Saving the rainforests

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In principle, the idea that legislation should be introduced to ensure that goods on sale in the UK have been produced in a way which does not encourage or promote deforestation is a sound one. The particular approach being proposed by the UK has a number of major flaws however, not least that it depends on the production of raw materials to be ‘in accordance with local legislation’. In states where ‘local legislation’ is either non-existent, badly defective, or hopelessly unenforced as a result of them exercising their own sovereignty, it creates a massive loophole which makes it look more like a gesture than a serious attempt to protect the rainforests. I’m sure that a desirable outcome could be assisted by UK legislation, but it would involve a willingness not only to have an independent international arbiter rather than depend on ‘local legislation’ to determine whether the rainforests are being damaged by producing the relevant products, but also to demand, effectively, that companies operating elsewhere which are selling into the UK market would have to abide by the same rules. It’s a clear instance where legislation in one country will never be enough to prevent environmental damage happening on the other side of the world – countries need to co-operate and work to common rules to ensure change. The UK could lead on this - if it really wanted to do more than make gestures.

In completely unrelated news, it seems that the negotiations over a trade deal with the EU are foundering largely because the UK government considers it utterly unacceptable that the EU should expect third parties (such as the UK) to abide by its rules in relation to issues such as environmental protection, rather than recognise that, as a sovereign state, the UK has the right to set its own rules independently of anyone else, and equally unacceptable that whether it is complying with rules should be determined by anyone other than itself.

Tradition and nostalgia

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One of the important issues exercising the minds of our MPs at the moment is the little problem that the building in which they debate is in danger of falling down around their ears.  This story appeared in a number of sources this week, outlining some of the problems and issues, of which there are many.

(As an aside, one of them is that the Palace of Westminster is apparently seriously infested by rats and mice.  Who’d have thought it?)

In most walks of life, the fact that a building which is not fit for purpose is crumbling away would be seen as an opportunity to take a long hard look at the requirements and even the location, and consider a range of options.  A legislative chamber which does not contain enough seats for all its members (even after the proposed reductions) is clearly not fit for purpose, the confrontational layout with its lines on the floor to ensure that members remain at least two sword lengths away from each other is quaint but more than a little dated, and the approach to decision-taking which involves the members standing up and walking through doors to be counted is antediluvian.

In any rational world, structural problems on this scale would be seen as an opportunity to create a legislative chamber which facilitates efficiency and the making of good legislation.  But no chance; the debate about options is limited to whether the building should be evacuated whilst it is repaired, or whether they should continue operating whilst the work is carried out around them – perhaps by making those doing the repairs work around the clock.  Tradition – in this case, working in the same way as their predecessors worked in the past – is more important to them than efficiency and effectiveness.  But then, as we’ve seen on so many other issues, looking to the past is what they do best.

A rose by any other name

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The word ‘parliament’ derives from the French, ‘parler’; so there is a sense in which ‘talking shop’ is a reasonable alternative description.  For reasons which escape me, there seems to be a general belief that an Assembly of the people is somehow a less important establishment, or has less status, than a talking shop.  But the idea that it isn’t a proper legislature unless it’s called a parliament strikes me as being a strange one, placing rather more emphasis on the name than on the function or activity.

‘Assemblée Nationale’ is good enough for France, for example, and worldwide, the title ‘Assembly’, in one form or another, seems to be more prevalent than the use of the term ‘parliament’, as this list indicates.  It’s true that many former possessions of the British empire do still use the term ’parliament’, but being a former possession of a specific empire doesn’t seem to me a particularly good reason for choosing one word over another. 

There is also, I think, a degree of correlation between the source of sovereignty in a country and the name of its legislature; monarchies, where power stems from god through the monarch, tend to prefer the talking shop word, whilst republics, in which power (in theory at least) stems from the people, tend to prefer the concept of an assembly of the people.

So, given a choice between calling our legislature an Assembly or a Parliament, I have a preference for retaining the former rather than aping Westminster.  Sadly, aping Westminster is what our politicians seem to prefer in most things.

Having said that, it’s not an issue of great importance to me – what matters more is what it does.  And in that context, the critique by Daran Hill earlier this week seems relevant.  We have a legislative body which isn’t actually doing very much by way of legislating.  Now, I’m not a fan of passing laws for the sake of it, but in this case I agree with Daran that there does seem to be a lack of ambition for Wales, when there is so much to be done.

And that brings me to my real criticism of the consultation announced yesterday on changing the name of the Assembly.  Whether the AMs spend a lot of time debating this, or whether they spend very little time debating it, as the Presiding Officer suggests, the very fact of launching a consultation on a change of name succeeds in giving the impression that this issue is important to them – and more important, at that, than all the potential legislation that they’re not considering. 

Whether that impression is fair or not isn’t the point; it’s the conclusion that many will inevitably draw.  If the difference was one of great import, it might be worth taking a considered decision to risk a negative response from the public at large, but it really is just a name.  I find it hard to think of a better way of highlighting the disconnect between the real world and our elected representatives than getting involved in this sort of diversionary activity.

Finding the real culprits

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Demanding that Sir Philip Green should be stripped of his knighthood, as several Labour MPs have done, is an easy way of attracting a headline or two.  It avoids the need for proper discussion about what changes might be needed.  It also fits the prevailing narrative about ‘holding people to account’, and demanding ‘justice’ - although scapegoating seems a better description to me.  It doesn’t actually help the employees or pensioners of the company, though.  Worse, I’m also not convinced that they’re going for the right target, as opposed to the easy one.

As far as I’m aware, no-one has yet suggested that Green has broken any laws – if that situation changes, then clearly he should be brought before the relevant courts and dealt with.  The suggestion is, rather, that he has been incompetent, reckless, greedy, or perhaps lacking in a sense of morality and decency in the way he has treated the staff involved.  All of those things may or may not be true; but the question about how this was allowed to happen stands.

BHS isn’t the only company facing a huge pension deficit; there’s a similar issue facing the employees of Tata and many other companies.  What we should be considering is how these pension deficits have arisen, and what we need to do to prevent more of them.  Pensions is a complicated issue, and expecting our MPs to turn their attention to that instead of seeking easy headlines looks unrealistic; but if pensions deficits on this scale can be so commonplace and entirely legal, surely the people we should be looking to ‘hold to account’ in the first place are those responsible for lax legislation and regulation – i.e. the MPs themselves.

There are a number of different things which have led to the scale of some of the pension deficits.  One of those was the change in the taxation regime for pensions introduced by Gordon Brown, and voted through parliament by – the Labour MPs now demanding action against Green.  The problem with Brown’s changes wasn’t that they were wrong in principle, but that they came without warning and were introduced in a single year.  There was no opportunity for adapting to the new regime or to phase in changes (including increased contributions).

A second issue is the requirement – again imposed by parliament – for pension funds to publish details of their funding situation as though they were about to be wound up.  The logic of this is entirely sound (and it’s a valid basis in the case of BHS), but for most pension funds, this accounting basis is both unrealistic and significantly exaggerates the scale of any likely deficit.

But another, and the most pertinent in the case of Green, is that employers can get away with making inadequate contributions to the fund, sometimes over a long period.  When I first joined a pension scheme, too many years ago, I remember being told that it was really ‘deferred salary’.  That is to say, the contributions being made by my employer were part of my overall salary, put aside to guarantee certain benefits in retirement.  From this perspective, the failure of any employer to make and maintain adequate payments over the long term (accepting that there are sometimes short term issues which can lead to a temporary shortfall) to meet the commitments given to staff is like failing to pay staff the wages due to them.  But the latter is a crime; the former is not.  Why not?  Again, we have to turn to our parliamentary representatives if we want to know who to blame.

Demands by MPs for tokenistic action against an individual may indeed make good headlines – but they also divert attention from the real culprits, the lawmakers themselves, who have consistently failed to ensure that the legal framework for pensions simply does not allow unscrupulous employers to get rich at the expense of their staff and pensioners.

Laws aren't the answer

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I’ve thought all along that the Tories’ proposal for legislation mandating the elimination of the budget deficit was just a silly gimmick.  In the first place, no government can ever tie the hands of another – any law passed can equally easily be repealed - and in the second place, whether, when, and to what extent the deficit should be reduced depends on economic circumstances.  Making it an absolute priority regardless is poor economics.

I’m afraid that I don’t think that Plaid’s proposal for a law mandating fair funding for the north (as noted by Cai Larsen last week) is any more sensible.  The first objection still applies – no Welsh government can ever bind its successors.  And a variation on the second also applies – whether equality of funding is the right thing to do at any point in time depends on the circumstances at the time.

That’s not to say that there isn’t a problem with the way the Welsh government is spending our money at present – there clearly is.  And it doesn’t only affect the north; there are those of us out here in the wild west who also feel that a Cardiff-centric government is replicating the centralist tendencies of the UK and concentrating spending in and around the capital.  It’s just that legislating for equality of spending isn’t the right answer.

In the first place, it might well be that in some years, depending on projects and priorities, it might actually be right to spend more per head in the north than in the south-east.  And what do we mean by the ‘north’ anyway?  If equality was achieved by spending all the north’s money in Wrecsam (nothing against Wrecsam, by the way), how does that help Ynys Môn?  And demanding equality of spending, carried to its logical conclusion on a village by village basis, might also mean that no large projects could ever be undertaken – anywhere.  Over what period would this ‘equality’ be mandated?  The shorter the period, the harder it would be to finance large projects; but the longer the period, the more meaningless the proposal becomes in practical terms.

No, I simply don’t think that the proposal for legislation to control the way money is spent in different parts of Wales is a sensible response to the problem.  It looks like a gimmick; just like Osborne’s deficit law. What we really need isn’t legislation, it’s an economic plan for Wales with a vision for improved infrastructure and for boosting the economy of all parts of the country.  It’s not exactly a new idea, of course (although the 1970 version might need more than a little dusting off).  But real, hard proposals will do more for the north and west than any amount of meaningless legislation.

Correcting the balance

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I liked Corbyn’s suggestion last week of a new law to prevent the payment of dividends by companies which are not paying at least a living wage to all their staff.  Any reasonable definition of a ‘viable business enterprise’ ought to exclude any business which can only turn a profit by underpaying its staff.  Underpaying staff whilst paying dividends to shareholders is just a simple and blatant way of transferring wealth from labour to capital.

The response of the CBI spokesperson was a little over the top – not to say out of touch with reality.  He said "The idea of politicians stepping into the relationship between a private company and its shareholders would be a significant intervention, and not one that we would support" as though the idea of legislative regulation of that relationship was an entirely new and novel suggestion.  I would have thought that anyone representing the CBI would at least be aware that the various Companies Acts are full of provisions which regulate that relationship.

And rightly so, too.  There are rules covering the way in which companies are managed, and rules governing the rights of shareholders and the responsibilities of companies and their directors.  Other legislation also affects the relationship – health and safety legislation and employment protection legislation, to name just two examples, both restrict the unfettered right of businesses to behave as they wish in the interests of shareholder profit.

I’m sure they’d argue that statute enshrines the duty of company directors to consider first and foremost the best interests of shareholders at all times, and that that’s what they’re doing in opposing this suggestion.  But as the previous paragraph illustrates, that duty has already been curtailed in a number of ways; it’s a duty which takes primacy only within the limits of any other legislation, and all Corbyn is proposing is another limitation on that duty – and quite a small one at that.

I can understand why the representatives of capital would want to maintain as far as they can the current presumption in favour of the interests of capital.  But I do wonder whether they have really thought this through.  It looks like a very short term and narrow view of the interests of capital to me.

A successful capitalist economy depends on there being a sufficient number of consumers in a position to buy the products and services which businesses produce.  From the perspective of any individual company, it might well appear advantageous to pay wages as low as possible in order to maximise its own profits; but from the point of view of the economy as a whole, underpaying employees is a huge problem in the long term.  Such narrow short termism is one of the fundamental problems of capitalism as an economic system, and it’s part of the reason for cyclical boom and bust.

Capitalists need external regulation and legislation for their own good; the fact that they don’t recognise that themselves merely reinforces the need.  So, on this one, I’m with Corbyn in principle.  Sadly, I think the chances that his own party would ever allow him to implement such a proposal are even less than the chances of him getting into power.

Legislating isn't governing

Tweet Much of what has been and is being said about the situation which will arise after the election is predicated on the assumption that governments must command a majority in the House of Commons, and if no party has such a majority in its own right, then it has to take steps to guarantee the support of one or more other parties.  It isn’t entirely true, though.

For sure, there are one or two key votes where a majority is necessary for the continuation of a government.  Passing the budget and fending off votes of no confidence are the two obvious examples.  But these are far from being everyday occurrences.  As a general rule, the executive can govern without much need to refer anything to the legislature.

Power to ‘govern’ isn’t – and never has been – vested in the House of Commons.  It is, instead, passed by the sovereign directly to ‘her’ (not ‘our’) ministers, and is generally exercised in Whitehall, not Westminster.  Governments and Ministers have to work within any rules or constraints set down by legislation, of course; and a government without a majority might find it challenging to introduce new legislation or amend existing legislation without being certain of a majority. 

Having said that, most clauses of most bills are singularly uncontentious.  Whilst the impression which the parliamentarians like to give us is of a fierce line by line fight on each and every act of parliament, that picture bears little relation to reality.  A government without a majority would and could still get a lot of non-contentious legislation through parliament; it’s only the most politically contentious issues which would cause a problem.

This was precisely the position facing Alex Salmond and the SNP between 2007 and 2011.  They managed it on an issue by issue basis; and by avoiding proposing any legislation that they knew could never pass (which is why they had to wait until 2014 for the referendum).  But it worked.  In fact it worked very well, and the Scots clearly believed that they had a competent and effective government.

The problem which the pundits and politicians are getting so exercised about isn’t that a minority government can’t work – it’s that it’s something that they’ve never given enough thought to, because they’re hung up on the macho image of a ‘strong’ government steamrollering its programme through parliament.   The idea that a government could quietly get on with governing, and tone down its legislative programme to that which they can get through, is a strange concept to them even though it’s long been the norm in many other countries.

Governing isn’t legislating; and legislating isn’t governing.  It will do the UK no harm at all to develop a better understanding of that distinction.  It might even provoke people into giving a bit more thought to what parliament is for.  Although, on reflection, that might be at least a part of what’s worrying them.

Back to the future

Tweet One of the characteristics of so-called ‘New Labour’ in government was that the solution to everything was always more legislation.  It was often poorly thought through legislation, and didn’t always achieve the claimed outcomes; but it usually achieved the desired political result, which was that the government was seen to be doing ‘something’.

Ed Miliband’s commitment to legislate for leaders’ debates in future elections seemed to me to have come from the same stable.  It’s perhaps even less well thought through than even some of Blair’s efforts, but it gives the impression of reacting decisively to a problem and promising to act.

The proposal is blatant nonsense, of course; but I doubt that Miliband will be over-worried about that.  He’s seen a problem, promised decisive action, and is now moving on.  All his focus groups probably told him that being decisive is a good thing in itself – the ‘about what’ and ‘in which way’ questions are secondary.

On the essence of the issue, I doubt that the public are demanding these debates in the way that the politicians and broadcasters seem to believe.  And I have a suspicion that 7 (or more) way debates are going to be televisual Mogadon, with too little time to explore any issue in depth, deteriorating into a swapping of pre-rehearsed sound bites and insults.  Plenty of artificial heat, and very little light.

None of that matters in the slightest to Miliband or his advisers, because his latest promise isn’t about debates or even about legislation; it’s all about image.  New Labour never really went away at all.

Laws and legitimacy

Tweet One of the characteristics of the last UK Labour Government was their apparent blind faith in legislation as the answer to everything.  Whatever the problem, the solution was invariably to pass a new law to deal with it.  It gave the appearance of action – which always pleases the spin doctors – without necessarily making much difference to anything.

Jack Straw’s call at the weekend for a new law to declare the UK indissoluble comes from the same stable.  Of course, in the case of Wales, no new law is needed – after all “annexed and incorporated, henceforth and for ever” is about as final and definitive as one can get.  But the fact that there were already laws covering particular issues never stopped them legislating in the past, and I have no reason to believe that it would do so in the future either.

The Welsh precedent also highlights another point.  The fact that the law says that the union is indissoluble does not, and cannot, stop people making a case for dissolving it.  Enforcing such a law requires a much more draconian approach.  That’s been tried in the past as well, but it doesn’t work for ever either.

I remember speaking to a Catalan nationalist in the final years of the Franco regime in Spain, and I asked why he was only arguing for a degree of autonomy rather than independence.  It wasn’t that he was not in favour of independence, merely that Spanish law forbade him from saying so, and in a dictatorship such as Spain was at that time, such a law could be, and was, enforced.  As it happens, the Spanish law forbidding any part of Spain from attaining independence is still in force, and the Spanish government is attempting to rely on that law.  But, as the Catalans are about to prove by holding their own independence referendum in November, such a law cannot prevent them seeking to take responsibility for their own country.

The Catalan experience, in turn, highlights another point.  The words legislation and legitimacy may come from the same root, but legislation is not the only thing which confers legitimacy.  The existence of the Catalan parliament, and the people’s decision to elect to it a majority committed to seeking independence, confers an alternate legitimacy on their actions, and on the referendum which they are about to hold.  That legitimacy comes from the people, and such legitimacy will always trump laws made in the past. 

The legitimacy conferred by electing a majority of nationalists to any parliament brings me to another point.  Over the weekend, Alex Salmond made the entirely rational point that a referendum is not the only possible route to independence.  (Whether it would be wise to seek another route is another question entirely, and I’m not going to go into that here.  I merely support the point that he makes, which is that plenty of countries have seen their legislatures move from devolved power to complete power without holding a referendum.)  The greater the degree of autonomy enjoyed by a parliament, the more credibility its freely-elected representatives have in speaking for the people, even on non-devolved issues.

I doubt Straw’s Law will ever become a reality, but if it does it will be an irrelevance from the day on which it is passed.  The people of Scotland and Wales may never choose to become independent; they have as much right to make that choice as the alternative.  But it won’t be any new law which prevents them.

Have they nothing better to do?

Tweet I probably shouldn’t ever be surprised at any aspect of Westminster’s government processes, but I’ll admit that the news this week that there is a potential problem with bilingual ballot papers for the police commissioner elections in two months’ time really did come as a surprise.

It’s not so much the fact that they’re late in the day thinking about it that comes as a surprise.  Much of what our own government in Cardiff does seems to treat the Welsh language as some sort of add-on extra; a simple translation job once all the real discussion has finished.  And if the Welsh Government can’t treat the Welsh language as an integral part of its activities, there is no reason to hope that the far-removed Westminster Government will ever be any better at it.

No, the part that surprised me was that it is necessary for the UK Parliament to pass an order ‘allowing’ the use of bilingual forms in Wales.  Given that bilingual forms for elections have been very much the norm in Wales for decades, and given the legislation which has been passed over the years in Westminster and Cardiff normalising the use of Welsh for official purposes, and giving the language, allegedly, equal status, why does a specific form for a specific election still need further legislation at all?

Has the Westminster Parliament really got nothing better to do than authorise what should be no more than a minor organisational detail, requiring nothing more than that relevant officials give to Welsh the equality of status which legislation claims it already has?  I find it utterly incredible that we need to seek the consent of a majority of the 650 MPs from across the UK (or however many of them bother to turn up for such a riveting agenda item) before a single form can be made available bilingually.

Even Commoner than the Commons

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This is quite an old story, but I’ll admit that it had passed me by.  The UK Coalition is introducing a new stage in the legislative process called the ‘public reading’ stage, which creates a formal mechanism for members of the public to comment on, and suggest amendments to, parliamentary bills.  It’s been piloted on the rather Orwellian-named “Protection of Freedoms” Bill, but will in due course be introduced as a formal stage for all legislation.

I can’t imagine that many of us will take advantage of this process, or that the Government would pay very much attention to anything we did say.  It is likely, however, to be used by a range of interest groups, often people who have a degree of expertise and knowledge which is lacking in the average MP.  The sort of expertise and knowledge which supporters of the continuation of a second chamber argue that chamber should provide.

At the heart of the debate about the future of the House of Lords is the desire of some to have a mechanism by which someone else can do the job which MPs seem patently unable or unwilling to do, namely to scrutinise badly drafted legislation and suggest amendments.  At the same time, however, they want to avoid giving those scrutineers any real power or influence which might enable them to challenge the right of the House of Commons to pass badly-drafted legislation any time it the government so wishes.

This new legislative stage might provide an alternative way of doing that; and the scrutineers wouldn’t even need to be paid, let alone provided with an elegant club house in Westminster with nice red benches upon which to rest their backsides.  It’s not a bad idea, although I have a preference, whatever other changes are made, for those sitting on the green benches to do the job for which they are elected rather than behave as slaves to the whips.

Legislation and delivery

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The comments made by Sir Emyr Jones Parry on the Welsh Government’s legislative programme have been extensively reported.  And it’s no surprise that some critics of the current government have been quick to seize upon the comments as justification for their stance.

It’s hard to disagree with the suggestion that integrated cycle paths may not be the most relevant response to the economic problems being faced by Wales.  And it’s equally hard to disagree with the suggestion that the Welsh Government’s legislative programme shows a certain lack of imagination and willingness to use the new powers devolved to the Assembly.

But reality, as always, is rather more complex than that.

I don’t know to whom in the four parties Sir Emyr spoke during the referendum campaign about how they would use the new powers, but I may have been involved in responding to the question on behalf of one of them, when giving evidence to the Convention.  (And, thinking back to what we said, probably not the party which gave him half an answer!)  It was a point that he was very keen to raise during the Convention’s hearings.  It was – and is – a valid question to ask at one level, but it wasn’t – and still isn’t – that easy to answer.

Even with the new powers, the situation in Wales remains one where specific powers are devolved under a multiplicity of different Acts and Orders, and no-one really knows exactly what the Assembly can and can’t do until a specific proposal is put forward and examined in detail by the lawyers.  It’s quite different from the situation in Scotland, where everything is devolved unless otherwise stated, and it makes it quite difficult to put forward a detailed legislative programme without a lot of legal work in advance.

Plus, from my point of view in trying to respond to his question, the new settlement wasn’t what I really wanted anyway.  It would have been much easier for me to say how I would use the powers of an independent Wales; what can be done within the current system is necessarily a compromise for those of us who want to see Wales as a member state of the EU.

At another level, it’s also a very one-sided question – it suggests that those who wanted powers devolved had to say how they would use those powers, but those who felt that the powers should stay where they were had no need to provide a similar justification for their opinion.  As I recall, Sir Emyr suggested that it was arrogant of us to ask for more powers without providing such justification.  But the argument for where powers should sit is not – certainly from a nationalist viewpoint – predicated on how they will be used.

Returning to the substance of Sir Emyr’s criticism, I’ve commented before that I thought that all of the manifestos for this year’s Assembly election were lacking in imagination, but in the case of new legislation, that would inevitably be the case for any party trying to put forward a legislative programme which was entirely achievable within the current settlement.

The more important question is the extent to which we judge a government on its legislative programme compared to the extent to which we judge it on its delivery performance.  Governments exist to do rather more than pass new laws – there’s far too much of a tendency to respond to any situation with a proposal for a new law.  It shows the sort of macho responsiveness so beloved of politicians, but often more can be done – and more quickly – by using existing legislation creatively and imaginatively.

Assuming that one can adduce a government’s priorities, and then judge that government, purely by considering its legislative programme doesn’t seem to be a sensible approach to me.  In the field of economics, delivery is more important than new laws at this stage. 

And it is on delivery rather than on legislation which we should judge the current Government.  Judging them on the content of their legislative performance may well give them a very negative score, but it is letting them off the hook on the far more important issue, which is their poor performance in delivery.

More to life than laws

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The slowness of the new Welsh Government in presenting any sort of detail of its programme for the next five years is surprising for a party which has been in government for the last 12 years, and which no-one seriously expected would cease to lead the government after this year’s elections.  It’s not unreasonable to expect that they would have been better prepared.

But the opposition criticism that the legislative element of the programme is so light is rather less fair – and it surprises me as well.  I’d have thought that the opposition parties would welcome the opportunity which it might provide. 

Labour didn’t promise a lot by way of new legislation in their manifesto, but then an awful lot of government activity doesn’t really require new laws to be made.  The fact that the Assembly now has new law-making powers doesn’t mean that it should rush to emulate the sausage-factory approach to legislation which characterises Westminster.  Legislation is only part of the Assembly’s function; it also has an important rôle in holding the Executive to account.  AMs really don’t need to spend all their time thinking up new ways of adding to the law book, just for the sake of it.

The Government in London likes to keep MPs occupied as much as possible in either supporting, or opposing, the government’s legislative programme, of course.  I’ve often suspected that they do so in order to make sure that the MPs don’t have enough time to do anything more useful, such as asking the more difficult questions which so few of them manage to do.

Scrutiny and free-thinking are dangerous activities to party leaders, and are generally to be prevented at all costs.  The decision of Carwyn Jones to allow AMs more time to undertake both rather than tying them down in the minutiae of a packed legislative programme may turn out to be one of his boldest decisions yet.  If AMs are ready to seize the opportunity, of course…

Bravery called for

Tweet The results of the poll published yesterday on Welsh attitudes towards climate change made interesting reading. No doubt, like most poll results, they will be subjected to a range of different interpretations.

What I found most interesting was the conclusion that a little over half had reached, namely that they as individuals can make little difference; and that 72% therefore said that the government had to take a lead, and use the law if necessary to bring about changes in behaviour.

People are right, of course, to conclude that each of us can make only a tiny difference; and that even the total elimination of emissions by the UK would make but a very small difference to the total world situation. Some of the most vociferous opponents of renewable energy projects use precisely that line of argument to justify their stance; but carried to its logical conclusion, no-one would do anything, and we'd all lose out in the end. It's a version of the 'tragedy of the commons'.

There's also a danger, which may be part of what is behind the responses obtained, that when some people are altruistic in their use of resources, then others will merely take their opportunity to help themselves to a greater share; on that basis, only decisions made at a collective level will ensure that altruism is not taken advantage of.

One of the reasons why governments - and politicians more generally - have been afraid to legislate has been a fear of consequent electoral unpopularity. And the question which appears not to have been answered by the poll is whether people would still be as happy to see the law used to implement changes if they as individuals ended up worse off as a result.

It's disappointing that people feel so unempowered; but the fact that so many people feel that government should be willing to legislate should encourage all of those of us involved in political activity to be prepared to be more creative - and, dare I say it, a little braver - when it comes to proposing actions. For instance, offering people carrots for 'good' behaviour, rather than threatening them with sticks for 'bad' behaviour may make politicans less unpopular - but is it really honest in a time when public spending will be coming under pressure?