Some present and correct

Readers of the Western Mail will have digested something of a spat in its letters column over the role of the main Welsh committee at Westminster.

The select committee on Welsh affairs chairman, Hywel Francis, has been defending his crew from criticism over its role in the devolved world.

The MPs say their committee has just completed "the busiest year in its history". Dr Francis has certainly been busy, attending 43 out of 44 meetings during the year.

The former Welsh Secretary, Alun Michael, managed 40 of the 44 meetings. Tory frontbencher David Jones made it to three quarters of committee gatherings.

Tory backbenchers were less regular attenders at the main Welsh forum for holding the Government to account. Monmouth MP David Davies made it to just five of the 44, an attendance record explained by diary clashes with his membership of the more prestigious Home Affairs Committee.

Mark Pritchard made it to 12 meetings. Labour MP Martyn Jones was present at nine gatherings.

The overall attendance record was 54.1 per cent, although it drops to below half if you take out Dr Francis and Mr Michael.

You can check out the scores for yourself here.

Banking on LCOs

Too much excitement can be bad for you, so let's talk about LCOs. Wales's former First Secretary has given his views on Legislative Competence Orders here.

Old news to readers of Mr Michael's Penarth Times column, I grant you, but interesting nevertheless - who are these Ministers who "spent far too long deliberating over Ann's proposals instead of getting on with it"? Time for the Penarth Times to name and shame.

The LCO Parliament has spent more time debating than any other is the one to give the Assembly the power to legislate over the Welsh language. You can read it here if you don't have a copy handy or have yet to learn it off by heart.

One or two MPs were intrigued by the reference to organisations "engaged in central banking" assuming it to be a reference to the original proposal to include the Bank of England - the only central bank operating in the UK - in the mix.

This puzzled one or two MPs on the Select Commitee for Welsh Affairs who wondered what it could mean.

Bilingual banknotes, perhaps? The MPs wrote to the Secretary of State for Wales. Peter Hain has now told them: "I do not believe the Assembly will be able to legislate on the issue of Welsh banknotes."

A less than emphatic denial, perhaps, but there (probably) goes any plan Cardiff Ministers may have for their own quantitative easing or to put an image of Owain Glyndwr on one side of a tenner note.

Voting early and often

One of the affiliated groups taking part in the Welsh Labour leadership election has more than ten times as many votes as members.

The Co-operative Party has "somewhere under 1,000" members in Wales, but will have 10,000 votes in the electoral college that will choose Rhodri Morgan's successor.

Co-op deputy general secretary Karen Wilkie said: "In terms of the Labour Party, the Co-operative Party has always affiliated on behalf of the wider co-operative movement; our voting strength reflects this rather than our actual number of party activists."

Labour - whose 11,000 Welsh members have one third of the votes - said organisations decide the numbers to affiliate and their voting strength is decided accordingly.
Voting will take longer for some than others. By my reckoning, the former First Secretary, Alun Michael, has at least five votes - as an MP, a party member, a member of the Co-op party, the GMB union and the Fabian Society.

Prison break?

Is North Wales the only part of Europe that wants both a nuclear power station and a prison in its own back yard?

Just a random thought (from a lobby colleague) as MPs discussed the prospect of a prison being built in the region with the Secretary of State for Wales.

Peter Hain previewed an announcement from the Prisons Minister, Maria Eagle, although he appears far more enthusiastic about a prison west of Offa's Dyke than his ministerial colleague. Ms Eagle pulled the plug on a proposed prison at Caernarfon earlier this year after the site was deemed unsuitable.

Mr Hain told the Welsh Affairs select committee he is still "very keen" to ensure that North Wales gets a prison and previewed a statement from the Minister published shortly after the committee finished.

"She will announce that there is an intention to look specifically for a new site in North Wales. It could be in Caernarfon, it could be in Anglesey, it could be anywhere else where the local county council and other representatives come up with a credible site.

"I do want to see it in North Wales if we possibly can and I've made it absolutely clear to the Minister herself."

A press release from Ms Eagle stopped short of committing to a prison in Wales: "The National Offender Management Service, which runs prisons in England and Wales for the Ministry of Justice, will look across the country for sites to serve areas with greatest demand for prison places. The search will be focused on London, the North West, North Wales, and West Yorkshire."

The proposed jails would be for up to 1,500 prisoners - one local MP estimates only 600 places are needed in North Wales.

Ms Eagle said: "Finding the most appropriate place for a new prison is of paramount importance. They should be located in those areas where there is the greatest need, areas where the greater number of prisoners come from.

"This will allow us to keep prisoners closer to their home areas and will help ensure that important family and other links can be maintained, which help prisoner rehabilitation."

Earlier this month, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Justice, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, questioned by the former Welsh Secretary Alun Michael, said: "Actually, I think there are plans to start the site search again in North Wales, and I think we are committed to that working with the Welsh Assembly Government and the Wales Office here. So there is no move away from that; that is still the plan."

That may still be the plan but anyone who has read Maria Eagle's carefully-worded statement - and Peter Hain's own comments - will appreciate that there is a subtle but huge difference between a prison in North Wales and a prison for North Wales.

Either way, the issue is unlikely to be resolved definitively before the general election that has to be held by next June.

ICANN do down under

MPs haven't had a good press of late, but some of them seem to be working too hard to spend their generous allowances.

Alun Michael, the workaholic former cabinet Minister and First Secretary, spent the weekend in Australia, leaving the UK last Thursday, returning Monday at 7am.

Those hoping for some paparrazi photos of the Cardiff South and Penarth MP sunning himself poolside in Sydney will be disappointed.

Mr Michael, who played a key role in the setting up of the UK Internet Governmance Forum, was a guest speaker at the 35th meeting of the jazzily-titled Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

As chair of the judging panel for the UK Internet Best Practice Challenge (a fun job, but someone's got to do it), he was guest speaker at the launch of the "2009 Australia and New Zealand Internet Best Practice Award".

Perhaps next time they could hold the conference and launch online and save on the jetlag.

Marathon Men

Rhodri Morgan may not have made it as a Minister at Westminster but he left his mark in other ways.

Not just as the rebel without a pause in the lengthy debates over the Cardiff Bay barrage or his role as an effective opposition frontbencher, but his running has secured him a place in an unusual "hall of fame".

The Welsh First Minister remains the fourth fastest sitting MP in the London Marathon. Morgan completed the 26-mile and 385-yards course in a respectable 3hrs 14mins 44secs in 1988, at the age of 48.

He is 20 minutes faster than any other Welsh MP past or present. Chris Bryant, Alan Howarth, Alun Michael, Stephen Crabb, Albert Owen and Keith Best are among those to have run it.

Their efforts were celebrated at a dinner at a swanky London restaurant in January. Author and runner John Bryant reports: "And there was a toast to Mike Steele, who has run 11 marathons. An Australian who has worked as a journalistin the Westminster Lobby {largely for ITV Wales}, he is always talking another fresh-faced MP into tackling the greatest race on earth."

Mike has acted as unofficial "chief whip" to the running MPs - and also sorted entries for parliamentary hacks like me who lost out in the general ballot.

One of those "fresh-faced MPs", Chris Bryant, is running his third marathon later this month. The deputy leader of the Commons is running this year to raise funds for the Army Benevolent fund and you can sponsor him here.

Fitness permitting, I'll be joining him on the streets of London for what will be my 10th (and, Mrs C tells me, my last) marathon. Next year, by way of mid-life crisis, I'll be saving up for the little red sports car and leather jacket.

Government by committee(s)

Governments often react to events in one of two ways.

There is no problem so grave that cannot be solved either by legislation, or by setting up a committee aka working group, review, task and finish group, convention etc.

New Labour has been keen on passing laws since it came to power at Westminster, creating hundreds if not thousands of new offences. Under Gordon Brown, it has also been pilloried for setting up review after review.

The Assembly Government is so fond of committees it recently set up a committee with the task of setting up another committee.

The contrast in styles has emerged on a serious issue. The UK Government is tightening the law to protect NHS staff from violence and abuse at the hands of patients and their relatives. (I thought this was already illegal, but apparently a new specific offence of creating a disturbance or nuisance on NHS premises is needed).

Most criminal law applies across England and Wales but in something of a departure the Ministry of Justice decided that as this law affects the NHS it would give the Welsh Assembly Government the right to veto its application to Wales (which it promptly did).

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "Health is a devolved matter in Wales. Although the provisions create a criminal offence, the offence is aimed solely at creating protection for and benefits for the health service (in response to a problem in the health service) . We consulted the Welsh Assembly Government last year and they confirmed that they did not want the provisions to extend to Wales. We are discussing the issue of the extension of this provision to NHS premises in Wales with the Department of Health, Wales Office and the Welsh Assembly Government."

A Welsh Assembly Government spokesperson said, several hours later: "The Welsh Assembly Government, working with the relevant Trade Unions and professional associations have developed its own set of policies for protecting staff who work in the Welsh NHS. These have recently been worked on further in a group led by a secondee from the Royal College of Nursing in Wales.

The report of that working group is expected imminently and will further inform the development of actions designed to meet Welsh needs and circumstances."

The problem WAG has it that it can't change criminal law so any changes its committee comes up with will stop short of that. If you're a nurse in A and E on Friday night trying to get rid of a drunk you might wonder how different Welsh needs and circumstances are from those over the border, but I digress.

Amid the general confusion, a former First Secretary of the Assembly Government, as it then wasn't, Alun Michael, has been trying to persuade UK Ministers to extend the law to Wales.

He thinks it's absurd that Welsh workers won't get the same legal protection and blamed Whitehall officials who didn't understand devolution for the loophole.

Only when the BBC started making calls did it emerge that this part of the new law was actually vetoed by Assembly Government Ministers.

The redoutable cross-bencher Baroness Finlay of Llandaff has now tabled amendments to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill to extend its remit to Welsh hospitals.

It will be an interesting test of devolution. Whitehall departments have been widely criticised for failing to understand devolution and being insensitive to it. It appears that this is a case of the Ministry of Justice being extremely sensitive to the Assembly Government on a non-devolved issue and ultimately annoying more than a few MPs on the way.

For those at the sharp end this must all appear very confusing. If you're a nurse in A and E on Friday night trying to get rid of an aggressive drunk you could be forgiven for wondering exactly how "Welsh needs and circumstances" differ from those over the border.

Perhaps Ministers could set up a committee to find out.

Back to the future

Welsh Labour has a new campaigning slogan - and a portable backdrop on which to display it.

The slogan is "Working hard for Wales".

Ring any bells?

Yes, it's the same phrase adopted by Alun Michael as Welsh Labour leader in the first Assembly elections in 1999.

Well, it got him elected.......

Letting the cat out of the bag

The former Welsh Secretary Ron Davies may be among those less than chuffed to find themselves in Alastair Campbell's diaries.

Campbell makes clear that Davies blamed Tony Blair for forcing him to resign after his "moment of madness" on Clapham Common.

Davies resigned from Blair's Cabinet but tried to hang on as Welsh Labour leader and Labour's candidate to become Wales's first First Secretary (as it then was).

Campbell writes: "TB eventually spoke to him and it was a difficult conversation. There was a hint of menace in Ron's voice now. He said he felt the wrong decision was taken. He had gone along with "your" strategy but the Welsh party will not dance to the London media tune."

Blair asked Davies to assure him there would be no other stories coming out about his private life and that the Welsh party genuinely wanted him to stay.

Davies told him: "If we stand for anything, we stand for justice and fairness. The Welsh party elected me and London cannot force me out."

Within 48 hours later, he had quit as Labour's candidate.

Campbell reveals how he and Blair's chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, were both "anxious about the inconsistencies emerging, not least in me saying we knew nothing else and that the police had not been in contact."

It had been Scotland Yard that initially alerted the Government to Davies's encounter on the Common - two days earlier.

Later in the week, President Carlos Menem of Argentina invited Blair to Patagonia, where Welsh is spoken. Blair's response: "Wales is very much on my mind at the moment, as you may have read in our papers."

Campbell adds: "Menem laughed, too loud."

Historians of Wales may not glean that much more from the diaries - there's no mention of the bitter battle between Alun Michael and Rhodri Morgan to succeed Ron Davies, Blair's desperate attempts to stop Rhodri Morgan leading Welsh Labour - or Michael's resignation.

Indeed, on first reading, Humphrey the Downing Street cat features in the book more prominently than the first leader of Wales's devolved government.