Yesterday in Parliament

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know my sob story about spending the best part of an hour of my train journey home from London last night, writing a long blogpost about yesterday’s exceptionally busy Welsh day in Westminster, only to have the WordPress app on my iphone crash and I lost it all. [...]

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Pushing the boundaries

The Lords and the UK government may have reached a compromise agreement on the bill that will usher in a new voting system but Welsh MPs are still angry about the other part of the bill which will redraw Westminster constituencies. Apart from their concerns about the loss of ten Welsh MPs, one of their [...]

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Lords ruling could mean end to AV vote/Welsh election clash

Last night the House of Lords held a vote which could mean that next year’s referendum on voting reform for Westminster elections might not take place on the same day as the Assembly election after all. Details here, here and here. The upshot is the legislation now allows the AV vote to be held any [...]

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A Grand Day Out

MPs arriving at this morning’s meeting of the Welsh Grand committee were met with a frosty reception – from the room itself. In fact it was so cold that one of my pens stopped working. But that didn’t stop the MPs trying to generate their own heat.  This was better natured than the last time [...]

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Barnett’s Fair – for the foreseeable future

At Welsh Labour’s special policy conference which was held at the weekend, the party launched its own Yes campaign for next year’s powers referendum. One of the main messages used to win over doubters within Labour was that the UK government would only look at reforming the way Wales is funded – the notorious Barnett [...]

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Referendum’s big week in parliament

I know you’ve been on tenterhooks to find out what the Welsh Affairs Select Committee has said since I trailed its report last night.  MPs on the committee have been working out what extra powers the Assembly has gained since 2006 when the last big change to the constitutional set-up came in the Government of [...]

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A change to the schedule

You may wish to familiarise yourself with Schedule 7 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 although I’m sure it’s already burned in your memory. Just in case it isn’t though, let me remind you: this is the bit of the Act that sets out exactly what the Assembly is responsible for. It defines the [...]

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