National Assembly for Wales

Good morning. Can I welcome Members to this morning's meeting of the Member Accountability Bill Committee? We'll do the housekeeping in a moment. Before we start, can I welcome Sam Rowlands, who is attending as a substitute for Paul Davies today? Do any Members wish to make a declaration? I will also highlight that Buffy Williams, at the moment, is actually stuck in traffic due to problems on the A470. Can I remind Members that this is being broadcast live and that a transcript of the proceedings will be published in the usual way, and that the simultaneous translation from Welsh to English is available on the headsets via channel 1, and if you require amplification, that's on channel 2? There is no scheduled fire alarm this morning—we've just had one, actually—so if one does take place, please follow the directions of the ushers to a safe location.

With that in mind, we'll move on to item 2, and that's the Bill itself and our process of starting the scrutiny. For the record, I will once again remind the public and Members that the Bill has now been formally introduced and that scrutiny will now take place. The Business Committee this morning approved our reporting deadline to be 23 December, which allows time for translation of the final version of the report. We will be undertaking our scrutiny in the short period of time we have.

We will be considering the general principles of the Bill, whether there's a need for legislation to deliver the policy objectives, and we will be looking at whether we can strengthen the systems that regulate and sanction the behaviour and conduct of Members; provide a mechanism to recall Members, removing them from office during their term, on the basis of the expressed will of voters in the relevant constituency; strengthen our standards processes, including requiring that each Senedd must establish a mandatory Standards of Conduct Committee; and, through the appointment of lay members, provide flexibility for the commissioner for standards to proactively consider concerns regarding the conduct of Members of the Senedd, and that means own-initiative investigations and amending the Welsh Ministers' powers in the Government of Wales Act 2006 to make provision for the conduct of Senedd elections, in particular by placing a duty on Welsh Ministers to make provision prohibiting the making or publishing of false statements of fact. So, we'll be looking at all those matters, and through that we will consider barriers to implementing the Bill, whether there are any unintended consequences—and we have had Bills before where there have been unintended consequences—the Welsh Government's assessment of the financial impact of the Bill, and that will be assisted by the Finance Committee—they'll be doing some work on that—the appropriateness of the powers and matters relating to the competence of the Senedd, including compatibility with the European convention on human rights.

So, that's what we'll be looking at in the next few weeks, and I say 'few weeks' because we've only got this half term to do it, and, remember, our report also takes a couple of weeks to discuss and produce. We have issued a call for evidence—that has gone out to relevant stakeholders—and we've asked for written evidence by 19 November. 

With that in mind, I move on to the next item, which is papers to note. We've received two papers. The first is a letter from the Business Committee regarding the Business Committee's review of the public Bill and Member Bill processes, including the publication of pre-introduction Bills, and they're asking us for our views as to how that has worked—the publication to committees prior to the laying of the Bill, so that it can help us and inform our work. We will have to respond by 14 November for that, so we may want to discuss that later this morning or next week.

The second paper to note is from the Chair of the Standards of Conduct Committee, informing us as to what ongoing work is being done by that committee on Member accountability, and the work they'll be doing in parallel, the same time as us. So, I hope Members are content to note those two papers. Thank you.

Item 4 is now going into private session and therefore, in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi) and (ix), I ask the committee to resolve to exclude the public for the remainder of today's meeting. Are Members content to do so? I see you are, so we will now move into private session for the remainder of this meeting.