Devolution

The second significant change to the administrative architecture of Wales was the creation of a devolved Assembly for Wales in 1999. This followed a very narrow referendum in 1997 and was officially enacted through the Government of Wales Act 1998. When the Assembly was first created it lacked the power to initiate primary legislation however, through the Government of Wales Act 2006, the Assembly now has power to legislate in some areas. Currently, the NAW has the responsibility for ‘As-sembly Measures’ across 20 sectors and governing remits⁵ (Great Britain 2006).

Previous to the establishment of the Welsh Assembly, Wales lacked a distinctive policy-making function. The under-resourced Welsh Office generally applied policies created in Westminster without very much modification (Loughlin and Sykes 2004). However, following devolution there was a significant change in policy development and the capacity of the civil service to meaningfully contribute towards distinctively Welsh policy debates (ibid). Significant departures from English policy- making have been noticed, particularly in the fields of education, health care and spatial planning. First

5 Agriculture, fisheries, forestry and rural development; ancient monuments and historic buildings; culture;

economic development; educ ation and training; environment; fire and rescue services and promotion of fire safety; food; health and health services; highways and transport; housing; local government; National

Minister Rhodri Morgan famously described this as the ‘clear red water’ between Cardiff and Westminster policies (BBC News 2002a). More generally, a collaborative approach to service delivery has been adopted in contradistinction to the competitive mode encouraged across the border (Osmond 2001) which relies on a combination of targets, inspection, choice and contestability (Andrews and S Martin 2007).

As the WAG struggled to find its identity and proper place within an already convoluted UK state apparatus, the relationship to the newly created 22 unitary author ities of Wales was also being established. The Assembly was not in a position itself to implement many of its policy decisions so it relied on local government to achieve its objectives in practice (Osmond 2001). Sitting between Westminster and the unitary authority tier and lacking the power to enact primary legislation it was unclear what the role of NAW should and would be during this time. During the design phase of the National Assem-bly there was a desire for the new AssemAssem-bly to be new, resembling neither the Westminster Parliament nor traditional local government (Loughlin and Sykes 2004).

As such it was created as a corporate body rather than a parliament. This means that the distinction between exec utive and legislative functions is blurred (Laffin, G Taylor, and A Thomas 2002). As part of a procedural review in 2001, the Labour Group in the Asse mbly asked whether there was

a consensus that the Assembly should be a strategic/policy making insti-tution with little role in direct delivery of services or should [it] take ever more direct responsibility for things currently dealt with by Assembly Sponsored Public Bodies or even by Local Authorities? (Osmond 2001)

The answer to this question remains unclear although it would appear that the Assembly has predominantly looked to enhance the role of the 22 Welsh authorities. Evidence to support this statement includes the creation of the Partnership Council for Wales in order to promote joint working and co-operation between Assembly Government and local government. The inclusion of this obligation on the Assembly in the Government of Wales Act created a unique statutory obligation on the Assembly to consult with the business sector, local government and voluntary organisations. For local government, this move represented an acknowledgement on the Assembly’s part that it would aim to

‘safeguard’ its place at the top table of governance of Wales (Laffin, G Taylor, and A Thomas 2002).

Adopting a more collaborative approach to governance while also relying on local authorities for service delivery, allowed for policy agendas to be steered to a greater extent than in England by locally-based motivations and pressures, as well as political relationships between key stakeholders. Importantly, these relationships also include those between different local authorities as well as the relationship between the Assem-bly and local government.

The Assembly’s relationship with local government began well on rhetorical terms as articulated by the establishment of the Partnership Council between the Asse mbly and Welsh unitary authorities as a statutory part of the 1998 Wales Act (Osmond 2001).

However, in reality relations had a shaky start (ibid). Despite these initial tensions and as mentioned above, the creation of a Partnership Council between the National Assembly and local government helped to mitigate many early problems. The Institute for Welsh Affairs (IWA 2006) writes that

[d]espite early suspicion there has been a maturing in the relationship be-tween the centre and local government in Wales. On the surface therefore the changes devolution has brought to local government appear to have created a much stronger relationship and a clear distinction in roles. Not only has the reality of a separate system of Welsh local government been formalised but the Assembly Government is allowing local government to be understood as a maturing and separate tier of governance in its own right.

While this may be true for the relationship between the Assembly and unitary a uthorities at a general level, the history of relations between Cardiff and WAG is slightly different and at times has been characterised as openly antagonistic. Michael Parkinson’s report comprehensively summarises the nature of these tensions from CC’s perspective:

[R]elationships between the Welsh Assembly Government and Cardiff Council appear particularly complex and constitute a barrier to the long-term economic performance of the city. Many argued that the Assembly was dominated by rural interests and did not sufficiently appreciate the economic contribution that Cardiff makes. There were suggestions that

contribution it made were not recognised. […] There were suggestions that there were political rivalries, almost sibling rivalries, between a city that had once been powerful and had to now deal with a recently estab-lished national government. There were suggestions that political relationships between the individual leaders of the previous Labour ad-ministration and the [WAG] were not very constructive. There were suggestions that a Labour controlled Assembly was not particularly sym-pathetic to the ambitions of a Liberal Democrat controlled council. There were views that there was not sufficient political talent in the Assembly to recognise or address the needs of Cardiff and that it was not a mature po-litical organisation (Parkinson and Karecha 2006, 58)

Conventional wisdom indicates that it is not possible to have both strong intermed iate (devolved) and local governments and that regionalisation tends to result in regional centrism (Laffin 2007). Jeffrey (1998), in a message to the Scottish Affairs Committee, suggested that ‘when formerly centralist states decentralise power to the regional level, local government can suffer from the “decentralisation of centralism’. In light of this it is unsurprising that there may be some institutional ambivalence demonstrated on the part of CC towards the NAW and WAG. However, in Wales a number of factors contribute towards a fairly symmetrical balance of power between the Assembly and local government in relation to the situation in England. These include the prominence that Welsh Ministers place on local government as an important political constituency as well as the vital contributory role local government plays in policy development. This dependency of WAG on local government has been well recognised. The Assembly also has a statutory duty to promote local gover nment and does so through the Partnership Council. Another key factor is that the Assembly has only limited legislative powers so Ministers are restricted in the extent to which they can intervene in local authorities.

This is one reason why the WLGA has opposed the blanket extension of primary legisla-tive powers to NAW since greater Assembly powers would potentially alter the power balance between the Assembly and local government (Laffin 2007).

To provide an even deeper understanding of the contextual background against which city-regionalism has developed in South East Wales, consideration must also be given to the higher level discourses which were also influencing patterns of administrative change in Wales. Two of the most important of these discourses are sustainable deve

l-opment and competitiveness (played through the entrepreneurial city) because of the influence that they have had on how the role and function of go vernance has been perceived within South East Wales.