Welsh devolution
Charles III Heir Apparent William, Prince of Wales First Minister (list) Rt Hon Eluned Morgan MS (L) Deputy First Minister Huw Irranca-Davies MS (L) Counsel General-designate – Elisabeth Jones Chief Whip and Trefnydd – Jane Hutt MS (L) Permanent Secretary Sixth Senedd Llywydd (Presiding Officer) Elin Jones MS (PC) Leader of the Opposition Darren Millar MS (C) Shadow Cabinet Prime Minister Rt Hon Keir Starmer MP (L) Secretary of State for Wales Rt Hon Jo Stevens MP (L) Principal councils (leader list) Corporate Joint Committees Local twinning see also: Regional terms and Regional economy United Kingdom Parliament elections European Parliament elections (1979–2020) Local elections Police and crime commissioner elections Referendums Welsh devolution is the transfer of legislative powers for self-governance to Wales by the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Laws were subsequently passed to establish the National Assembly for Wales and grant it secondary legislative powers over areas such as agriculture, education and housing.
[1] The 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan caused Wales to lose its de facto independence and formed the constitutional basis for it as a principality in the Realm of England.
[8] At the time, a majority of people in Wales belonged to noncomformists chapels despite members of the Church of England having legal and social privileges.
Historian and former BBC Wales producer John Trefor suggests that the act "was a victory, not only for the chapels and the temperance leagues, but for Welsh identity.
"[9] David Lloyd George, MP for Caernarfon at the time, was devoted to Welsh devolution early in his career, starting with the Church in Wales.
[21] As such Lloyd George was seen as a radical figure in British politics and was associated with the reawakening of Welsh nationalism and identity, saying in 1880, "Is it not high time that Wales should have the powers to manage its own affairs".
[24] The first Cymru Fydd societies were set up in Liverpool and London in 1887 and in the winter of 1886–7, the North and South Wales liberal federations were founded.
[25] Lloyd George was also particularly active in attempting to set up a separate Welsh National Party which was based on Charles Stewart Parnell's Irish Parliamentary Party and also worked to unite the North and South Wales Liberal Federations with Cymru Fydd to form a Welsh National Liberal Federation.
[26] The Cymru Fydd movement collapsed in 1896 amid personal rivalries and rifts between Liberal representatives such as David Alfred Thomas.
[8][27] In 1898 however, David Lloyd George managed to form the Welsh National Liberal Council, a loose umbrella organisation covering the two federations.
[28] Support for home rule for Wales and Scotland amongst most political parties was strongest in 1918 following the independence of other European countries after the First World War, and the Easter Rising in Ireland, wrote Dr Davies.
This idea which eventually fell out of favour after "southern Ireland" left the UK and became a dominion in 1921 and the Irish free state was established in 1922.
[25] Home rule all round became official labour party policy, by he 1920s, but the Liberals lost interest because if a Welsh Parliament was formed they would not control it.
[43] With the generation or so before 1922 there "had been a marked growth in the constitutional recognition of the Welsh nation", wrote historian Dr John Davies.
[47] Welsh Labour backbenchers such as D. R. Grenfell, W. H. Mainwaring and James Griffiths supported the establishment of a Secretary of State post whereas Aneurin Bevan thought devolution would distract from "British mainstream politics".
Successive Conservative Party victories in Westminster led to suggestions that only through self-government could Wales achieve a government reflecting the votes of a Welsh electorate.
[54] John Davies adds that the representatives of Wales were powerless under the political structure of the time, a core message of Plaid Cymru.
This event lead to the creation of a petition of 240,652 names calling for the establishment of a Welsh parliament, which was presented to the House of Commons by Megan Lloyd George in 1956.
[61] The leader of Plaid Cymru, Gwynfor Evans won the party's first-ever seat in Westminster in Carmarthen in 1966, which "helped change the course of a nation" according to Dr Martin Johnes of Swansea University.
This, paired with the SNP's Winnie Ewing's winning a seat in Hamilton, Scotland in 1967 may have contributed to pressure on Labour prime minister Harold Wilson to form the Kilbrandon Commission.
[28] The UK Labour government introduced separate devolution bills for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in 1977 following the support for a Scottish parliament by the Kilbrandon Commission.
[70] In the early 1990s, Labour became committed to devolution to both Scotland and Wales, and in 1997 it was elected with a mandate to hold referendums on a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh Assembly.
These included an increased number of members, legally separating executive and legislative acts and the devolution of primary law-making powers.
[80] Following the referendum in 2011, the Official Languages Act became the first Welsh law to be created in 600 years, according to the First Minister at the time, Carwyn Jones.
[84] Plaid Cymru proposed two bills to the UK parliament in the 2021-22 parliamentary session which ultimately did not gain royal assent.
Among calls for specific matters to be devolved to Wales are powers over; Broadcasting,[93] the Crown Estate in Wales[94] and natural resources,[95] Shared Prosperity Fund,[96] bank holidays,[97] energy firm taxation & regulation,[98] gender self-identification,[99] the justice system,[100] rail infrastructure,[101] setting rates and bands of all income tax,[102] welfare system and full taxation powers.
It's got expanded powers, it's the settled will of the people that we have a Welsh parliament, and that's got to be effective, so by all means, be concerned about value for money, we should be, as any political party should be, but in terms of is it a good idea then the personal view is we need more members.
Cooke suggested that a relatively weak devolution settlement had prevented the Welsh Government from developing innovative economic policies, especially when compared to Scotland.
[107] However, critics including former Welsh Secretary Ron Davies and John Lovering, another Cardiff academic, claimed that Cooke's argument that a more powerful Assembly was a necessary precondition to more effective economic policies was a non-sequitur.
