There may be trouble ahead...
That would get a round of applause at the weekly meeting of the Welsh Parliamentary Labour Party.
The trouble is that it’s the same argument that a number of Welsh Labour of MPs have made at every turn of the devolution journey. I was a House of Commons Lobby Correspondent when the Richard Commission published the first call for a resolution to the ‘Jagged Edges’ of the devolution settlement and my notebook is full of such comments.
Same again when Peter Hain and Rhodri Morgan cobbled together a clever but clunky compromise to fast-track law-making powers in the Government of Wales Act 2006. It was accepted under sufferance.
To be fair they weren’t in power when the 2011 referendum on full law-making powers was conceded or they’d have done their best to block that. But when the Tory / Lib Dem Coalition put a range of powers on the table for cross-party agreement in response to the subsequent Silk Commission the Welsh PLP blocked powers over rail infrastructure being devolved (which would have resulted in Wales getting its share of HS2 funding that they later decried, then failed to do anything about).
But anyway, I’m getting side-tracked. My point is there has been a consistency of world-view from the majority of Welsh Labour MPs since powers were first conceded to devolved institutions. The position is not a response to the performance of the Senedd or the Welsh Government, it is a reflection of an instinctive resistance to devolving power to Wales.
There are reasonable practical arguments to be made against devolving further powers in a hurry based on the ability of the Welsh civil service to absorb significant extra responsibilities given its constrained capacity and capability. I set out the impact that a limit on the number of officials in the Welsh Government has had on the effectiveness in a book of interviews published by Cardiff University, which I brought to life with first hand accounts in my documentary podcast series Y Pumed Llawr / The Fifth Floor
But the case against further devolution is not made on practical nor on policy grounds, but on an a priori prejudice against further strengthening the Senedd.
Keir Starmer's Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens dismissed the case for devolving powers over policing and justice as "fiddling around with structures and systems when there are urgent things to be done to fix things, which is what our people's priorities are in Wales”. She raised no objections though about rearranging the number of Councils in England nor plans to abolish the offices of Police & Crime Commissioners. Apparently these constitutional changes met the people's priorities test.
There is no single, unified position among Welsh Labour MPs opposed to devolution. Mark Drakeford was right to push-back on Professor Richard Wyn Jones’ view on the excellent Radio Cymru podcast Gwledidydda earlier in the summer that there is an almost unanimously negative view amongst the current group of Welsh Labour MPs towards further devolution. Whilst Richard Wyn’s point has force, the former Welsh Labour Leader was fair in pointing out that it is much more complicated than that - there is more than one view amongst the MPs.
But it is true to say that the dominant view is hostile. The political team in No 10 need no reminding to tread carefully when it comes to meeting the demands of the new Plaid Cymru Government for powers over policing and justice to devolved - a position also held by the previous Welsh Labour administration. No matter that similar powers have been granted to Belfast and Edinburgh - even the Mayor of Manchester has greater powers of oversight of the police than the Welsh First Minister does - consistency does not trump power-politics in this debate. But maintaining the status quo feels increasingly obdurate when the boundaries of police forces across England and Wales are already under review by the Home Office with a view to rationalising their number. And a powerful new statement of policy on devolution published by the Cabinet Office in Andy Burnham’s first weeks as Prime Minister pledged an ‘the alignment of public service geographies, and the devolution of new powers and functions’ - specifically ‘This will include new local police units aligning with local authorities, and regional police forces, fire and rescue services and Integrated Care Boards aligning with the boundaries of strategic authorities by the end of the Parliament.
When he visited Port Talbot at the end of his summer tour Andy Burnham was asked if he’d respond to the mandate given to the new minority Government in Cardiff Bay to address the policing anomaly. “I hear what you're saying," he said. "That's an issue I'm certainly prepared to look at. As a former Mayor that had those responsibilities, I understand how much you can do when you can really make policing right for the places and the people where you are. So I hear that call, I'm open to the discussion with the Welsh Government. As part of the wider policing reform that's going on, it seems a good time to have a look at those issues. So I can't promise today, but what I can say is I'm open to the conversation."
His hesitancy reflects that fact that he knows a good number of his Welsh MPs will be in uproar if he follows through. "It will be a travesty and not in Wales's interest" one unnamed Welsh Labour MP told BBC Wales after the Prime Minister’s comments. "My feeling is they shouldn't devolve anything until we've got a grip of the NHS and education and Plaid have earned their stripes", they added. The coy MP would only say it off-the-record, but nonetheless with confidence, that a move by Andy Burnham to agree to the Welsh Government’s request for further powers would not be "welcomed by a majority" of Welsh Labour parliamentarians in Westminster.
The new Welsh Secretary Stephen Kinnock is well aware of the feeling of his colleagues.and will have little appetite to expend his political capital in taking that on in the way that Peter Hain did over law-making powers. In his first interview as Wales’ voice around the Cabinet table also used the formula of being ‘open to discussing’ changes to the devolution settlement. But he added: "As things stand, I don't believe that that case has been made", Kinnock said.
He argued that policing works across the England-Wales border. "I think we have to be evidence-based and it's really important to look at what are the costs and benefits of making change," said Stephen Kinnock.
That sounds reasonable doesn't it? Let's look at the facts - evidence-based policy making, that’s what we need!
Trouble is there’s already been a huge amount of work testing the case for change which seems to have passed evidence-hungry MPs by. Four years after Stephen Kinnock was elected as the MP for Aberavon the former Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord John Thomas of Cwmgiedd (a small village not 30 miles from Port Talbot) led a Commission on Justice in Wales. It made 78 (evidence-based) recommendations which were endorsed by the Welsh Labour Government.
The central conclusion of the Thomas Commission was that the current split of responsibilities between Westminster and Cardiff "has created pointless complexity, confusion and incoherence in justice and policing in Wales".The policy areas that affect crime and justice, such as health, education, housing and social services, are already devolved to Wales, while policing and courts remain reserved to the UK Government. The Commission unanimously recommended that Wales should have the same ability as Scotland and Northern Ireland to shape its own justice and policing policies according to Welsh needs.
The Welsh Secretary asked in his first interview "Would the Welsh people really benefit from a change? That's an open question. I'm not entirely convinced."
He may not be (though it is far from clear that he’s engaged with the evidence), but you can’t credibly say on the one hand that an evidence-based assessment is needed and then dismiss out of hand the report of a full-blown Commission consisting of the man who until very recently been the head of the judiciary and the president of the courts of England and Wales, a former Police Chief Constable, three law professors (one a QC, the other a recently retired as Director of the Prison Reform Trust, and the third one of the UK’s leading constitutional experts) and a number of other authoritative figures.
Disagree with them by all means, but you can’t seriously suggest there’s an absence of an evidence base.
But this isn’t about evidence. This is about power.
The most naked demonstration of this was from Carolyn Harris, the MP for Swansea East & Neath MP and Welsh Labour Deputy Leader on ITV’s late-night political discussion programme Sharp End in 2022:
Carolyn Harris (CH): “I wouldn’t be very enthusiastic to devolve policing.”
Rob Osborne (RO): “Why not?”
CH: “I just wouldn’t.”
RO: “Your colleagues in Cardiff Bay…”
CH: “Well, I’m not in Cardiff Bay.”
RO: “Are you in tune with what the Welsh Government’s doing? Do you support what the Welsh Government does?”
CH: “Ye, ye. Of course I do. But there are some things I would like to stay in Westminster, policing being one of them.”
Keeping things in Westminster is an article of faith for many Welsh Labour MPs. Some for reasons of constitutional principle, they want to maintain an England & Wales jurisdiction where they can. Others despair at the performance of public services in Wales since the Assembly was established in 1999 and fear that a tendency to defer to producer interests will prevail. Some MPs worry about the impact of their status in the House of Commons if more and more of their areas of influence are diluted, this is a view encouraged by many Scottish Labour MPs who resent their ability to directly influence areas devolved to Hollyrood - Tam Dayell’s West Lothian question still echos.
In his first Prime Minister’s Questions Andy Burnham said again “Where proposals come from the Senedd Government we will give them a fair consideration. We do need to work together to get growth going…and if that can be done with more locally devolved power across Wales then I am absolutely prepared to work with the First Minister on that”.
On the face of it that’s a change from the position of the Starmer Government which simply said No to further devolution. But what does it mean? By ‘more locally devolved power across Wales’ Burnham is not talking about further powers for the devolved government (which is what the new Plaid Cymru Government wants). He means directly empowering local and regional authorities.
The PM said his time as Greater Manchester mayor had given him "a clear theory of growth", namely that devolving powers to regions outside London would boost their economy. He now wants "every single place across our regions and nations to be able to do the same, creating the conditions for good growth in every postcode".
Andy Burnham is right that local and regional government in England has been cut and denuded of powers, and a revival of municipal government is long overdue. But like the Manchester City Region the Welsh Government was set up as a strategic co-ordinating layer - and they contain just about the same number of people. When he was Mayor of the Greater Manchester Authority Andy Burnham didn’t pass his powers further down to local Councils he harnessed them to be able to punch above his weight.
As Welsh First Minister Rhun ap Iorweth said in his press conference to mark the end of his first 100 days in office “I think it’s very important that the Prime Minister understands the difference between a nation and a region of England.” Powers over Local Government are by law devolved to the Welsh and Scottish Parliaments. Their Governments have decided not to follow the model of elected Mayors and by viewing the whole of the UK through the prism of Greater Manchester the PM risks echoes of the famous 1888 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, which under the entry for Wales simply said ‘See England’.
As well as creating constitutional tensions the new PM’s posture seems to be ignoring the political currents which resulted in the Labour Party coming within a few thousand votes of losing all their seats in the Welsh Parliament. The party’s successes came when it was able to present itself as ‘Standing up for Wales’. It conceded that ground to Plaid Cymru in the two years before May’s Senedd elections and the result saw a direct transfer of 40% of Labour voters from the previous elections to Plaid Cymru. If it continues to do that, as the current polling suggests, the Party’s MPs may suffer a similar fate to most of its Senedd members.
There are no signs that they have interpreted the election result in that way though, and if anything seem to be doubling-down in their attitude to the Welsh Government. They seem to think that simply swapping Burnham for Starmer will see them through. I think that’s a misreading of the mood. A large section of the electorate are sensitive to how Wales is perceived to be treated by Westminster and are more attuned to slights than MPs seem to realise.
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