UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 967-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

WELSH AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

wales office annual report 2008

wednESday 9 july 2008

MR PAUL MURPHY, MR ALAN COGBILL, MR JOHN WILLIAMS

and MR GLYNNE JONES

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1-73

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Welsh Affairs Committee

on Wednesday, 9 July 2008

Members present

Dr Hywel Francis, in the Chair

Mrs Siān C. James

Mr David Jones

Alun Michael

Albert Owen

Mark Pritchard

Mark Williams

Hywel Williams

________________

Witnesses: Mr Paul Murphy MP, Secretary of State for Wales, and Mr John Williams, Deputy Director, Head of Policy, Mr Alan Cogbill, Director, and Mr Glynne Jones, Deputy Director, Head of Legislation and Cabinet Support, Wales Office gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Good morning, bore da. Welcome back, Secretary of State, or should I say welcome back! I understand you wish to make an opening statement.

Mr Murphy: Not a statement really, but simply to say how pleased I am again to be with you all today. As you know, I have been, on and off, reporting to the Welsh Affairs Committee since 1999, and well before then I have been a member of it myself. I think when we had the opportunity to talk with each other some months ago I mentioned that the difference between the Wales Office now and when I occupied this post some years ago is quite stark, and I am sure that the questions that you ask me, and your own deliberations over the last number of months, reflect that difference. The difference is essentially one about making legislation for Wales. I know that you have done a sterling job of scrutinising the legislation that comes to you. We will probably touch on that in a bit more detail later on this morning. As you know, I am now concluding a review of how that scrutiny takes place, and I am particularly interested of course in how the Welsh Affairs Committee itself feels about the nature of that process. The Committee is familiar of course with these new arrangements, and I think there is a good opportunity for us to reflect not just on the process but also on the substance of the legislation that flows through here and gives extra powers to the National Assembly for Wales. You know, too, that in June last year Rhodri Morgan outlined the Welsh Assembly's first legislative programme, which included six proposals in councils, and he will announce the second programme very shortly. As you also know, there are three United Kingdom bills this session that are specific framework powers. You will also know - and it does not need me to remind anybody- that the political landscape in Wales has changed quite significantly since the last time I held this job, and doubtless that will inform you about some of the questions that you might have to ask me as well. That does mean that the nature of my job is different again from what it was before. With that, I am more than happy to answer the various questions that you, Dr Francis, and your colleagues, are going to ask me throughout this session.

Q2 Chairman: Can I thank you for your very positive comments about the work of the Select Committee over the past year; they are very much appreciated. In your foreward to your Annual Report you note that devolution is about improving and getting better services for the Welsh People and tackling social justice. Since democratic devolution, can you confirm that there are better services and can you give us some examples?

Mr Murphy: First, one of the problems that faces us as well as members of parliament, and particularly those of us in government, is that although we might have party-political affiliations with the administration in Cardiff - and for that matter in Scotland - we do not hold responsibility for that.  There are of course huge areas of agreement between the Welsh Assembly Government and the British Government on many issues, but ultimately the decisions taken in Cardiff by the welsh assembly government are their decisions. I have often found it strange during the course of answering questions, for example, on the floor of the house, that it is not necessarily my job perhaps in a party sense to answer for the assembly government on the pros and cons of their policies; however, i do believe that a lot of very good work has been done by the welsh assembly in terms of improving the lives of our people in Wales. There was an announcement last week, for example, by Edwina Hart, the minister for health, on the establishment of a new hospital in the Cynon Valley and all the other initiatives she has announced is a very good development in our health service on its sixtieth anniversary, which is very important to us, as welsh members of parliament, because of the fact that it started not just in Wales but, i remind the committee, in Monmouthshire! In addition to that, Mr chairman, the initiatives that we have jointly taken as a British Government and the Welsh Assembly Government, for example in the establishment of a children's commissioner, of a commissioner for old people, are initiatives that have been copied and developed by other administrations in the United Kingdom and beyond. That is of great credit to the Welsh Assembly Government, and a certain amount of credit to us here in Parliament for steering those particular measures through. In terms of how the economy has improved in Wales over the last years, especially in terms of people who are not unemployed any more, is a result of good joint working. However, we of course jointly face the problems of the global difficulties in economic terms. Devolution has meant improved services for people, but i particularly believe that it has meant that the accessibility of government in Wales is much better. When my predecessors held my job they had two junior ministers to help them, and for most of the working week they were in London and not in Cardiff. Now we have a ministerial team, under Rhodri Morgan, in Cardiff, which is accessible and in Wales all the time: that is not just more accountable and more accessible, but i think the people of Wales understand that the relationship between the government and the governance, so to speak, in Wales, is now much a better one.

Q3 Chairman: I take it from your observations that whilst we welcome democratic devolution, we also welcome continued and stronger collaboration; and the fact that we are now able, as a Welsh Affairs Committee to undertake a cross-border inquiry is an indication of that; that the two institutions are mature enough to be able to engage in a scrutiny of that collaboration.

Mr Murphy: Yes. We are not at war with each other! At the end of the day, we represent the same people. In my constituency and yours, and everybody's in here who represent Welsh constituencies, the people we represent are the same people who the Assembly Member represents. Sometimes we forget that, I think. The people we represent expect from us a good working relationship even if sometimes the party political differences are there: they still want us to work together. They certainly do not want us to work against each other! I think that the establishment of an inquiry into cross-border issues is a very good and timely one; and it is to help rather than hinder. There are some who I believe are mistaken who think that inquiries and investigations into cross-border issues somehow or other is anti-devolution: far from it; it actually emphasises the fact that there are differences of governance, but at the same time how those can work together. I understand that sooner or later you will be going to Ireland to see how cross-border issues are dealt with there. I have some experience of that having helped to set up the cross-border bodies back in the late 1990s - and that is between two sovereign, independent countries where cross-border co-operation is seen to be a sensible and good thing. When you come to write your conclusions I am sure that you will not only point to those areas that need attention but you will also say that cross-border co‑operation is not just about things going wrong but that it is very much about things going right as well.

Chairman: I think the whole Committee would endorse those observations, irrespective of our own political parties.

Q4 Mark Pritchard: Bore Da, Secretary of State. Good morning, Secretary of State. I know your comments about not being at war with the Welsh Assembly Government, but you sure do sound like a peacemaker this morning, and a very good one at that! I wonder whether you agreed with the comment made by the Honourable Member for ... that certain members of the Welsh Assembly Government are dull and whether you think that has had any impact on the frontline delivery of services for Wales!

Mr Murphy: I am not sure that he - I have not talked to him about it but I am sure I will before the end of the day! I do not think he meant individuals were dull but you must ask him himself what he meant by the term. He and I shared the same view before the coalition government was formed, and there was a healthy and extremely robust debate within the Labour Party as to whether there should or should not be a coalition. But my party made its decision in a democratic way, and at the end of the day those of us who believe in democracy in our political parties accept the fact that that is the case. My view is that the coalition has brought stability to governance in Wales. I am not a lover of either PR or of coalitions; that is generally well known; but that is where we are - where we are. For the benefit of the people that I represent and for the people of Wales generally, I think that the stability that has been brought by the coalition has been welcomed. Of course there will be nuances and differences between the two political parties, and inevitably that is going to be the case; but I think that when we look at what has happened during the course of the last twelve months, some very good progress has been made in terms of the services to which the Chairman earlier referred.

Q5 Mr Jones: Good morning, Secretary of State. Given that you succumbed to the temptation given by the Chairman to express an opinion as to respects in which you think devolution has improved the lot of the people in Wales, could I possibly tempt you further to express an opinion as to the respects in which you think it has possibly proved a disappointment?

Mr Murphy: It depends who will be disappointed! My view, you see, was always that devolution is likely to strengthen the United Kingdom rather than the other way round. There would be other people who would see it more as a process by which, if it gets stronger, perhaps in Scottish and perhaps less in Welsh - I do not know - that it would lead to independence. What do we mean by disappointment? In terms of the delivery of services, I do not express disappointment. The services that they have delivered are good ones. I think that they have improved. I think it took some bedding in and getting used to - there is no question about that. I think, because the majority was so small in Wales - in my own constituency there was a small majority against amongst the people I represent - it took a lot longer to bed in the process to be successful than were there to have been a very large majority in favour. I think the people in Wales now accept the reality of governance by the Welsh Assembly, the Welsh Assembly Government, and I think that is a good thing.

Q6 Mrs James: I want particularly to concentrate on the legislative process. In your Annual Report you state that there has been significant progress made in ensuring the smooth running of the new constitution and legislative items on the agenda. This implies that the process is not quite there yet.  What do you think remains to be done?

Mr Murphy: I think we need to ensure that we sharpen up the way in which we deal with legislative orders. Inevitably, because it is the first year, that means that we are going to get teething troubles. Whatever process we bring in, that is going to happen. However, I have seen in the last six months a positive improvement in how the process works. Having talked to quite a lot of people in the last few weeks about the review that I am undertaking - talking to Members of the House of Lords, talking to yourselves both individually and collectively, talking to the different political party leaderships in Westminster, and talking to the First Minister and other Ministers, I think everybody accepts that it has got better. It has got better because it has sharpened up and it has got quicker. People understand that there are processes to go through that are a bit complicated, but which people will soon get used to. What we must not do, though, is forget the importance of scrutiny in all this, and that sometimes you can have a hugely efficient machine but that could mean you do not scrutinise properly. It would be quite wrong for there to be less emphasis both on the pre-legislative scrutiny process and the processes that you engage in as well, and your equivalents in the Assembly. During the passage of the 2006 Government of Wales Bill, I and others from the back‑benchers expressed the view that we did not think scrutiny was good enough in the way in which we were dealing with it during the passage of that particular bill. I think the Government accepted that, and I think Parliament has. As I said, I will soon be coming out with some suggestions that will result from consultation with all sorts of people and parties as to how to improve that. It has got better; it did have teething problems to begin with; it is complicated, but then so is any legislative process; and I think next year we will see a speeding-up and a more streamlined approach because it is, after all, the second year.

Q7 Mrs James: You have mentioned the review; have you any indications of when and how you will be reporting back and any emerging conclusion that you can see?

Mr Murphy: We should be able to conclude our short review before we go down by this term and I think I had probably better wait before coming to final conclusions but I will give you one or two examples of concerns that have been expressed that I hope we can recognise. One is that in the House of Lords they have a different system than we do in the House of Commons to deal with these things; but they will need regular briefing from Ministers, both Welsh Assembly Ministers and United Kingdom Ministers collectively because of the nature of how they operate there. That is pretty obvious. It is on a cross-party basis, by the way, so there is no party issue involved. The work of this Committee is, as I said earlier, admirable, and I would not see any diminution of the role of the Welsh Affairs Committee; if anything I suspect it will have a greater role in dealing with it. There is a consensus emerging that we need to address the process, and I hope that we will be able to come to a conclusion before we go down.

Q8 Albert Owen: in regard to the length and timetabling of LCOs, are you surprised at the time Whitehall departments take to clear the LCOs? Do you think that is an area that could be sharpened up?

Mr Murphy: I am not surprised because that is the nature of how the machine works in Whitehall; after all, government is a big affair, and lots of people have to be consulted. Some LCOs are easier to deal with than others, obviously. If a piece of legislation is one that seriously affects how the British Government deals with its responsibilities, clearly it will take longer than one that is less significant - in other words, when it is a grey area - and where there are cross-border issues, for instance the Marine Bill. That is one which clearly both the Assembly and obviously the British Government have a huge joint interest in. That will take longer obviously. The environmental order going through will take longer than others because there is a joint interest. Sometimes it is not quite like that, but and it is much more of a Welsh issue which does not impinge in the same way on British issues. It will depend a bit. I do take the general point that there needs to be an acknowledgement by Whitehall departments that they have to play their part in ensuring that the process is more streamlined.

Q9 Albert Owen: Do you think the Whitehall departments are improving? Do they give it greater priority now than perhaps they did earlier on?

Mr Murphy: Yes, I think they are doing that, but it still needs attention. That is my role really. I think the issue is that, as devolution has developed, sometimes Whitehall departments believe that devolution now is something that is a matter entirely for the Assembly - forgetting that with this new legislative process we have got, the involvement of Whitehall departments is crucial to it. It is a question of reminding them that it is not "oh, that is Wales and they can get on with it". It does not work like that. Of course, since the settlement in 2006, it needs getting used to, and that includes Whitehall departments, but it is getting better.

Q10 Albert Owen: Do you think they should come in at an earlier stage?

Mr Murphy: I think the stage is okay; the chronology of it all is good; it is the speed with which we had to negotiate with each other. As I said, you cannot lay down a hard and fast rule for it because it depends on the nature of the order that is in front of us. To take the example I gave of the Marine and Environment; they are quite complicated and touch on the responsibilities of both governments, so therefore it is much more complicated and takes more time.

Q11 Albert Owen: How many LCOs do you envisage the Welsh Assembly Government or individual Assembly Members in Assembly committees submitting for pre-legislative scrutiny in the next twelve months?

Mr Murphy: We cannot really give you a precise answer on that until they have announced their own programme, of course, and they have not done that yet. I doubt it will be significantly different from this year.

Q12 Albert Owen: Notwithstanding what you said with regard to the complexity of it and the need for involvement by Whitehall departments, do you think there is a number that we can all cope with to get the best results in what you consider to be a sharper and quicker process?

Mr Murphy: No, I do not think there is a number because it depends upon the nature of the LCO. For the sake of argument, if you take ten easy ones and four difficult ones, the four difficult ones may take longer than the ten easy ones. It depends what they are about. Obviously, if it comes to a stage where dozens and dozens of LCOs are being thrown to us and to your Committee, then it becomes a very difficult task indeed - but that is unlikely.

Q13 Albert Owen: Do you do think the initial enthusiasm of the Assembly will die down and that we will get different types of LCOs that we can all deal with quicker?

Mr Murphy: Yes. Their job now is to metamorphosise - that is a good word for a Wednesday morning - the LCOs into measures. A lot of the time the Assembly is now taken up with producing the legislation resulting from this Parliament giving those powers in order to bring forward the improvement in services that they are intending.

Q14 Mark Pritchard: The comprehensive spending review 2007 obviously allocated the budget to Wales, but within the Treasury's forecast for three years was a 2.4% of the recent budget taken for the next year, 2009/2010, to about £15.74 billion. Given the recent rises in fuel costs and overall inflation, is there going to be a shortfall in the Welsh budget, and if so will that shortfall be met through cuts in services or by going back to the Treasury asking for more money, which is unlikely to be received well this time?

Mr Murphy: I am just checking about the nature of the questions. You are talking now about the block grant to Wales, I suppose!

Q15 Mark Pritchard: Yes.

Mr Murphy: In 2010/2011 there is an extra £2.2 billion in the Welsh budget. We indicated how that has gone up. The total Welsh block for 2008/2009 is £14.26 billion and for 2009/2010 £14.94 billion, and it goes up for 2010/2011 to £15.74 billion. They are reasonable increases, but of course you are right in saying that, as all Government departments will have to face, the economic circumstances that we may face in the years ahead, particularly in terms of inflation and, as you rightly say, the cost of fuel and petrol and oil and other costs, may have an impact upon the way in which services are delivered, not just in Wales but in the rest of the United Kingdom. I cannot predict how the Welsh Assembly is likely to decide; they might have to change or switch their priorities, but that is a matter entirely for them. We have not been asked by the Assembly to be given more money as a consequence of the rising fuel prices, and the CSR is set, and we have to work - Government has to work within its budgets, just in the same way that ordinary households will have to work within budgets in the years ahead.

Mr Cogbill: Purchasing power will be reduced where there is extra cost. You have to look at the nature of the Assembly programmes to work out if there is a differential effect. I would venture that, without knowing the precise percentage, quite a lot of that money goes on pay, if you think about health, education and local government and so on, and therefore the likely rise over the next few years in public sector pay will probably be more material than, for example, fuel costs.

Q16 Mark Pritchard: If the Welsh Assembly Government came back, Secretary of State, and said, "These are difficult times, and whilst we realise the Treasury might not be prepared to give us any more funding", one way is to look again at assigned and non-assigned budgets and to have more independent flexibility on how those budgets are spent in Wales, how would you respond to that?
Mr Murphy: It is a matter for them. They have to decide. As you know, the Assembly gets Barnett consequentials from Government spending proposals in England, but of course they do not have to spend it on - in other words, for the sake of argument the Department of Education in London, the two Departments of Education, decide to increase their budget by X amount; that does not mean to say that the Welsh education budget has to go up by the same; they could spend it on whatever they want to. They get the money but the allocation of the money is entirely a matter for the -----

Q17 Mark Pritchard: You are not concerned about the removal of ring-fenced funding for any services in Wales?

Mr Murphy: I am sorry, I missed that!

Q18 Mark Pritchard: Do you also have a view on whether ring-fenced funding will be removed from services in Wales?

Mr Murphy: I have a view on it, but not that it is right for me to express because it is a matter for them to decide how to do it. There are certain people within the Assembly, not least of which is my own Assembly Member for example, who have argued that the education budget should be more sharply defined when the grant is passed on to the local education authorities. It is a fair point, but there are other arguments about local accountability and democracy and it would not be right for me to say how they do that. It is a matter entirely for them.

Q19 Hywel Williams: I wanted to ask you a supplementary question, Secretary of State, about framework powers. You will recall there was a debate about this before you returned to office. You refer to framework powers in your report on page 16, but we have not touched on the matter as yet. I asked the Attorney General recently, when she made a statement on future equality legislation whether there would be framework powers. Quite understandably, she was not particularly definitive in her reply, and I quite accept that; but can you give your assessment of the way framework powers have been used so far in this last period, and do you foresee any changes? What are the prospects, for example, in terms of equality education?

Mr Murphy: I think that it is a very good way and a very efficient way of ensuring that certain powers and responsibilities can be handed on to the Assembly. It is not new, of course - when I did this job before it was the only way in which there were specific Welsh affairs - I think the term was "piggy-backing" - bills here in Parliament to ensure that Welsh provisions were given to them. Incidentally, the way you deal with the West Lothian question is referred to in the Committee stages of bills recently, and I am sure you would agree with me that there is a huge majority of bills affecting, for example, health and education in Wales and England that have a Welsh aspect, and it is quite difficult to disentangle. You referred specifically to where there is a specific request to have a framework power in that bill. We have had seven framework clauses since 2005. Some of them are attached to very big bills like the Planning Bill, and others are easier. We have improved the way in which we involve Welsh Members of Parliament and inform Welsh Members of Parliament about the nature of those, but there is still some work to be done on that. I will be saying a little bit about that in the arrangements and review of scrutiny, but I do think it is important that the earliest possible warning is given to Members of Parliament so that they are aware of aspects of bills that have Welsh parts to them, either whether they want to serve on a committee or speak at a second reading or make representations to Government about them. It is a good way of introducing legislation that can have a Welsh flavour to it.

Q20 Hywel Williams: Can I now ask you about orders brought forward by individual members of the Assembly? There is a reference in your report to two orders, one on sprinklers and the other on mental health. Can you tell the Committee what the procedure is when an order is proposed by the Assembly or by Assembly committees and are taken forward both in Whitehall and in Parliament? How will they be referred to you as Secretary of State by the Assembly? What is the procedure?

Mr Murphy: It does not really differ from the procedure in regard to those orders that are sponsored by the Assembly Government, in that it goes through the proper scrutiny processes, both pre-legislative and after the order has been published, but it has to be properly debated in both Houses, in exactly the same way as any other order - on the basis that you would not get what you might call a private member's order getting up here unless, basically, the Welsh Assembly Government had approved of it, because there would not be votes sufficient in Cardiff in order for it to be passed. It has a sort of parallel to private members' bills here, where it is usually unlikely that if a government is opposed to a private member's bill in the House of Commons it is unlikely to get very far, so it has to have the approval, not least of which is the number of votes requested, required for that to be passed. They are not big changes, but it does mean that the individual member of the Assembly sponsoring it has a bigger role to play, and will need to talk to the relevant Government departments here and in Cardiff about the nature of it. So far, things have gone reasonably well on that.

Q21 Alun Michael: You made the comparison with the private members' process to this House. The big difference, of course, is that a private member's bill in this House cannot proceed unless there is a lack of significant opposition; so as well as Government support there has to be a lack of significant opposition. Is there not a danger that people might acquiesce with draft legislative competence orders and that therefore it might have less scrutiny than would be the case with private members' legislation here?

Mr Murphy: Maybe. I do not think that has happened yet. For example, the one that Peter Black put forward on local government electoral issues was voted down in the Assembly, so the Assembly Members themselves clearly take the business of private members' orders very seriously, and if they think that there is no chance of success on it and fundamentally disagree with it, whatever the reasons might be, then at that stage it stops, but it is possible that some future order might slip through because people do not feel terribly strongly about it and they leave it to us.

Q22 Alun Michael: I was getting at the point that the threshold is a majority against, whereas with a private member's bill the threshold is a much lower one in terms of lack of opposition.

Mr Murphy: Indeed, and that is a very fair comparison.

Q23 Hywel Williams: To pursue this question a little further, looking at the process from start to finish what is your opinion of the resourcing for private members bringing this sort of LCO forward? I know that it is a tremendous amount of work. Is it sufficient that individual members have to shoulder this particular burden? I can see it might be a matter for the Assembly.

Mr Murphy: Yes, it is really more for them than for us because by the time it reaches us, it has got to be in a shape that we are able to deal with it properly, and then it is a matter for the Welsh Assembly Government itself, if it supports the order, to give all the help it can to the individual member supporting it, as obviously the office of the presiding officer as well in Cardiff that would have to do that. So far, they are orders that have not aroused controversy other than the one that was voted down, which would have been a controversy both here and in Cardiff. There is nothing wrong with controversy; but it would have been controversial.

Q24 Hywel Williams: I am just concerned that they arrive to us in good shape.

Mr Murphy: The shape is fine so far. Like anything else, Mr Williams, we have had to look at this process as we develop it and as it moves forward obviously new developments will take place and new ideas of dealing with these things; but it is a new process and obviously needs time to bed in. As I said, I think that is happening pretty well, but who knows what we might face next year! It makes life interesting!

Q25 Hywel Williams: You referred earlier on to the next stage for the Assembly, where they will be considering measures, and I suppose the whole process will calm down a bit. In respect of those proposed measures, what procedures have you agreed with the Attorney General's office for the monitoring of those proposed measures arising from the framework powers that have been granted?

Mr Cogbill: We have had quite extensive discussions on this with the Welsh Assembly Government, and the procedure is that the Wales Office legal advisers, with some help, we hope, from the Welsh Assembly Government, will produce a report to the Attorney General's office to enable the Attorney to be satisfied that the statutory tests are met. That is in place ahead of its being needed.

Q26 Mr Jones: Can I return briefly to the issue of framework powers? You mentioned specifically the Planning Bill. Is it a source of concern to you that the clauses containing the Welsh framework powers were not available for Second Reading, and also that because of timetabling in statements they were not debated at all at Report stage? Do you feel that more could be done to protect time for the debate of Welsh framework powers, since obviously they are constitutional provisions, on the occasion of the debate of each bill as it goes through the House?

Mr Murphy: Yes, and I think we have improved since the unfortunate circumstances that occurred at the beginning of the Planning Bill where things could have been better. It is important, as I said earlier, that everybody gets good notice of particularly important clauses in bills which affect Wales, and sometimes because of the complexity of bills and the difficulty of reading some of the clauses - indeed, not just the clauses themselves but sometimes the commentary on clauses can be quite complex - it needs to be put in reasonably clear English for people like me to be able to understand that there are measures - not just informal measures but they could be all sorts of examples in very big bills - where Wales is affected in one way or another, and we should be made aware of it. As to the later stages, I think there is a need for the usual channels, shall we say, to sort it out a bit more effectively than we have seen in some instances in the past. I know it is new, and that is probably the reason for it, but there has to be some sort of agreement between the parties that certain parts of bills ought to be treated in a way that means they can be debated it properly at every parliamentary stage. They do not always get the request, the Government, but they want these things to happen, so there is a responsibility on the opposition parties as well as the Government, between them, to ensure that sufficient time is available, if they think it is necessary.

Q27 Mark Williams: Turning now to Wales Office funding, you wrote to the Committee in March about why the Wales Office needs to draw down an additional £1 million for 2007/2008. How much of that funding top-up was required to cover costs of support services for the Ministry of Justice, and how much of that was needed to cover the higher legislative workload we talked about?

Mr Cogbill: I cannot give you an exact figure, but the major part of it is for the additional legislative work, and there are some costs that are to do with maintenance of building and that kind of thing. The major part of it is in that area. The arrangement of our budget is that over the last two or three years, and as we plan with Treasury agreements over the next three years, will supplement the base budget -----

Q28 Chairman: Can you raise your voice?

Mr Cogbill: I am sorry; I was explaining that in the last two or three years and as we planned with Treasury agreements in the next three years, we will continue to manage our money in aggregate over a period of years so that where there is unspent money from earlier years we will draw it down under the so-called EYF scheme. That is a deliberate approach to managing the budget, so I expect to continue to do that.

Q29 Mark Williams: Does that explain then that in annex 4 of the Annual Report we see Wales Office resource budgets increasing very significantly in 2008/2009/2010 and then being cut in half in 2010/2011? It seems a huge reduction there. Is that going to be balanced by underspends for the next two years, or is it a reflection of increased costs?

Mr Cogbill: The way we have managed the budget using underspends brought forward has, I know, caused a lot of confusion to outsiders. I saw some horror stories about the Wales Office increasing its expenditure by 80% or something, and it is true that we are increasing expenditure considerably, but nowhere near 80%, you will be relieved to hear.

Q30 Mark Williams: Is that a response to increased legislative demands?

Mr Cogbill: We are talking about an increase from just under 5.2 million which we spent in the last financial year, in 2007/2008, to what I think may be spending of up to about 6.2 million this year. I am sorry to sound a bit vague about that, but it fairly early in the financial year to be exact. We are talking about an increase that could be about a million this year over last year. The total spending review settlement from last year gave us 18.8 million over the three years, so if we spend at an even rate this year, next year and the year after, it would be about 6.3 million a year. Looking ahead, as we had to do last autumn in those discussions with the Treasury, we were somewhat at a loss to decide what the level of activity would be by the time we look out to 2010/2011. We just do not know. An awful lot will depend on how many orders come through and whether the pace of them falls off and so on. So in discussion we agreed we would have an aggregate sum that would cover us at about the level we had built to this financial year, just over 6 million a year; but it is skewed in these figures, so that we could draw up something like 7.6 million this year and about the same next year, but then we would have very little for 2010/2011, if you see what I mean. I do not know what our spending will look like in year three. My guess is that it will be closer to a bit over 6 million in each of the three years than 7 million, 7 million and three and a half million.

Q31 Mark Williams: Does that uncertainty alarm you, in that we heard from the Secretary of State that he envisages things to calm down in terms of the work of the Assembly and the number of orders coming here, but given your key role at the London end of this process, that must cause you some worry.

Mr Cogbill: If we spend, as we expect, a little over 6 million this year, we will be able to put by 1.5 million from this year's base budget figure, and the same again next year; so potentially we would have again just over 6 million by 2010/2011. The answer is that I do not really need to worry too much about not being able to gauge the future precisely until we get to financial year 2011/2012. Of course, I would love to know exactly what the future holds, but that is quite a long way out, and that is why we are comfortable enough with the budget as set.

Q32 Mark Pritchard: Staying with the Ministry of Justice and the Wales Office Annual Report, on page 42 it says the Wales Office has the protections afforded by the Ministry of Justice-supported electronics records management system; and, Secretary of State, as you will no doubt be aware, you are the Chairman of the Cabinet Committee on Personal Data Security. Given the Ministry of Justice record on data security, have you been involved directly, or have any of your officials, about data loss relating to Wales handled by the Ministry of Justice?

Mr Murphy: No.

Q33 Mr Jones: Secretary of State, you wrote to us in March to tell us that the CSR settlement for Wales subsumed efficiency savings of £0.6 million over three years. Will the settlement be sufficient for your workload without having to make further cutbacks on spending, even more than is already required to raise efficiency targets?

Mr Cogbill: The figures I included are what you might call about good housekeeping, about trying to reduce some travelling and subsistence costs, despite cost pressures, locating people in Cardiff where the overheads are a bit lower, so I think we are happy enough that we should be able to deliver that.

Q34 Mr Jones: You also told us that you planned to underspend on budgets in the first two years in order to cope with a much lower budget in the third year. Are you able to tell the Committee why the Treasury has not been able to give you a much more stable budget profile?

Mr Cogbill: We were in a position of all but almost exhausting the accumulated entitlement to EYF in the previous year, and in discussions the Treasury said to us, "Supposing that the surge of workload proved much worse and supposing you had to take more extreme measures, what would the numbers look like?" Those numbers give us more than ample headroom, shall we say, for the worst case eventuality. I suppose I am tempting fate here, but that is considerably more than any reasonable prediction of what we are going to need in those couple of years. That will enable us to put some money by so that if the workload is still running at a fairly high level in the third year, 2010/2011, we can afford it.

Q35 Mr Jones: I take it that was a very intense negotiating process at that time!

Mr Cogbill: It was an ordinary process of inter-departmental discussion.

Mr Murphy: As long as it takes! I was not there but I am sure it must have been.

Mr Cogbill: We do not do these things casually - I would not like you to think that!

Q36 Alun Michael: Secretary of State, can you give more explanation as to what is behind the growth in your empire that comes with the planned increase in policy staff in 2008/2009?

Mr Murphy: I will hand over to Mr Cogbill!

Mr Cogbill: Last year we reorganised the office quite significantly. Historically it had been set up with teams that tried to cover subject areas within the Assembly Government. That did not seem the most flexible way of having resource available to deal with the live issues of the day. It also meant that from the point of view of the people, they were not necessarily able to capitalise on their particular skills, so we completely rehashed the internal structure, and that has produced some rather odd effects when you look at what we now call policy and what we call operational. It has rather wrecked the straight-line comparability of earlier years, which is the table you are looking at. You will find we have also got slightly higher reliance currently on casual staff and overtime, and that is to do with the year of transition. How it will settle I do not quite know. We have carved out a significant branch of about ten people who look specifically at the legislative side as opposed to the other policy aspects. That is coping hopefully -Glynne can confirm that - we will have to see. As this Committee knows, there has been quite intensive effort on scrutiny. You have seen that in orders referred to already. I would suspect that some of that will recede a bit as people become more comfortable with procedures. We will be a bit streamlined internally. People will know what they are doing slightly better because they have seen the issues before and that kind of thing. I am assuming pretty much steady state will do it.

Q37 Alun Michael: When a department has a wide range of policy responsibilities - and this is an issue that used to be there for the old Welsh Office and it is there for the Assembly and is there for the Northern Ireland Office - having the appropriate expertise is quite a challenge. Are you satisfied you will have the resources to deal with the increased number of legislative competence orders, especially if there is a wider range of policy issues that are being covered by those orders?

Mr Murphy: I cannot give you the detail, but in terms of the general principle, I believe we are resourced effectively and properly for the new roles that the Wales Office has undertaken. As you know, Mr Michael, we are divided between Cardiff and London, and quite rightly so. Generally speaking, if you are dealing with financial and administrative issues, it really does not matter where someone comes from because they are obviously issues which do not matter. But when you deal with issues such as policy and legislation, I like a reasonably good mix of people with a Welsh background as well, who would understand the issues from Cardiff - so we do have a good mix on that, and that is why we are in both places. In the relatively short time that I have been back, I have been very impressed with the quality of the staff in terms of the advice I get in terms of both policy and legislation, but I do not have the detail.

Q38 Alun Michael: That is encouraging. One of the things that has been a matter of discussion and comment is the question of the quality of staff in the Wales Office and in the Assembly. There are concerns about whether there is enough movement of staff so that you have the expertise about Welsh conditions, social and economic and all the rest of it, but you also have a leavening of expertise from elsewhere.

Mr Murphy: Yes.

Q39 Alun Michael: Are you satisfied that both within your own office and in its relationship with the Assembly that enough is being done to maintain that quality and also to have secondment so that that cross-fertilisation, which incidentally the former First Minister of the Scottish Parliament spoke about very strongly when giving evidence to the Justice Select Committee - are you satisfied that that is being promoted?

Mr Murphy: I do not know that I can properly comment on the Assembly point of view, but I will raise the issue with the Permanent Secretary when I next meet her next week. I will talk to her about that. Her own appointment, in a sense, was very interesting, and I think could point to the fact that the Assembly Government itself believes that there should be proper cross-fertilisation, as you put it, and experience from other Government departments, and certainly within the Wales Office I very much encourage people to come from Cardiff, from the Assembly, to experience Whitehall departments. In fact, only recently my private office appointed a young lady who was put on secondment from the Welsh Assembly Government at DCMS, who has come across to the Wales Office. They get a really good experience about how different Government departments work, and hopefully are able to go back to Cardiff and share their experience with others and apply it to their own work. It is a very important issue.

Alun Michael: Your answer is encouraging because maintaining that quality is something where the Wales Office will be able to help the Assembly, and that would be to the benefit of us all.

Q40 Mr Jones: Secretary of State, the table on page 36 describes your success in meeting your departmental targets, which is, I would have thought, is remarkably encouraging. We want to be encouraging it. You appear to be hinting at between 90% and 100% of your targets; would it be fair to speculate that that tends to imply that your targets are not sufficiently challenging?

Mr Murphy: I will ask Mr Cogbill to answer that.

Mr Cogbill: I thought you were going to protest that our performance had slipped slightly from last year, which it has - I am sorry to say, and it has to be fixed. However, in some respects it has improved, for example on parliamentary questions, which is important, and on freedom of information. It has slipped slightly on general correspondence and on ... payments. I think the targets are reasonable. I think the norms we have adopted are comparable with other Whitehall departments, and I think our performance is high enough in the range not to feel ashamed, at any rate. We want them higher; however, I do not think the targets are particularly soft!

Q41 Mr Jones: You do not propose to review those targets?

Mr Cogbill: I think they are about right at the moment.

Q42 Mr Jones: One of the targets that concerns me is the payment of invoices. You are paying 90% within the target time, but, clearly, that means one in ten of your suppliers is not being paid on time. Would you not agree that that is possibly the most important one to get up to 100%?

Mr Cogbill: That is one that fell about 3% this year and I agree with you that we want to improve it. That reflects 10% invoices not being paid; whether it is 10% of particular suppliers I could not say. I do not think it is. One of the things we have done is try to make more use of the Government procurement card, which accelerates payments and there are certain things we have in hand to try and push that rate up. I agree it is an important target. I do not know if it is the most important target, but it is important.

Mr Murphy: It is a very important target and I want to make sure that we look at it. I remember dealing with this before. It has improved since I left the years when I did this job from my first time round, but certainly it is worth paying attention to because it is an important issue. I would add one caveat; because it is a very small department in comparison with big Government departments we are dealing with small numbers, so that does have a distorting effect sometimes on the overall percentage because it is so small in relative terms.

Q43 Albert Owen: Can I move on to the UK's legislative programme! The Wales Office plays an important facilitating role between the Welsh Assembly Government and the UK Government, but since the programme has been published in draft form the Wales Office has decided to consult the people of Wales and stakeholders. How does this work, and are you happy with responses that you received, the number and the quality, and how do you intend to develop this in future as we have another draft publication of the legislative programme?

Mr Murphy: A lot of it is to the Internet now and a lot of it is put on the Government website but also on our own website in terms of being able to comment on the parts of the programme that apply to Wales. It is also about talking to what are now termed - that dreadful word "stakeholders" - in Wales itself about how the people in Wales are affected by the programme that is in front of us. Obviously, some bills are much more significant to Wales than others - those affecting the police force, for example, and crime reduction. England and Wales bills are very, very important in getting the message across to those. Others we share with the Assembly. The Education and Skills Bill, which has a parallel Welsh equivalent means we have to talk to our Welsh ministerial counterparts there on it. The Parliamentary Under Secretary next week or this week will be in Wales having meetings with various organisations about some of the bills in the programme, so that he can get some feedback on that as well.

Q44 Albert Owen: So there is direct contact between your ministerial team and individual stakeholders!

Mr Murphy: Yes.

Q45 Albert Owen: What about the possibility of open meetings for people who do not have access to the Internet, to ask them what they want to see in the next one, or how things should be developed? Is that something you have thought of - power to the people?

Mr Murphy: I agree with power to the people, and they show that from time to time in no uncertain ways. I think public meetings do have a role to play but it is a question of where they might be held and what the subject might be. As some of these bills are developed during the course of the legislative process, for example on the accountability side of policing, there may well be a case for open meetings in parts of Wales to discuss those. I think initially though, by advertising in the way we do in the websites, by talking to the organisations most affected by it, that is a good start; but if it is then felt that that should go beyond that, perhaps in the way that this new convention in Wales will talk to people, we will have to see. My experience over the years is that public meetings are less popular than they used to be from the obvious ways and why technology has improved the communications field, but it is by no means something we should dismiss.

Q46 Albert Owen: I was not really concentrating on that aspect alone. I was asking whether people were aware of access to give their views? That is an important step. We are doing more in this House pre-legislatively, and rather than fire-fighting and people getting angry when a bill is three-quarters of the way through, this would be a good way, so I hope you will take that on board. With regard to your work and the British Irish Council and joint ministerial committees on devolution, where do you get your resources and support from? Does it come from the Wales Office or from the Ministry of Justice and the Cabinet Office?

Mr Murphy: From all of those places because the devolution issues are dealt with in Government by being spread between what used to be the Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Ministry of Justice. The co-ordinating role is through the Cabinet Office, and of course there is the work of my own department as well. For example, the British Irish Council is essentially one that the Ministry of Justice deals with, whereas the Joint Ministerial Committee is more inclined to be in the Cabinet Office. There is a case for us to look at how all those mechanisms work, but in a way the co-ordination of all these things so far as the JMCs and the BICs are concerned is me, so it is a matter of coming through my office in Whitehall and talking to the relevant officials about how we go about that business. The resources from the Wales Office are very small indeed, and most of them come from the other departments. There is an element of it, but not big.

Q47 Mrs James: You mentioned the Auditor General in your report and state: "Any findings by the Auditor General for Wales communicated to the Welsh Assembly Government which are material to the Wales Office's responsibilities will be made available to the Wales Office too." Is this a new development? Has it been an area of some concern in the past?

Mr Cogbill: It is something that we formalised last year. As you know, our responsibility is to transmit the grant to Wales accurately, but what the Welsh Assembly Government does with it is for them. It is possible that the Auditor General for Wales might make findings for example about cash management or something of that kind by the Welsh Assembly Government, which would be material to our view of the funding and the rates at which money should be handed over and so on. So we quite deliberately set out to put in that bit of machinery that there would be access from the Wales office to any Auditor General for Wales's findings that we ought to know about from the point of view of transmitting the grant. That was put in an agreement with the Welsh Assembly Government and I met the Auditor General for Wales last year just to confirm that all was well in terms of our statutory responsibilities.

Q48 Mark Williams: The Wales Office Welsh Language Scheme was delayed at the request of the Welsh Language Board in 2007 and there are issues in relation to the Welsh Language Board itself and its processes: when do you intend to get the review underway again and when do you intend to get a report?

Mr Cogbill: Now. How long it will take? Some months, I should think. We will have a new scheme in place later this year. The Language Board, as you know, has changed some of the templates for organisations like ours which is why there was no point in pushing on with the work last year on the old scheme, but a way is now clear for us to do that, and that will happen.

Q49 Mark Williams: I am sorry?

Mr Cogbill: I would think we would have a new scheme in place before this calendar year is out. I cannot be more precise than that. It would depend on what issues come up, but that would be my expectation.

Q50 Mr Jones: Secretary of State, page 33 of the report indicates that Ministers have met Cabinet officers and Post Offices Limited on the Post Offices Closure Programme - I am glad, by the way, you refer to it as a "closure programme" and not a change - to ensure that the views of the Welsh Assembly Government and the wider Welsh public were heard. Can you tell the Committee what representations you have made to ensure that such concerns have been effectively indicated and what response you have had?

Mr Murphy: Not just myself but my predecessor were involved in such meetings. It is really talking about not individual post offices, of course, but the process by which their action plans were to be developed and the arrangements that they have in place for that, because the actual business of consulting local communities about that programme was a matter for the Post Office itself and not the Government. So, yes, we have met them; but we do not intervene as a government on individual Post Office closures; that is a matter for them unless you happen to be the representative in that area; indeed the Welsh Assembly Government Members, Members of Parliament and local authorities have made their views very well known about individual closures; but that is not really an issue for us. It is whether the process of the undertaking was one which was appropriate and suitable for what was agreed in the first place. We have responded to lots of letters on Post Office closures, but the operational side of things is a matter for the Post Office.

Q51 Mr Jones: What response have you had from the Post Office? You indicated in the report you have met Cabinet colleagues; presumably those are Ministers in BERR, and also the Post Office Limited.

Mr Murphy: I have not met Cabinet colleagues; there were early meetings in the early part of the -----

Q52 Mr Jones: I understand, but what response has the Wales Office had to those representations?

Mr Murphy: One would assume that was about the process by way of which this was going to occur. There were three or four stages in - is it North Wales? I guess that would be about the nature of the process, not about the operational nature of what post offices will be closing.

Q53 Albert Owen: I attended one of the early meetings that the Parliamentary Under Secretary set up with the Minister responsible from BERR, and one of the issues that we did discuss in the Welsh context on closure and network change, as it happens, was the role of the Welsh Assembly and the Welsh Local Government Association. Has any progress been made there? We hear about the S6 model in the UK press, but is there any Welsh local governments that you are aware of in the Assembly looking at models that could help local areas in future once the network change programme has developed?

Mr Murphy: I will come back to you on that one. I met Rhodri Morgan on one occasion on the issue and we corresponded on it when he was making points about the process. Obviously, the WRGA has a significant interest. You will recall that the Welsh Assembly some years ago put some money into post offices in Wales so they had their own programme on that, and of course it is up to individual local authorities how they deal with it. The point was that it was a co-ordinating effort made by the Parliamentary Under Secretary over the last year to try and bring these different strands together to ensure the process was managed in a way people could understand and, most importantly, that local communities could have their say in what the proposals of the Post Office were.

Q54 Albert Owen: Additional business was an issue that was going to be looked at, whereas local authorities could encourage people to pay council tax rather than just blame the Westminster Government and the Post Office.

Mr Murphy: Yes, that issue certainly has been raised, where they could have a one-stop shop, particularly in rural areas so the Post Office could do things for the local authority. We have certainly discussed those issues with the Post Office and with the Welsh Assembly Government as to whether you could have different means by which the service could be provided. The mobile post offices is one example, but there are others too,; so those issues have been raised in terms of meetings with the Assembly and the local government.

Q55 Mark Williams: You mentioned that previously the Assembly had accessed money from the Post Office Development Fund. The fact that a statement is going to be made early next year to re-enact that Post Office Development Fund - were you aware in your discussions with the Post Office, or any discussions that the Post Office had borne that in mind as part of the Closure Programme?

Mr Murphy: As far as I know, yes. Some of these meetings were held by my predecessor and one by myself and a number by the Parliamentary Under Secretary, so there are a number of us involved. During the course of that, of course, all the different options available were talked through, including help by the Welsh Assembly Government. As you rightly say, we will await possible further developments on that. The point that Mr Owen made about joined-up government in Wales, being able to help in terms of post offices, was one that is very important. It may or may not work, but the idea that we should at least look at the possibility of other government services other than central government services being provided through the medium of post offices whether in rural or urban areas or whether they are mobile post offices or other innovations, is something we certainly had a look at.

Q56 Alun Michael: As you know, the Committee has been involved in hearings about cross-border services and we have had a particular focus on the health service and moved on to education, but I was interested to see your reference in the report at the bottom of page 33 on to page 34 about the work on cross-border health delivery. When do you expect a revised protocol for the cross-border delivery of health services to be agreed and published?

Mr Murphy: To be honest, Chairman, it was quicker than I thought. It will be out in draft before the recess. I know there has been work at official level and indeed ministerial level on the protocol between the Department of Health and the Wales Office and the Welsh Assembly Government to ensure that we make progress on it. As you and as you particularly know, as a Committee, this has a resonance amongst English Members of Parliament as well as amongst Welsh Members of Parliament and Welsh Assembly Members, and so we are working very hard on this because we believe it is a very, very important issue.

Q57 Alun Michael: It has been that tripartite approach, with the Wales Office and the Department of Health and the Assembly, and that is welcome.

Mr Murphy: Yes.

Q58 Alun Michael: In report you acknowledge that the work is complex involving commissioning and delivery of cross-border health services. What have been the most difficult aspects of reaching agreement?

Mr Murphy: Many, usually! I think it is probably the work around the financial arrangements across the border. As you will have seen by your own investigation it is an extremely complicated area. It is not just about people going to hospital in Shrewsbury or Hereford, obviously on primary health issues we were talking in the Commons last week in the Chamber about the tens of thousands of people from Wales who are registered with English doctors and vice versa, and how that has an impact for instance on prescriptions, which are free in Wales but not in England. There are difficult issues that inevitably come with having a border there. It is not anything like the same in Scotland because no-one really lives either side of the border to the extent that they do in Wales, certainly in the north east of Wales and to a certain extent in the middle and the south. They are complex issues, but they need to be resolved. We are working very hard on them. They are basically financial arrangements.

Q59 Alun Michael: The other interesting thing is that there are clearly different bodies that have to liaise in different parts of the border, so it is the West Midlands part, the north-west of England in the more northerly part and down to the south-west. Does that pose any particular problems for the development of the protocol?

Mr Murphy: They are certainly issues that they have to take into account in dealing with it because you are not dealing with the same all the way along the border, as you rightly say. I will just give you a flavour of the sort of things that the protocol has to cover, as well as the money issues. Arrangements to manage dispute resolution between cross-border providers and commissioners; achieving greater transparency and comparability of waiting times - an issue that has come up time and time again in the Chamber - and pricing of secondary care services of cross-border referrals as well. There are complex issues, and of course there are different policies. Foundation hospitals, for instance Chester Hospital in Cheshire, is a different arrangement from other hospitals in England. It is a hugely complex area, but I am afraid that our constituents are not too interested in the complexity, but rather the efficiency of the system, and it is up to us to try and make it more simple.

Q60 Alun Michael: That is very helpful, and we look forward to seeing the draft protocol. Can I ask you about the issue that comes immediately after that in the report, which is the Severn Barrage? As you know, over many years I have had a particular interest in barrage legislation, although the one I was primarily engaged with is quite different from the one proposed here, but I have an interest in this one as the proposal is partly to end up in my constituency. Are you satisfied that the Wales Office is to be fully involved in the ongoing examination of the evidence, which again is a very complex set of issues, and that we will have all the information and research available in good time for appropriate scrutiny of any proposals that come forward?

Mr Murphy: Of course you won that in Cardiff, and I was on your side at the time! It is a much bigger issue over the Severn Barrage, I suppose. I am very much in favour of it personally. The Government has a cross-departmental, cross-government Sustainable Development Commission dealing with it, which involves the Welsh Assembly Government and various Government departments including very much the Wales Office, and other people too. That will run until 2010. Of course, as well as the environmental issues, which are significant, obviously the energy issues which are huge and could provide up to 5% of our electricity in the United Kingdom from it, but there are also issues of transport - do you put a railway on top of it, for instance? It is a very, very interesting and long-term project in which we are very much involved.

Q61 Mr Jones: While we are dealing with the specific aspects of the report, can I refer you to chapter 3 on page 22, which has a number of very good photographs of yourself and your predecessors and the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State attending various functions. You are pictured with a variety of politicians, Members of Parliament and Assembly Members, but I cannot help noticing that each and ever one of those politicians happens to be a Labour politician! Maybe the next time the report is produced, possibly I and some of my colleagues on this side of the Committee could feature in some of these photographs as well in the interests of equality!

Mr Murphy: I would be more than happy to have a photograph taken with any Welsh Member of Parliament. The only trouble is of course there happened to be more of ours.

Q62 Mr Jones: I am sure.

Mr Murphy: Given the issue of number, obviously, perhaps not everybody wants a picture of me of course!

Q63 Hywel Williams: Can we turn to your role as Minister of Digital Inclusion in respect of the coming year, and in relation to the legislative inclusion in Wales. What do you intend to be doing?

Mr Murphy: First of all, before the end of the term is reached there will be issued a digital quality action plan by the British Government, by which I mean an action plan rather than a talking plan, which will go out to consultation on how we can improve the situation for the 17 million people in the United Kingdom who are not linked up to the new technology. There are lots of elderly people and disadvantaged people. That has resulted from the work of officials from all departments in Whitehall who are involved in these issues, and surprisingly every Government department has a role to play in that. I chair a Cabinet committee of Ministers looking at digital inclusion and who will have to approve the document before it is finalised and put out before we finish a week Monday. That is a very, very important part of my job; to co-ordinate and bring together Government departments to ensure we do reach out to so many people. From the Welsh point of view of course, Leyton Andrews is the equivalent Minister in the Welsh Assembly Government and I talk to him obviously about what he does and the Assembly does. There is an awful lot of common work and good principle between the Welsh Assembly Government and ourselves. Oddly enough, UK Online does not operate in Wales but there is an equivalent body, Communities First, which is an excellent body that looks at how to reach out to our communities that have not got the benefits of new technology and access to the Internet. It is a fascinating role and one that I highly value. I wondered initially how would I, as a silver surfer myself, react to this; but I am very pleased to say that I find it a very challenging and very rewarding role, and something that in Wales is very much appreciated as an instance by which we can ensure that lots of older and other people will get better lives because of access to the Internet, looking for jobs and benefits of every kind.

Q64 Hywel Williams: Over what period will the consultation be? Are you going to have public meetings? I have thought of taking one myself in my own constituency. Obviously people in ... spots will not be able to contribute to an online discussion, or not easily anyway.

Mr Murphy: We have announced a timetable before the term is up. It will not be all that long otherwise there will not be much point in it going on for ever, but it will have to give sufficient time to enable people to give proper consideration to the recommendations. Obviously, I cannot give those now, but they can be very interesting ones. In terms of my role as Secretary of State for Wales, though, there will e an additional role for me to ensure - in Scotland and Northern Ireland for that matter - that although this is essentially a UK issue, many of the services which local government offers of course are devolved. Obviously the health service is devolved and schools are devolved - the Government is, libraries - and so there is a tremendous need for proper co-operation with the devolved administration - and Scotland and Northern Ireland on it as well. In fact, I am recommending that the British Irish Council also looks at this as a workstream for them so that we can compare notes not only in the United Kingdom but the Republic of Ireland, which has been leading the field in some ways in new technology and that is why its economy is so good, but also Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man too. It is something that all of us need to work together on.

Q65 Hywel Williams: I am sure you know there is a concern that Radio Cymru will not be available in a digital form in north-west Wales and perhaps West Wales as well, until 2015 because of the capacity being taken up by Irish services. Do you foresee being able to do something about this?

Mr Murphy: I had a meeting on Monday with Ofcom, and talked to them about issues such as that, so I am very much aware of the points you are making including the points made on the floor of the House of Commons last week in Welsh Questions. There are these areas in our rural communities that need to be addressed, not just in terms of people liking to be on it, but sometimes their livelihoods depend on it as well. If you want to develop industry in rural areas and they do not have access to broadband, then you are disadvantaging those areas in terms of economic development as much as the other issues we have talked about. We are very conscious of it. I have had a meeting this week with Ofcom and will talk to BT tomorrow about these issues. I raised the issues last week as well with them.

Q66 Albert Owen: The Annual Report refers to awareness raising and a series of seminars across the United Kingdom between the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Justice and other territorial offices. What sort of issues are covered by these seminars?

Mr Murphy: Yet another document is to be issued before we go down, for people to read over the recess, and this is a devolution guidance note. The Assembly has prepared its own simultaneously. These will be issued within the next week or so. It has taken some time to develop them because there are huge issues, some of which we touched on earlier about how Whitehall departments deal with the legislative order, for instance. The guidance covers not only how we deal with legislation but how we deal Government to Government on these things, and Parliament to Assembly. That will give you a very detailed insight into the issues we have to deal with by raising awareness of devolution everywhere. That is of course an awareness in Cardiff too about how Whitehall operates ....

Q67 Albert Owen: This work is undertaken with officers and officials from the Welsh Assembly Government as well.

Mr Murphy: That is absolutely right. We have been in some very intense discussions between Cardiff and London on both sets of guidance notes issued, and they will be made public. They are about dealing with the nitty-gritty of our relationship, which is so very important.

Q68 Albert Owen: Do you think it is a bit late in the day after so many years of devolution to be having awareness from certain departments when -----

Mr Murphy: There is a different settlement now, of course.

Q69 Albert Owen: Is that the reason?

Mr Murphy: It is the big driver, but also of course there is a different political landscape, as I mentioned earlier. It is easier when all administrations are in the same party. It is not quite so easy when they are not. The Northern Ireland's Assembly Executive as I know only too well, was suspended for so many years so that we are now in a different devolution place than we were before. That is one of the reasons why the Prime Minister asked me to be responsible for the joint ministerial committees. Incidentally, we had a meeting the week before last, which went extremely well. We will have more of them in the autumn so that devolution develops in certain ways. We have to ensure that government responds to that, here in Whitehall. That is one reason why we update the devolution guidance notes and update the way in which Ministers deal with each other as well. It is a different political landscape, and from a Welsh point of view, a different devolution settlement now as a consequence of the second Government of Wales Act.

Q70 Albert Owen: The earlier response you gave to Mr Michael with regard to the protocol on health - are these are the type of things you discuss? Do you go back to the micro level about various protocols, or is it just a general awareness?

Mr Murphy: No, it is detailed stuff. Obviously, I would not necessarily involve myself in great detail on the health protocol; that would be for the Health Ministers and officials between the administrations to work out. We have an overall look at it and ensure that it is something that is moving. My job is to ensure that it does move and does not get stuck. If they do get stuck and then come to me or my junior minister, our job then is to try to ensure progress is made on it. It is all about people at the end of the day, as well as issues. It is about people working together, and the more we can get that to happen at all levels, the better. Of course there will be political differences and disagreements between different administrations, but a lot is not; a lot is about making things happen properly. That is why, at different times, we need different guidance and different protocols.

Q71 Albert Owen: In addition to the series of seminars, on page 32 you talk about the forum on devolution; is that the same thing? Is there a separate forum for representatives for the Ministry of Justice and Cabinet Office or -----

Mr Cogbill: There is a standing set of arrangements for what we call the English contacts, which is people across Whitehall plus people from the devolved administrations at official level; and then there is an additional series of special seminars and so on which on the whole will be officials rather than the Ministers, which buttress that and get into the sort of issue the Secretary of State was talking about.

Q72 Albert Owen: So we have more joined-up government.

Mr Cogbill: That is certainly the object.

Mr Murphy: It is the joint ministerial committees and the British Irish Council, both of which have now been revived because of particularly Northern Ireland coming back into devolution and because of the different landscape I have referred to. There are very good ways in which Ministers can now engage with each other from the different administrations, not just about dispute resolution, which is an important issue of course, but also about comparing best practice. That is something which is so very, very important. We can learn from each other in the different administrations in the United Kingdom and beyond, and that is something we have a duty to do.

Q73 Chairman: Secretary of State, can I thank you on behalf of the Committee, and your colleagues, for the very comprehensive and frank way in which you have answered our questions today. We have been very interested in all the areas but in particular there are two themes that have emerged for us. First, we have delayed producing our memorandum to you on the process of the legislative competence order and your evidence today has helped us in finalising our thoughts. We anticipate getting our memorandum to you within the next 24 to 36 hours and certainly by the end of the week. Can I place on record our appreciation of the help that your staff have given us in our worn in that particular area, and also place on record our thanks to the Welsh Assembly Government and the individual members of the Assembly who have assisted us - those who have been bringing forward individually or collectively the evidence. I personally have been very appreciative of the briefings I have received from them in the Assembly. Secondly, I can announce today that our next inquiry, I am sure you will be delighted to know, will be on digital inclusion in Wales. I look forward to receiving the evidence from you and from Mr Leyton Andrews. I am sure you will be wishing to appear together or separately! That again is an indication of the way in which the two bodies, the Assembly and Parliament, are working together.

Mr Murphy: Thank you, Mr Chairman, for your patience and your Members' patience today but also for the very good work that we are very appreciative of, and we will come to you as soon as we can with our review of scrutiny, and I think that your choice of a second area of investigation is a very good one! Thank you very much.