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National Assembly for Wales

I will be mild in my criticism, but I thought it was completely disgraceful. It showed a great lack of respect for the blossoming new democracy that we have in the nation of Wales, with a Welsh Government doing very good things and the road of devolution moving forwards. Where important decisions can be made locally by the people they affect most, that is what should happen. It was very unfortunate, to put it mildly, that the Prime Minister showed such disrespect to the leader of the Welsh Assembly Government.

The other propositions in the Green Paper include the idea of a five-year cycle for the National Assembly for Wales detached by a year from Westminster’s five-year cycle. That might be quite sensible on the grounds that it would be unfortunate to have both elections on the same day because there could be confusion in Wales as a result of the media carrying more about UK policies of the Labour party and other parties that may differ from those in Wales. It is important in the interests of effective democracy, and effectively communicating democracy, that the elections do not occur in the same year, and I am therefore minded to support the idea of moving to a five-year cycle displaced by a year.