiar with the scene there – were way ahead of Wales when it came to actually constructing a bill for devolution.

When it came to the referendum, I would just like to analyse it a little bit. It had to be quite rightly based on the Labour Party’s general election manifesto. That was inevitable but certainly looking from the outside in, as far as we were concerned both as Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru that there was a compromise within the Labour Party, because there were a diversity of views in the Labour Party – I do not want to make this a political occasion, I am trying to be as objective as I can – which meant that those opinions had to be really contained within the referendum proposal. Really I believe the referendum was only won because there were genuine reformers in parts of the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, and Plaid Cymru who formed a united front for a ‘yes’ vote. Crucially, as a result of preparations before the ’97 elections, there was support from the Government at Westminster, and that was crucial in gaining a ‘yes’ vote.

The Government of Wales bill as originally drafted was therefore was inevitably a mirror image of the referendum proposals and followed very closely structures and policies contained in the referendum document. In my view, the bill was very timid when viewed by a Liberal Democrat MP like me, as I was at the time. I campaigned for years – four decades – for a Welsh Parliament with primary legislative powers. Indeed, it did not seem to me that the bill met the aspirations of the Welsh people.

We did our best to amend the bill and we recognised that the Secretary of State Ron Davies had gone as far as he could within the constraints of the various views within his party. In the final analysis we wanted to see the bill succeed, so we put down amendments as markers really which would improve the bill and ultimately the legislature itself. The additional functions that we wanted at the time of the Wales bill was going through were contained in amendments.

I am coming at this from the view of a federalist. Our policy was for a federal UK with the old Welsh Office powers being devolved to a Welsh Parliament; obviously with Foreign Affairs, Defence, Treasury and the Home Office affairs still being dealt with by Westminster. I think a lot of damage has been done to the federal case in the tabloid press and other places, in that you look at the Oxford Dictionary definition of the word ‘federal’, it says ‘a form of government in which two or more states form a political unity but remain independent in internal affairs.’ Now this has been lampooned on the European stage by various Euro-sceptics, etc. I think now the public itself does not really any longer understand the basic principles of federalism.

However, if you look on page three of my document, you will see that we put down amendments in favour of primary legislative powers, tax varying powers, primary legislative powers for agriculture, transport, and broadcasting. We also put down amendments for a cabinet system of government, election by single transferable vote, or indeed open regional list elections, and a 70- or 80-member Assembly. We wanted direct communications with the EU, and independent committee clerks offices of the Assembly; in other words, servants of the Members of the Assembly, but we did not get that. We failed to get it.

It was only after two years of the Assembly that we really got proper clerks who service the Members who are independent of the executive. This really held up matters. Of course there is now a clerk to the Assembly being appointed. A lot of that I think is old ground and a lot of that has been viewed and has moved forward, so the situation is certainly not what it was four years ago. There were many other amendments, but I hope this gives some idea.

The Government of Wales Act of course had to be put into practice by the new Assembly Members, the Cabinet, the ministers, and the civil servants. The frustrations of only being able to execute secondary legislation are very well-known. Certainly in agriculture, particularly with Defra, I believe many frustrating problems have surfaced.

If I can give you an actual example that I heard of only yesterday: I was contacted by a farmer – as was the MP – who had some sheep on the Black Mountains. Defra put up a fence dividing the Black Mountains. It was impossible – it was all done very quickly – to keep some of the ewes and the hefts actually together. What subsequently has been discovered is that 400 of this farmer’s ewes were in the area where a slaughter took place. Indeed, now that he is trying to get redress financially, neither Defra nor the Assembly will take responsibility for this. There are 400 sheep accounted for, but the farmer has not been paid and nobody is saying that they will actually pay. That is I think an example of the consequence of what is wrong.

Even with health and education, free care for the elderly, and the abolition of top-up fees for students, are two examples have been ways of trying to get around that within the Assembly. Certainly the Assembly cannot do what Scotland has done with these matters. We believe and I believe that the Government of Wales Act should have provided Wales with a legislative parliament. It should have replicated the Scottish model, but the time was not right clearly in 1998, or in the referendum; public opinion was not right for that, but I believe now with the Richard Commission Report that we can put a lot of these matters right in a logical model for the better government of Wales.

This week there is a communications bill going through the House of Lords where there have been endless representations from Wales for a consultative body for Wales to deal with the new body Ofcom. The minister who responded in the Lords only yesterday was stating that there was no case for any representation from Wales and there is no representative from Wales to be on the Ofcom board as far as I know. One of the amendments we had down in the Wales Bill, and the other parties, was to make broadcasting a function of the National Assembly, as far as certainly an overview was concerned. But we are back to square one certainly, as far as that is concerned.

In item three, as far as powers are concerned – and I will try to move on as fast as I can – there is a question asked in one of your documents, ‘Does the Government of Wales Act provide the Assembly with the powers it needs to operate efficiently?’ I believe the answer to that question is ‘no’, because it only actually has powers for secondary legislation and not primary legislation. Indeed, I have listed there in the middle of the page some fundamental reforms which cannot be pushed through the Welsh Assembly. Certainly in agriculture, as I have illustrated, we have local government [inaudible] bills, contacts with Europe which are exceedingly difficult, transport, and the police force.

The fact we can only get through Westminster one bill per year which is actually a Welsh bill – we have only had two in the last four years, one was the children’s commissioners bill and the other the NHS Wales bill, which has been renamed and it is called the Wales Health bill now – but we have had clauses in education and local government bills on an England and Wales basis. Really that is totally inadequate; it is in the slow lane of legislation and it is going to take decades to get what we want through.

I am particularly concerned in the fields of transport and the environment, but Wales has also been denied representation on the Strategic Rail Authority and a separate Environment Agency for Wales. I believe both of these bodies are crucial for the creation of a sustainable Wales, which is one of the principles of the Welsh Assembly. I mention on the top of page six problems with animal health during foot-and-mouth disease. I understand you had the farmers with you this morning, so you will be very well-briefed on that I am sure. And I believe that the National Assembly does need primary legislative powers in order to govern more effectively in the interests of the people of Wales.

Now tax varying powers to a strict percentage limitation either side of a mean is important. I believe that, for example, money could be identified if a bill went through Parliament giving that tax varying power or primary legislative powers for specific economic development: business projects specific to better quality and increased employment; particularly for infrastructure, where we are miles behind nearly everybody else. It is significant that the Irish have a £30 billion infrastructure programme. A lot of that is European money, Objective One money for infrastructure, but of course the Objective One we now have in Wales is not available for infrastructure projects.

That I think is a problem. We will never be a united nation unless we have a proper infrastructure, whether that is broadband, roads, or rail. We have got to be connected to each other and I think this showed up very clearly in the recent election. I believe that there should be no taxation without representation. Indeed, tax varying powers are absolutely vital. We should not shy away from the negative arguments against it. I note that the Richard Commission rightly emphasises the importance of policies and scrutiny and accountability, and emphasises the translation of powers as being crucial.

There is no doubt that because we do not have enough primary legislative bills going through the Westminster Parliament, and we have no powers in the Welsh Assembly, that the timeframes involved in getting legislation on the statute book is lamentable. If we want to get something done it takes years. That I think is something that has not always been taken account of. If we do have that power, then obviously the workload on Assembly Members is going to be greater. We would have to increase the Assembly by at least ten and probably another ten Members later on.

I would certainly commend to the Commission really if we are going to have a parliamentary model – which I sincerely hope we will – that you look very carefully indeed at the New Zealand model. I have been around the New Zealand Parliament with their officials and with some of their Members. One of the things which particularly appealed to me was something that they call the Select Committee. In fact, it is a combination of a standing and a select committee in one committee.

That Committee has the power to put bills through Parliament to a certain stage. Obviously the whole Parliament considers them eventually, but in the working-up stage of a bill and the consideration of a bill in New Zealand, what they call their Select Committee – which is the same as a standing committee really – they can call evidence on clauses of bills and bring in the public if they want to make representations, they can bring in pressure groups if they want to hear representations from them, they are held in public, and those bodies and those individuals can contribute to the amendment of bills.

That is a very, very inclusive and relevant way of involving the public and pressure groups in the legislative process. That does not mean to say that they are actually doing it, because they are not people who have been elected and have the powers to do that as elected members, but nonetheless they have a pivotal role in working up far better legislation than would be the case otherwise. I would very strongly recommend to the Committee that they look at that system.

As far as electoral arrangements are concerned for the National Assembly, I would just like to preview what I have said in my paper with something which I believe to some extent has had an effect in the Assembly election we have just had. I think the method of election of regional Members would benefit from the introduction of open lists; that is, where the electors can choose who they want to actually vote for, rather than the parties. Indeed, I believe the electorate in Wales at present are dismayed when candidates who have failed in the first-past-the-post elections appear at the top of party lists and then automatically get elected as an additional member. I think this is a real switch-off to the electorate in Wales. I think it devalues the democratic process and there are far better ways of achieving what we want.

On page eight of my submission I have put three methods which could be used which would be an improvement on the present situation. I believe the single transferable vote would work best. You would not be surprised to hear me say that as a Liberal Democrat, but I am going to say in the next sentence that regional multi-member constituencies are not at all suitable for Wales. I believe that if two members are elected by STV per constituency – we have 40 constituency members at the moment and then you would have 80 members – then you would have a far better election.

It would be fair to all political parties because the electorate could choose who they want. Even if it is a member of the same party: if they do not like X and they like Y in the same party, then they can vote that way. If they want a woman elected, they can vote for a woman. Or if they want a good male representative and a good female representative, regardless of party, then they can have that with STV as well. That is I think by far the best method.

Secondly, you could have an alternative vote-plus system with an open additional member list, from which the electorate could choose their preference as a top-up. But if the present elected additional member system – that is, those members more than the 40 first-past-the-post – is to be retained, then to get absolute proportionality you certainly need at least 70 Members in the Assembly. It would be better with 80. You would get a far more representative election system as a result of that. Indeed, it is far better with open party lists and we had amendments in the bill in 1998 to that effect which were not accepted. I believe that closed party lists certainly should not be an option if the present system is retained.

Finally, to try and sum up in a very short way, I believe that the Assembly should be converted into a parliament with primary legislative powers, an 80-member parliament elected by a single transferable vote, with two members per constituency and combined legislative and select committees based on the New Zealand parliamentary model. I am sorry if I went over my time.

LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much indeed.

PAULVALERIO: You said you would like to see the numbers of AMs increased. Is that consequential to them having the increased powers? If for whatever reason we should recommend that it should remain at the existing number, would you still think that there should indeed be more AMs? Also, in your list of powers that you think should be transferred, do you think that possibly there is a case for having a separate legal system for Wales? There has been an extensive devolution; we have had evidence of that and there has been quite a lot of administrative devolution within the legal system. I am just wondering why you did not include that on your lists.

LORD LIVSEY: On your latter point, you are absolutely right. I have not thought it through, to be quite honest, as well as I might. Rather than having some airy fairy proposal. My colleagues certainly in the legal profession, a number who are probably well-known to you, are certainly of that view. I would certainly favour it. It is something essential, because if you are going to have primary legislative powers then you must have a stronger legal department. I am not saying now that we have got a 60-member Assembly that in fact we should willy-nilly expand it if it is going to have the same powers. I cannot see the point. What I am saying is that if there are primary legislative powers in the Assembly, then clearly there would have to be an increase in the number of Assembly Members.

PAULVALERIO: What would your views be on another alternative of achieving the 80 Members: having the existing 40 first-past-the-post for constituency to keep the constituency link on that basis, and the other 40 on an open list system, but done nationally as against the regions? Some people argue that the existing regions are not easily recognisable or identifiable to their constituents and it might be just as well for there to be a national list, which would also help smaller minority parties such as the Greens and possibly independents.

LORD LIVSEY: I can see the attraction of that, but I suppose being a good Welshman it is terribly important that localities are represented. The Welsh word ‘bro’ is very important indeed. This is where I part company really with some of my party’s policies on multi-member constituencies. I think the trouble is the electors and the public cannot identify with these great big areas, even sometimes – dare I say it – with the whole of Wales. If you think of the Euro MPs, the five of them, they are there but you cannot quite get your finger on at any one time what they represent on something in your area, etc.

There may be a case for the reorganisation of the regions. I would agree with you there. Certainly living in Mid- and West Wales, there is not always a synergy between certain parts of Mid- and West Wales. Certainly where my grandparents came from in Pembrokeshire, the way they think down there is totally different to the way they think here, for example. Given the results of the referendum, for example, and the way people vote in East Wales and West Wales, there may be a case for changing the regions. I think the regions came because they were the old Euro constituencies, but I think perhaps a rehash of the regions by open list would be a better thing.

If the Commission decided on 40 first-past-the-post and say 30 or 40 members elected in the regions, then I believe it is essential that that is done on open lists, but I do not like that system. I think STV is better, or alternative vote-plus is better.

LORD RICHARD: What you really want is to double-up the constituencies.

LORD LIVSEY: I do indeed, because I think people will actually relate to constituencies. They know what a constituency is. It would also sharpen up a lot of competition within the constituencies and you get far more active politics I believe as a result of that.

LORD RICHARD: Do you think they should be sort of ‘co-chair’ in this with parliamentary constituencies?

LORD LIVSEY: I think they would have to be in the first instance.

LORD RICHARD: What do you do about the number of MPs?

LORD LIVSEY: I have always been of the opinion – and so has my party – that when the Assembly gets, as I hope it will, primary legislative powers, that is the point where you would reduce the number of MPs, but not until then. I think it is a hopeless situation at the moment where the Assembly does not have primary legislative powers; all sorts of things are going through Westminster which affect Wales. I think to reduce the number of MPs while that is going on is really committing political suicide.

SIR MICHAELWHEELER-BOOTH: Going back to what you said in your introduction, there were various points which I did not quite follow. The first was about the Cook-MacLennan talks, what did they agree about Wales?

LORD LIVSEY: They, obviously both Robin Cook and Bob MacLennan being at that time Scottish MPs, and there having been a convention in Scotland already, they addressed that particular issue in some detail. But both were committed to devolution for the other nations in the UK. My understanding, and it is about four or five years since I have read the Cook-MacLennan agreement, there may be those here who have read it more recently, that there were proposals for a Welsh Assembly and a Northern Ireland Assembly within that. That was important. Also, there was reform of the House of Lords and matters pertaining to Europe as well; it was a whole constitutional package.

SIR MICHAELWHEELER-BOOTH: You refer to the attitude of the Welsh Office civil servants and their part in drafting the Government of Wales Act, but of course it was drafted by a parliamentary draughtsman by the name of Davis, I think. Yes, Philip Davis. But you imply that the Welsh Office civil servants wanted to some extent to emasculate the Assembly or make it harder for it to work. Why should it be so? What is your evidence?

LORD LIVSEY: [Inaudible] That is a perfectly fair and good question. I met the person you refer to, both in Westminster and in Cardiff. I am not making any personal accusations at all against him, but going into certainly the building in Cathays Park during the process of the bill, talking to various civil servants there, sitting down with them and letting them explain what was going on, I feel that the culture in the Welsh Office at the time was understandably – because they had just had three Secretaries of State in the previous party who came some little distance from Wales, shall we say – they were used to taking orders. They were used to having executive devolution.

I do not think some of them – and I am not slagging them off in any way – but I think some of them did not appreciate there was going to be a democratic breath of fresh air coming down the line and they did not appreciate that provision would have to be made in the bill to allow for independent clerks of the Assembly, for example. I was very surprised when this was in fact denied the Assembly, because in the first year of the Assembly when Members of the Assembly, many of whom had never been involved in a legislature before, were seeking advice they were getting pretty direct messages at the time which I am sure their previous Secretaries of State in the Welsh Office gave to their civil servants, saying this has got to be sorted. There was no discussion period on such matters.

Maybe I am being a bit unfair, but there should have been a more radical change of culture with officers of the Assembly at that time. For some reason, and I can only guess why – I am only giving you straws in the wind – there was a bit of ‘control-freakery’ going on. I think that is all behind us now, because we have had all kinds of things happen: like three First Ministers for example and all of the problems of that and going through them within the Assembly, and then the realisation halfway through the four years that just finished with the first term of the Assembly that they had to have a clerk for the Assembly, I think that was very significant indeed. Now the clerk has a staff and the legal department has been strengthened, etc. There is a much better balance. I think that is all behind us, but I think it is a pity that some of the amendments that were there on the table in the Wales bill did not actually come to anything at the time.

LORD RICHARD: How do you feel about the ‘corporate body’ point? I know that the Assembly has taken the ‘corporate body’ away; in fact, it has developed into a government and a legislature. Presumably if it is a corporate body you do not need a separate clerk.

LORD LIVSEY: I understand that and where you are coming from Lord Chairman, but I as hopefully a good Democrat certainly cannot accept that situation. I find it excruciatingly interesting that in Scotland, where they thought that they had a degree of democratic influence into what is going on, they now realise they do not really have any control over the money coming into the Scotland. Some economists in Scotland are saying, ‘Well, Gordon Brown rules.’

LORD RICHARD: I would be surprised at that.

LORD LIVSEY: Even though they have got tax varying powers, they decided not to use them in the first term of the Scottish Parliament. So there are even hurdles up the line, even if you have got primary legislative powers.

SIR MICHAELWHEELER-BOOTH: Could I follow up on a thread? In your introduction you talked about the New Zealand select committees. I have to ask you two points, really. Firstly, in one of the standard works on the New Zealand Parliament, they describe it as the most efficient legislative sausage machine in the world. Now that phrase has stuck in my brain from years past when I read this. That does not chime in with what you were saying. That is my first point on legislation.

My second point is this. In Westminster, it may be undone now that Robin Cook is gone, but there has been a lot of pre-legislative work which is essentially the same idea that you take evidence before you amend a bill, and you hear witnesses and hear experts. We do not actually have to go all the way down to Auckland, or wherever the New Zealand Parliament sits, to get an example of a better way of doing things than has been practiced heretofore at Westminster.

LORD LIVSEY: I do not know whether the person who said it was a sausage machine was a butcher or a spin bowler, so it is very difficult. I do not know where that phrase came from.

SIR MICHAELWHEELER-BOOTH: I think it was the then clerk of the New Zealand Parliament, who was a lawyer but he was also a professional clerk.

LORD RICHARD: He probably thought it was a good thing, not a bad thing.

SIR MICHAELWHEELER-BOOTH: No, he thought it was a bad thing.

LORD LIVSEY: Like a lot of discussions, this has been highly intelligent and enlightened, but the thing is that yes that may possibly be the case. I have only been in the New Zealand Parliament for a day, and that does not really say a lot. But I was very impressed indeed; not least because their second chamber stands empty. It was abolished 20 years ago and it is a unicameral legislature.

SIR MICHAELWHEELER-BOOTH: But they were given the choice of having a second chamber or having PR. They went for PR. Presumably, given your political attitudes, they made the right choice.

LORD LIVSEY: Well, you cannot always say they can have the penny and the bun, or the sausage, but PR is important. I think one would need to look in some detail – I am going to be objective – as to how the New Zealand legislature works. That part of it which I described fits into the whole. One need not necessarily have precisely the same model in other parts of the legislature as they do in New Zealand. That is what I would say as an answer to that.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: Can I take you back to what you said a couple of minutes ago about the relationship between the Scottish Parliament and the Treasury? One of the points you make in your paper as an example of where there is an argument for primary powers is free personal care. Now, I want to suggest to you that is more a question of policy being capable of being funded than anything else, and that Scotland have gotten themselves into considerable difficulty over the cost of it and also the fact that they have not understood the impact on other parts of the benefits system.

If there was a feeling in Wales that we wanted to provide free personal care, the choice at the moment would be to stop spending the same amount of money on something else, to balance the books, or I suppose you could use tax varying powers – if we had them. Would not a Chancellor sitting in London think, ‘Well, if they can raise that amount of money to do that, I am going to cut their spending at original settlement figure so there is no net gain.’ As a Chancellor, my financial strategy is about containing public expenditure. I would like to get you to talk about how you could cut that Freudian knot.

LORD LIVSEY: As someone who comes from a management background, an economic background, I think that you really have to manage your resources well, and look and take very hard decisions at some things you may be doing. This is before you actually maybe have a dialogue with the Chancellor. Yes indeed, you can cut back on some aspects of the budget and relocate that money into a priority which you think is a far greater priority, and with the money apparently being well spent.

You would certainly have to do that in certain circumstances, and different political parties and different political combinations have different priorities in this respect. I think that is a fair question that you put. There was the whole question with the Barnet Formula which I shied away from, which I have not mentioned in the paper, which I feel very strongly about actually that we are under-funded through the Barnet Formula in Wales.

It is a whole subject in itself really. Certainly in comparison to Scotland, we are not properly funded. It is a chronic situation, with our GDP still going down quite a lot and we have lost – off the top of my head – 10% of GDP while Scotland’s has gone up by the same amount. They have a far better deal out of Barnet. That needs to be reformed on the basis of need. We look at health, and we look at the health needs in Wales and the demography in Wales, there are many older people, then that has to be taken account of in the Formula.

Similarly, we lose out in many rural areas because the Formula there is not adequate for the funding of services in rural areas. The situation in Powys, certainly a year or two back, school buses cost £5 million. It came off the education budget. There is no real redress for that, but certainly in a county across the river 30 small schools have been closed in the last 30 years.

VIVIENNE SUGAR: Are you saying that reform of Barnet is a necessary requirement?

LORD LIVSEY: I think it is fundamental and I am sorry it is not there. If I had some research staff it would have been.

PETER PRICE: One of the areas in which you are seeking primary legislative powers is transport. You have just referred a moment ago to your experience in representing the area around here, which is a border area. If one thinks of that in relation to transport, what sort of powers do you think that the Assembly ought to have, both in respect of primary legislation and secondly in terms of changes to the pattern of executive devolution if there were no gain of primary powers? In transport.

LORD LIVSEY: Yes, I think you have got to separate out the railways from other aspects of transport to some extent, but there is no doubt that as far as the rail system is concerned we are at the very end, the last mile of the branch line. We will never get any investment unless we have some legislative powers over rail.

I know the Assembly has a Welsh Rail strategy. It has done its best to have an all-Wales strategy. It has the franchise out, which firms are bidding for, and all of that. But when you consider – perhaps you think now I am being a bit airy fairy – but when you consider the potential for renewable energy and the electrification of the railways in Wales, and the fact we can supply all of that energy from within Wales and indeed maybe even build a few new lines, that is something which we would need primary legislative powers for.

It is infuriating that the wind farm situation in Wales is controlled by the DTI and we cannot do anything about it. It is a real sore issue as far as communities are concerned in rural Wales. We cannot really in many cases have the necessary public Inquiry. Because the DTI controls it, we cannot have a proper energy policy for Wales really. We can have an aspirational one, but the real power lies elsewhere.

LORD RICHARD: Can I come back to the number of AMs? You favour as you said two per constituency. How could you get 70 from that?

LORD LIVSEY: You cannot. I would prefer 80. In the end, when we were debating the Wales bill in Parliament it was decided because on the books there was a 60-member Assembly, that we might get an amendment through with 70 but not with 80 at that time. Remember as well that we were trying to get primary legislative powers at the same time. No, it would not work properly with the 70.

LORD RICHARD: Thank you very much. We are grateful; that was very helpful to us.