Why I Voted YES For Wales

I finally received my first piece of literature today, in the campaign and I found the last debate on TV, to be rather dull.I have already voted by post.

As a Liberal Democrat, you would think I would be voting yes, or because I am English, you may think I have good reason to vote no. But no political party can make me vote how they expect me to vote as I am entitled to my own views. Especially as all the parties in the Welsh Assembly are backing the Yes campaign. Those who are cynical would say "Well, they would, wouldn't they! They want more powers to dictate to us how we live our lives and it makes them look more important".

When I was a District Councillor in the 90's, we had the majority to bring about Lib Dem policies of bringing the Council nearer to the people and devolving services and decision making. We also opened up the Council to give the public the right to ask questions at committee and Full Council meetings, and gave Parish and Town Councils the right to speak to planning applications at site meetings, as well as supporters or objectors. It all worked well. Come to Pembrokeshire and such things are STILL not available to Joe Public.

The Conservatives at that time were against devolving powers downwards. Now, when I hear Cameron speak about devolving powers, he sounds like a Liberal Democrat from 20 years ago and gives the impression the Conservatives have always supported decision making at the lowest level, rather than centralised decision making.

I ummed and aahhed for a while how to vote and it was only by e-mailing Preseli Pembrokeshire AM, Paul Davies, that finally made up my mind to vote Yes. I had wanted to vote Yes, but I had concern that there was insufficient scrutiny of legislation by a governing party at Cardiff Bay.

Any party in Government will want to carry out its own agenda and will use their members to push legislation through.

With new powers, there is insufficient scrutiny in place, at the moment, to stop ill thought out legislation, being introuduced. I hope if the Assembly gets the powers it is looking for, that it will come up with proposals to ensure there is a separate body to provide the scrutiny that you get in most legislatures. Such body needs powers to stop an arrogant Government bulldozing its legislation through, otherwise it will reflect badly on the Welsh Assembly.

Just giving the Assembly the powers to legislate is one thing. But it also has to use them responsibly and whilst I support the Assembly, recent weeks has shown that its education policies are not necessarily the best and a recent report shows West Wales and the Valleys have gone backwards, economically, despite huge investment from the EU.

The Welsh Assembly's record under Labour and now Labour/Plaid is questionable, but we have elections in May and maybe the voters might then pass judgement on their record. However, my feeling is that they will vote back Labour as a result of the coalition government's cuts, rather than as a positive endorsement of the Assembly's record.

However, that is for a future blog.

I hope the Assembly gets the Yes vote and if they are successful, they show humility and will be responsible, when they get the powers from Westminster.

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