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Government of Wales Bill

I put my name to the amendment as well, and would like to try to explain briefly why it is incredibly important for people working in Wales that some form of register is established and maintained. As is the case with government departments, the Assembly produces a considerable amount of regulations, orders, directions, schemes and other subordinate legislation. It has powers authorising it to do so in Acts of Parliament. The Stationery Office prints and publishes legislation, in so far as the legislation is made by statutory instruments. The Assembly makes about 200 such general instruments a year. However, on top of this is subordinate legislation—it usually consists of directions, many types of orders, and schemes—which is not required to be made by statutory instrument. With very few exceptions, the Stationery Office does not print and publish such legislation. The method of printing and publication is left to individual government departments and the Assembly to decide, and there is a problem with the Assembly. Until January this year, the Assembly, including the Assembly Government, had no established system of printing or publishing this legislation. In most cases it was impossible to find the legislation on the website, and there was no central register of such instruments to consult. Since January, the Assembly and Assembly Government have established a register and ensured that all legislation follows the same format. The problem is that there are no plans to do that for pre-January 2006 non-statutory instrument subordinate legislation. Since its creation in 1999, it is estimated that the Assembly Government have probably produced at least the same amount of non-statutory instrument legislation as the number of statutory instruments. In other words, another 200 pieces of legislation a year have gone through, but no one can find them. In total, there must be about 1,000 pieces of law made by the Assembly Government that are not generally available to the public or public organisations. In the field of health, in which I work, most of the Assembly Government’s legislation is produced by means of directions. Such directions are not usually required to be made by statutory instrument so are not printed by the Stationery Office. Because the Assembly Government have no system of publication or registering such legislation, it is usually impossible to find most of the law made by the Assembly on health matters in Wales. The only way in which you can have it is if you have personally accumulated the bits as they have come through. This is a serious concern, particularly to the BMA, but also to the Law Society and firms of solicitors that specialise in advising health bodies in Wales. The Department of Health regularly registers, publishes and updates such legislation made by it, but that no longer applies to Wales. Worryingly, in a letter to the Wales committee of the Law Society, the Assembly Government gave no undertaking to publish their pre-January 2006 legislation. They even hinted that their present practice of publishing may not necessarily continue after the next Assembly elections, in May 2007. Indeed, it is hard to see how a client who goes to a solicitor to seek legal advice could have redress if that solicitor had been ignorant and unable to access, by searching, a particular instrument pertinent to that client’s case. As the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno, said, lack of knowledge of the law breaches the principles of common law and human rights. The Assembly’s publication scheme has operated under the Freedom of Information Act, in which the Assembly Government undertake to ensure publication of all their laws. Unfortunately, there are few sanctions under that Act if such an undertaking is not fulfilled. I hope that noble Lords can see that, if 1,000 pieces of law are difficult to trace, that will accumulate in time and without a proper central register and a duty to maintain it, it will become increasingly difficult to ensure not only that the legislation is relevant and pertinent, but that it is abided by.