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The future of the UK – Part IV of Constitutional Convention plans

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What is the future of the UK? Lee Waters invites you to help shape the design of the Crowd Sourced Constitutional Convention

The fourth and fifth stages of our Crowd Sourced Constitutional Convention will focus on the future of the UK and ask ‘What is Wales for?’.

Just as we are ‘crowd sourcing’ the funding to try and help us hold this innovative experiment in deliberative democracy, we are also ‘crowd sourcing’ the design of the debate.  This week on Click on Wales we are posting the working drafts of our plans for each of the stages of the eight-week project for you to shape.

After considering the purpose of the UK,  how we create a more prosperous Wales and how to create a fairer Wales in the initial phases, we’ll move on to the future of the UK.

As with all the themes four cross-cutting themes have guided the design of our questions:

  • Performance to date
  • Barriers to progress
  • Capacity and calibre
  • Do we need more powers to identify these problems?
The fourth phase of our Constitutional Convention will start on Monday March 2nd, which is the day we expect the Secretary of State for Wales, Stephen Crabb, to publish the St David’s Day declaration – the result of cross-party talks at Westminster on further devolution to Wales.  We do not yet know what the outcome of these talks will be but we will allow time at the beginning of the phase to debate and digest the announcement.
Here is our plan for the rest of the phase:

  1. England

    1. Should there be an England only level of government?

    2. What should it do?

    3. How should it be related to the UK Government?

  1. Federal arrangement

    1. What does the debate around England mean for the rest of the UK?

    2. Is a federal arrangement the only way forward?

  1. Funding

    1. How would a future arrangement be funded?

    2. Should the Welsh Government be responsible for raising the money it spends?

  1. Europe

    1. What are the implications for the future of the UK Wales of an EU in/out referendum?

Our fifth and final phase in the final week will bring together the discussion to date and go back to first principles to ask ‘What is Wales for?’. This open question will be shaped by the previous debate, but we anticipate that it will address the roles of the multiple layers of governance within Wales.

We’d value your input to try and shape this attempt at engaging the public in a debate about our country’s future.  Also if you are able to make a financial contribution to help us reach the potential of this initiative please donate here.

 

[* The expert group we consulted on the design of the first and fourth stage included Prof Laura McAllister, Prof Richard Wyn Jones,  Steve Brooks,  Emyr Lewis, Lee Waters, Jess Blair, Paul Silk, David Stevens, and Geraint Talfan Davies]

Lee Waters is IWA Director.

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