A Reserved Powers Model for Wales

The Constitution Unit has long argued that the National Assembly for Wales should have primary legislative powers, conferred in the same way as in Scotland, with the main schedule being a list of the powers reserved to Westminster. In 2015 and 2016 the Unit joined forces with the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff to recruit a team of academics, former civil servants and parliamentary draftsmen to produce two detailed reports setting out how this could be done. The first explored the difficulties involved and developed a set of principles in Delivering a Reserved Powers Model for Devolution for Wales (September 2015). The second applied those principles in Challenge and Opportunity: The Draft Wales Bill 2015 (February 2016).

This project was led by two former senior civil servants, Alan Cogbill and Sir Stephen Laws, and the reports were drafted by Alan Trench and Professor Rick Rawlings. Other members of the project were Robert Hazell, Emyr Lewis, Lowri Morgan, Sir Paul Silk, Thomas Glyn Watkin, and Richard Wyn Jones.