Rhodri Morgan and Peter Hain ‘thought a referendum on more powers for the National Assembly would be lost’

Martin Shipton

A research paper written by a Clerk to the House of Commons Clerk has shed fresh light on constitutional rows within Welsh Labour in the early years of devolution.

Dr Adam Evans, a former Clerk to the Welsh Affairs Committee who is also an Honorary Research Fellow at Cardiff University, tells how First Minister Rhodri Morgan and Welsh Secretary Peter Hain both thought a referendum on more powers for the then National Assembly would be lost.

He also reveals how Morgan wasn’t told for months that a Cabinet committee had vetoed a compromise proposal he had devised.

Evans writes: “Towards the end of 2003, attention in Number Ten returned to the issue of securing an agreed position on further devolution in response to the Richard Commission [which had recommended full lawmaking powers for the Assembly in devolved areas].

“Writing to the Prime Minister [Tony Blair] on 26 November 2003, ahead of another bilateral meeting with the First Minister, [the PM’s senior policy adviser Alasdair] McGowan suggested that the First Minister’s ‘private view’ was that while ‘tax powers would require a second referendum’, primary legislative powers or a wider set of devolved responsibilities ‘would not’. This was a particularly significant consideration as both the First Minister and Welsh Secretary ‘desperately want to avoid another referendum’ as they were convinced ‘we would lose it’.

“As anticipated by McGowan, media coverage was quick to highlight the divisions that the Report’s recommendations would trigger within Labour. Writing in The Times on 1 April 2004, Greg Hurst suggested that the report would ‘unleash a fierce debate in the Labour Party’ between Labour’s Assembly group which was ‘keen for more powers’ and Welsh Labour MPs who feared ‘their role will vanish’.

“Indeed, while Hurst noted that the Welsh Secretary was expected by some to ‘seek a deal that backs a bigger Assembly with law making powers but rejects a switch to STV’, while his deputy in the Wales Office, Don Touhig ‘is said by MPs to oppose giving the Assembly more powers’.

“Noting that the Welsh Labour party had called a special conference on 11 September ‘to debate its policy as a first step towards including the plans in its manifesto’, the question of whether further powers would require a referendum risked posing ‘further controversy’ for the party.

“Indeed, it became rapidly clear in the weeks that followed that a majority of Welsh Labour MPs would oppose any move to primary law making powers without a referendum. While this number included seasoned devo-sceptics such as Llew Smith (MP for Blaenau Gwent), the ranks of Labour MPs demanding a referendum before primary legislative powers extended to those who had previously been considered to be more sympathetic to devolution, including Huw Irranca-Davies (MP for Ogmore) and Wayne David (MP for Caerphilly).

“In his diary entries for this time, the then Welsh Secretary (Peter Hain) noted the ‘difficult challenge’ he faced in making ‘progress towards getting the Assembly more powers’, as well as the ‘difficult series of discussions [he had] in the Welsh group of Labour MPs’. These MPs, he emphasised, ‘were deeply hostile to any more powers going down to the Assembly’. To make matters more problematic for Hain, he noted that all of the Welsh Labour Ministers in Whitehall, including his predecessors as Welsh Secretary, Paul Murphy and Alun Michael (the former First Secretary), were also ‘very opposed to supporting any major advances [in devolved powers]’.

“With the report published and the date confirmed for the party’s Special Conference, the First Minister put forward his thoughts on how the party should respond to Richard during a keynote speech before the Economic and Social Research Council.

“After thanking the Commission for the ‘very valuable task’ it had undertaken, the First Minister explained that he and the Welsh Secretary had been working to ‘fashion a [Labour] response to the Richard proposals which commands sufficient support to move forward’. While the way forward was still to be determined, the First Minister was clear that that status quo wasn’t tenable, arguing that the ‘sticking plaster’ current arrangements suffered from a ‘lack of stable foundations’ and that ‘more durable arrangements now need to be put in place’.

“While the Welsh Secretary’s memorandum had been silent on the First Minister’s proposed scheme [which involved giving the Assembly powers to amend laws made at Westminster], his spoken contribution during the Ministerial Committee on Devolution Policy meeting made clear it was a non-starter. Noting simply that the ‘Welsh Assembly Government was currently proposing enhanced secondary legislative powers with the ability to make secondary legislation retrospective’, the Welsh Secretary confirmed that ‘this would not be acceptable to the Government’.

“While … the First Minister’s favoured approach … had been rejected in Whitehall, the First Minister had not only not been informed of this, but had continued to champion the idea—as could be seen from the Better Governance for Wales policy paper and the Welsh Labour Party’s special conference.

“As he admits in his diaries, the Welsh Secretary had ‘let Rhodri go ahead with promoting it [his scheme] because he was terrified about the idea of a referendum on full primary law-making powers, although … he would ideally of course want these’.

“This communication failure meant that when it came to preparing a draft White Paper, the First Minister continued to press his proposal. Indeed, Hain’s diaries suggest that the First Minister was ‘absolutely wedded’ to the idea. Unsurprisingly, this meant, according to Hain’s diaries, that the talks between both individuals ‘got bogged down’ on the First Minister’s proposals.

“In an attempt to offer an alternative, the Welsh Secretary proposed a scheme whereby, under the affirmative procedure, Parliament could debate and vote on orders in council providing the Assembly with further powers. This initially resulted in a ‘pretty tense’ encounter between the two gentlemen in October 2004, and led, in Hain’s words, to an ‘effective stalling [of] the whole process’ due to ‘his refusal to move’ on the issue.

“However, in early 2005, having secured the support of senior Welsh Labour MPs, and devo-sceptics, such as Paul Murphy, the Welsh Secretary, according to his diaries, was able to persuade the First Minister that he was unable to deliver the First Minister’s scheme and that the First Minister should instead accept the order-making arrangements that the Welsh Office were proposing.”

Eventually a referendum on giving the then Assembly primary law-making powers was won in 2011. However, there was no referendum before income tax was partially devolved.

From new dawn to new dispensation: the rapid unravelling of the Government of Wales Act 1998, the Richard Commission and the road to the Government of Wales Act 2006 by Adam Evans can be accessed here.