Politics of Wales
Politics in Wales forms a distinctive polity in the wider politics of the United Kingdom, with Wales as one of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom.
Constitutionally, the United Kingdom is a unitary state with one sovereign parliament delegating power to the devolved national parliaments, with some executive powers divided between governments. Under a system of devolution adopted in the late 1990s three of the four countries of the United Kingdom, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, voted for limited self-government, subject to the ability of the UK Parliament in Westminster, nominally at will, to amend, change, broaden or abolish the national governmental systems. As such, the Senedd is not de jure sovereign. Since then, further Welsh devolution has granted the Senedd additional powers.
Executive power in the United Kingdom is vested in the King-in-Council, while legislative power is vested in the King-in-Parliament. The Government of Wales Act 1998 established devolution in Wales, and certain executive and legislative powers have been constitutionally delegated to the Welsh Parliament. The scope of these powers has been further widened by the Government of Wales Act 2006, Wales Act 2014 and Wales Act 2017.
Overview
Since 1999 most areas of domestic policy have been decided within Wales via the Senedd and the Welsh Government /2014 ).Judicially, Wales remains within the jurisdiction of England and Wales. In 2007, the National Assembly for Wales gained the power to enact Wales-specific Measures. Following the 2011 Welsh devolution referendum, the National Assembly was given the power to create Acts.
Wales, together with Cheshire, used to come under the jurisdiction of the Court of Great Session, and therefore was not within the English circuit court system. Yet it has not been its own distinct jurisdiction since the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, at which point Welsh Law was replaced by English Law.
Before 1998, there was no separate government in Wales. Executive authority rested in the hands of the HM Government, with substantial authority within the Welsh Office since 1965. Legislative power rested within the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Judicial power has always been with the Courts of England and Wales, and the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom.
History
English rule
Wales was conquered by England in 1283. The 1284 Statute of Rhuddlan annexed the territory to England. Owain Glyndwr briefly restored Welsh independence in a national uprising that began in 1400 after his supporters declared him Prince of Wales. He convened Wales' first Senedd in Machynlleth in 1404, but the rebellion was put down by 1412.The Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542, passed by the English Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII, united the Principality and the Marches of Wales, creating a formalised border for the first time. Wales became part of the realm England. The Welsh legal system of Hywel Dda that had existed alongside the English system since the conquest by Edward I, was now fully replaced. Penal laws enacted after the Welsh revolt were obsoleted by acts that made the Welsh people citizens of the realm, and all the legal rights and privileges of the English were extended to the Welsh for the first time. These changes were widely welcomed by the Welsh people, although more controversial was the requirement that Welsh members elected to parliament must be able to speak English, and that English would be the language of the courts.
The Wales and Berwick Act 1746 stated that all laws applying to England would also be applicable to Wales, unless the body of the law explicitly stated otherwise. However, during the latter part of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century the notion of a distinctive Welsh polity gained credence. In 1881 the Welsh Sunday Closing Act was passed, the first such legislation exclusively concerned with Wales. The Central Welsh Board was established in 1896 to inspect the grammar schools set up under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act 1889, and a separate Welsh Department of the Board of Education was formed in 1907. The Agricultural Council for Wales was set up in 1912, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries had its own Welsh Office from 1919.
Home rule movement
Despite the failure of popular political movements such as Cymru Fydd, a number of institutions, such as the National Eisteddfod, the University of Wales , the National Library of Wales and the Welsh Guards were created. The campaign for disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Wales, achieved by the passage of the Welsh Church Act 1914, was also significant in the development of Welsh political consciousness. Without a popular base, the issue of home rule did not feature as an issue in subsequent general elections and was quickly eclipsed by the depression. By August 1925 unemployment in Wales rose to 28.5%, in contrast to the economic boom in the early 1920s, rendering constitutional debate an exotic subject. In the same year Plaid Cymru was formed with the goal of securing a Welsh-speaking Wales.Following the Second World War the Labour Government of Clement Attlee established the Council for Wales and Monmouthshire, an unelected assembly of 27 with the brief of advising the UK government on matters of Welsh interest. By that time, most UK government departments had set up their own offices in Wales. By 1947, a unified Welsh Regional Council of Labour became responsible for all Wales. In 1959 the Labour council title was changed from "Welsh Regional council" to "Welsh council", and the Labour body was renamed Labour Party Wales in 1975.
The post of Minister of Welsh Affairs was first established in 1951, but was at first held by the UK home secretary. Further incremental changes also took place, including the establishment of a Digest of Welsh Statistics in 1954, and the designation of Cardiff as Wales's capital city in 1955. However, further reforms were catalysed partly as a result of the controversy surrounding the flooding of Capel Celyn in 1956. Despite almost unanimous Welsh political opposition the scheme had been approved, a fact that seemed to underline Plaid Cymru's argument that the Welsh national community was powerless.
In 1964 the incoming Labour Government of Harold Wilson created the Welsh Office under a Secretary of State for Wales, with its powers augmented to include health, agriculture and education in 1968, 1969 and 1970 respectively. The creation of administrative devolution effectively defined the territorial governance of modern Wales.
Labour's incremental embrace of a distinctive Welsh polity was arguably catalysed in 1966 when Plaid Cymru president Gwynfor Evans won the Carmarthen by-election. However, by 1967 Labour retreated from endorsing home rule mainly because of the open hostility expressed by other Welsh Labour MPs to anything "which could be interpreted as a concession to nationalism" and because of opposition by the Secretary of State for Scotland, who was responding to a growth of Scottish nationalism.
In response to the emergence of Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party Harold Wilson's Labour Government set up the Royal Commission on the Constitution to investigate the UK's constitutional arrangements in 1969. Its eventual recommendations formed the basis of the 1974 White Paper Democracy and Devolution: proposals for Scotland and Wales., which proposed the creation of a Welsh Assembly. However, voters rejected the proposals by a majority of four to one in a referendum held in 1979.
The election of a Labour Government in 1997 brought devolution back to the political agenda. In July 1997, the government published a White Paper, A Voice for Wales, which outlined its proposals for devolution, and in September 1997 an elected Assembly with competence over the Welsh Office's powers was narrowly approved in a referendum. The National Assembly for Wales was created in 1999, with further authority devolved in 2007, with the creation of a Welsh legal system to adjudicate on specific cases of Welsh law. Following devolution, the role of the secretary of state for Wales greatly reduced. Most of the powers of the Welsh Office were handed over to the National Assembly; the Wales Office was established in 1999 to supersede the Welsh Office and support the secretary of state.
Devolved era
Between 1999 and 2007 there were three elections for the National Assembly. Labour won the largest share of votes and seats in each election and has always been in government in Wales, either as a minority administration or in coalition, first with the Liberal Democrats and with Plaid Cymru between 2007 and 2011. The predominance of coalitions is a result of the Additional Member System used for Assembly elections, which has worked to the benefit of Labour but not given it the same advantage the party has enjoyed in first-past-the-post elections to Welsh seats in the House of Commons.Policy divergence between Wales and England has arisen largely because Welsh governments have not followed the market-based English public service reforms introduced during the premiership of Tony Blair. In 2002, First Minister Rhodri Morgan said that a key theme of the first four years of the Assembly was the creation of a new set of citizenship rights that are free at the point of use, universal and unconditional. He accepted the Blairite mantra of equality of opportunity and equality of access, but emphasised what he called "the fundamentally socialist aim of equality of outcome" - in stark contrast to the approach of Blair, who said that the true meaning of equality is specifically "not equality of outcome".
Marking ten years of devolution in a 2009 speech, Morgan highlighted free prescriptions, primary school breakfasts and free swimming as 'Made in Wales' initiatives that had made "a real difference to people's everyday lives" since the National Assembly came into being. However, some authors have argued that the approach to public services in England has been more effective than that in Wales, with health and education "cost less and delivering more". Unfavourable comparisons between National Health Service waiting lists in England and Wales were a contentious issue in the first and second Assemblies.
Nevertheless, a 'progressive consensus' based on faith in the power of government, universal rather than means-tested services, co-operation rather than competition in public services, a rejection of individual choice as a guide to policy and a focus on equality of outcome continued to underpin the One Wales coalition government in the Third Assembly. The commitment to universalism may be tested by increasing budgetary constraints; in April 2009 a senior Plaid Cymru adviser warned of impending health and education cuts.
On 1 June 2020, the Senedd and Elections Act 2020 came into force, giving 16- and 17-year-olds in Wales and legally resident foreign nationals the right to vote in Senedd elections.