The story of the Welsh devolution settlement makes an interesting comparison to the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. What is the devolution settlement and how was it negotiated and implemented?
There was talk of devolution for many years in Wales. It was first rejected by the people of Wales at a referendum in 1979. It came about in its present form as a result of a commitment in the Labour Party manifesto for the 1997 general election. There was another referendum some six months after the Labour Party won that election, and at that point the people of Wales voted in favour of having an Assembly. At first there was no difference between the legislature and the executive; then two years ago we developed a proper de jure separation between the government on the one hand and the legislature on the other.

What were the Government of Wales Acts, and how did they define the characteristics of the 60-member Assembly?
There have been two Government of Wales Acts: the first one in 1997 set up the Assembly as a corporation; the second one in 2006 split the legislature and the executive. The First Minister is a separate position; then come the Welsh ministers, who collectively take the administrative decisions; then the Counsel General, who is part of the government but is not part of the cabinet - that is my position. Technically the Assembly remains a statutory corporation, but it's Welsh ministers, who comprise the executive body and effectively make up most of the government, who would normally be parties to any judicial review.

So the legislative and executive functions are devolved to a degree, but not the judicial function.
We're not a separate jurisdiction. We don't have any control over the justice system, it's still part of the unified England and Wales jurisdiction.

What about local administrative appeals?
We have an administrative court for Wales. The anticipation is that all administrative cases will be heard in that court, and when there is an appeal the Court of Appeal will come to Wales to sit to hear the appeal. We have to deal with a situation where we have Welsh laws being created without a jurisdiction, so therefore we must make sure that the courts of first instance and the Court of Appeal dealing with those laws do actually have a good knowledge of them and do actually sit in Wales in order to hear those cases.

What is the position of the mooted devolution of criminal justice?
The commitment in the Coalition agreement is to examine the evidence for the devolution of criminal justice, but not to press for it necessarily without looking first at all the evidence. It would be a significant change if criminal justice were to be devolved, as it is in Scotland, because the criminal justice system has in effect been a single system for 500 years.

Would it bolster the rule of law in Wales to have the judicial function devolved?
At the moment I don't think we are in a position where we have to consider separate jurisdiction, although there might be a debate on that in the future. It's not caused any real problems. There have been one or two cases where it's not been absolutely clear that every judge has understood that there are separate rules and laws in Wales, but in the main the message has now got across. Most of the judges who are sitting on Welsh administrative cases are specialised in terms of understanding the devolution settlement and understanding the legal framework within which we all operate.

Can you explain the quasi-primary power of the Assembly to make regulations?
In the Act that set us up there are 20 fields in which we can acquire competence. The fields themselves are quite broad in their descriptions; for example, one of the fields is just entitled 'social welfare'. In order for us to be able to legislate freely, we have to make a request to the Parliament in London to devolve a particular power to us. Once that power is devolved it becomes a matter, and matters fit into the fields. For example, field 15 is social welfare, and field 15.1 is a specific power dealing with safeguarding children. That means we can pass any law that is relevant to safeguarding children. It's like a shopping basket, where the field is the basket and the ingredients get put in as the powers get drawn down. Powers once devolved are permanently held.

What is the process for obtaining a Legislative Competence Order? Is it a negotiation?
First of all we would get an agreed draft as between ourselves and the UK government. The Order would then go through several stages in the Assembly. It then is scrutinised by committee in London, and then goes through both houses of Parliament, and finally it receives Royal Approval via an Order-in-Council. It's quite a lengthy process, but it does work, and we've had powers devolved through it. The key is to make sure that there's agreement by governments on both sides so as to make the process smoother, although, of course, both Assembly committees and committees of the UK Parliament will still suggest changes that we have to consider. We've never had a request refused, although some have been modified and some have taken a little time, because it does take time to get the drafting right.

On the question of good governance, what is the extent of public accountability and scrutiny in Wales?
Before the Assembly was set up there was a large measure of administrative devolution in Wales. The Welsh office, headed by the Secretary of State, had broad responsibilities in many areas; for example, the areas of health and education. There was a real democratic deficit at that point, because the person that held the position of Secretary of State was a member of the UK cabinet and not actually an MP from Wales. There was no sense of any kind of accountability to the people of Wales in that regard. With the setting up of the Assembly, we now have a democratic body in place overseeing what was once the old Welsh Office, as it were, so there's far more accountability for what happens in Wales, in terms of policies like health and education, than there was before.

Is there also full universal suffrage?
Yes, everybody over the age of 18 has a vote. There are certain groups that are disqualified - for example, if you are in prison you can't vote - but in the main it's universal.

How do you balance the various values we've talked about - good governance, the rule of law, democracy - and also the other value that Wales has identified for itself, human rights?
They're all important. We are different from the UK Parliament in the sense that we're not the sovereign parliament. In constitutional law, the UK Parliament can do what it likes; the courts have no control over primary legislation. That doesn't apply to ourselves, or the Scottish parliament, or the Northern Ireland Assembly. It follows then that anything ministers do can be judicially reviewed, but also, any law passed by the Assembly itself as a legislature can be judicially reviewed. Further, there is a legal restriction on us so that we can't pass any law or take any action that is in breach of European Community law or of the Human Rights Act. That doesn't apply to UK ministers, so we have to be especially vigilant in terms of ensuring that the laws that we pass are sound in terms of their challengeability in courts.

The devolution settlement places an obligation on Wales to promote sustainable development, bringing to mind Hong Kong's Basic Law obligation to maintain its status as an international financial centre. How does Wales approach the sustainable development obligation?
We see it as something positive. There are three prongs to sustainable development: it's not just about the environment, but about social and economic sustainability as well. Economically, we try to ensure that when jobs are created in Wales they are going to last - they're not here one day and gone tomorrow, which was a problem particularly in the 1980s. Socially, we aim to ensure that communities continue to thrive; as well as ensuring that our environment continues to improve. We produce a sustainable development scheme and a sustainable development action plan: the scheme outlines what we are supposed to do over the course of the coming year to promote sustainable development, and the action plan is how we intend to do it. We see this as a positive direction in which we'd want to move anyway, and I think it sends a positive message in terms of the ethos of government that exists in Wales.

Like Hong Kong, Wales has had to grapple with bilingualism and the law. What is the status of the Welsh language and how have you approached this challenge?
Welsh is spoken by about 20% of the population, which is about half a million. It was once widespread across the whole of Wales, but as the area industrialised, people tended to move in from all over the world and English became the lingua franca in many parts of Wales - although people were still very proud to be Welsh, of course. As a result, Welsh tends to be spoken as a community language in the west and the northwest, although it is now making great strides in some of the cities through the education system.

We have difficulty in getting parliamentary drafting teams who can draft in legal Welsh. It's quite new for them - the last time a legal document was drawn up in Welsh was in the 11th century - so a challenge has been to create a terminology that didn't really exist before. Old Welsh law wasn't based in the common law: it was a system of its own, apparently connected to some of the earlier Scandinavian systems. As a result, the common law terminology wasn't there even in the days when Welsh was being used as a drafting language. Creating that terminology has been important, and since we produce legislation bilingually we have to make sure that it is clear in both languages.

Do you find that much litigation is conducted in Welsh?
Not a great deal. English has been seen for some years as the official language. In 1536, when the Acts of Union were passed linking Wales with England, Welsh was banned from the courts. That persisted until 1942, when the Welsh Courts Act was passed; it was then possible for Welsh to be used in a courtroom. As a result of all that, although Welsh is spoken as a daily language, and it's been a language of religion in the past, historically people haven't seen it as a legal language. Although we don't get much court work conducted in Welsh, we do have advocates and judges who are able to conduct cases in Welsh if needs be.

Finally, a question about the Commonwealth's Latimer House principles regarding accountability and the separation of powers in the three branches of government. How applicable are such governance principles to semi-autonomous systems which may still be developing and maturing?
The principles apply to all of us. The Welsh government has in common with British-based constitutional systems that we don't have a full separation of powers between the legislature and the executive - we don't have the US-style separation, for example - but nevertheless that separation does exist in law and in practice. I think it is possible and we掯e shown for many years that politicians are able to make real that separation of power when they exercise their powers as a minister, as opposed to doing their job as a member of the Assembly. I'm both a member of the legislature and a member of the executive; I have two jobs in that regard but no difficulty in separating them.



Brendan Clift

威爾士的分權自治之路
威爾士國民議會政府法務總長兼領袖Carwyn Jones AM 與《香港律師》論及一個獨特組成的行政體。

有關威爾士的分權自治問題，對照香港治理權自英國到中國的轉移，之間為我們提供了一個有趣的對比。何為分權自治，以及分權自治如何達成一致及得到實施？
在威爾士，大家談論有關分權自治的話題已經很多年了。第一次是在1979年的公民投票中被否決。接著，由工黨於1997年在其大選宣言中對選民作出承諾而形成目前的模式。工黨贏得97年大選六個月之後，又組織了一次全民投票，當時威爾士的民眾投票贊成成立國民議會。起初，立法與行政部門之間並無區分，直到兩年前，我們逐步形成一種政府與立法權力分開的新體制。

何為《威爾士政府法》，以及它們如何界定60名議員所構成的國民議會的特點？
總共有兩個《威爾士政府法》：第一個頒佈於1997年，它將國民議會設立為一個社團；而2006年頒佈的第二部《威爾士政府法》將立法與行政權分離。首席大臣是一個獨立的職位，接著是威爾士眾大臣，集體形成行政決定，之後是法務總長，這是政府的一個組成部分，但不屬於內閣的成員—這就是我現在的職位。從技術角度來說，國民議會依然是一個具備法定地位的社團組織，但是組成行政機關的是威爾士大臣，並有效構成政府的主體，且在一般情況下他們往往是任何司法覆核的一方。

那麼似乎可以說，立法和行政職能在一定程度上是分權的，但是司法職能依然未能獨立。
我們不是獨立的司法部門。我們對於司法體制不具備控制權，該體制依然是統一的英格蘭和威爾士司法體系的一個部分。

那麼當地行政訴訟如何審理？
我們在威爾士設立了一個行政法庭。期望通過這個法庭審理所有的行政案件，而一旦出現上訴案件，上訴法庭即前往威爾士加以審理。我們必須處理我們擁有該些在不具備司法管轄權下制定的威爾士法律的情況。因此我們必須確保處理此等法律的原訟法庭和上訴法庭能夠切實掌握威爾士法律，而且真的坐在威爾士的審判席上審理此等案件。

刑事司法的分權備受爭議，現狀如何？
聯盟協議中所作出的決定，是要探尋刑事司法分權治理的證據，而非一定要忽略對所有證據的全面審視而強求分權。如果刑事司法得以分權，那將是一個重大的變革，正如蘇格蘭目前的變革，因為事實上刑事司法體系作為單獨的體系已經存在了500年之久。

實行司法職能的分權是否可以促進威爾士的法治？
目前看來，我認為我們尋求獨立司法管轄權的時機似乎尚未成熟，當然未來就這個問題或許會有不同看法。至今為止，司法分立與否尚未引起任何實質性問題。我們可以從少數幾個案件中看出，並無顯著證據表明每名法官都已經能夠理解威爾士有它自己獨立的規章與法律，但普遍來說，大家對此還是有所瞭解的。在威爾士審理行政案件的法官大多數對於分權治理瞭解頗深，對於我們藉以運行的法律框架也是相當精通的。

可否請您介紹一下國民議會在訂立制度方面的準首要權力？
按照設立我們這些職位的法例之規定，我們可以在20個項目方面取得資格。這些項目從其自身的界定上是很寬泛的。例如其中之一為「社會福利」。為了能夠自由立法，我們需要向位於倫敦的國會提出要求，由其向我們授予特別權力。該等權力一旦授予，它便成為一項事宜，而各項事宜即被納入各個範疇之中。例如第15個範疇為社會福利，而第15.1個範疇則規定了一項有關保護兒童的特殊權力。這意味著我們有權頒佈任何有關保護兒童的法律。這一點類似於一個購物籃，範疇便是該購物籃，物件被放入購物籃，正如權力被下放出來。權力一旦下放出來，即獲永久保留。

要獲頒發立法資格令要經過哪些程序？是否屬一種協商過程？
首先我們要經過與英國政府的協商一致，擬訂一個草案。之後該命令需要在國民議會逐級通過，然後經過倫敦的委員會審議，再後在國會兩院通過，最後通過樞密令而正式取得女皇批准。這些程序相當繁瑣，但是切實可行。其實我們已經通過這種方式取得過多個分權的授予令。最重要的一點是要取得雙方政府的同意，之後的批准程序就會簡化很多，當然後期無論是國民議會委員會還是英國國會委員會都將提出一些修訂建議，我們須得作出考慮。我們提出的權力要求從未遭到拒絕，不過有些確是經過了一定的修訂，還有一些經過了較長時間的審議方獲通過，原因是要完善草案的確需要一定的過程。

有關良好的管治問題，威爾士公共受託責任與公眾行政監督的範圍有多大？
在設立國民議會之前，在威爾士存在大量的行政分權。威爾士政府辦公室由大臣領導，在眾多事務方面具備廣泛的許可權，如衛生與教育等方面的領導許可權。從民主的角度，這種治理方式存在一定的不足，因為擔任大臣職務的人是英國內閣成員，而不是來自威爾士的國會議員。從這個意義上說，對於威爾士人民來說，不存在任何意義的公眾受託責任。而在設立了國民議會之後，我們有了一個民主的機構，用以監督過往威爾士政府辦公室的職能行使，所以對於在威爾士發生的一切事件都具備一定的公信力，例如在衛生與教育事務等方面的管理，較諸以往都會更為民主。

威爾士是否也有全面的普選？
是的，每個年滿18歲的人都具有選舉權。當然有些團體是不可以參加選舉的—例如監獄服刑的人是無權選舉的—但是從廣義來說，實行的是普遍的選舉權。

您如何平衡我們所談論的各種不同價值觀—良好的管治方式，法治，民主，等等—以及一些威爾士所獨有的觀念，如人權等？
這些價值觀念都是同等重要的。我們與英國國會的不同點在於，我們不是主權性質的國會。按照憲法，英國國會可以依其決定任意行事，而法庭對於最高立法並無控制權。我們則不是這樣，蘇格蘭國會，還有北愛爾蘭議會也不是這樣。這樣說來，大臣們所做的任何行為都是可以加以司法審查的。與此同時，議會本身通過的任何立法也可以從司法角度加以審查。此外，對於我們也有法律限制，我們無論頒佈任何法律或是採取任何行動，均不得有悖歐盟法律或違背《人權法令》。這種限制不適用於英國大臣們，所以我們必須高度審慎，以確保我們所通過的法律能夠經過法庭的嚴格審查。

分權治理方案要求威爾士促進可持續發展，這一點讓人想起《香港基本法》有關保持香港國際金融中心地位的要求。威爾士如何實現可持續發展的任務要求？
我們認為這是一個相當積極的任務要求。可持續發展包括三方面：不僅涉及到環境的要求，同時也關於社會與經濟的可持續性。從經濟角度來說，我們需要努力確保我們在威爾士創造的就業機會得以延續—不能今天讓人就業，明天又讓他失去工作，這種情況在80年代尤其嚴重。就社會的可持續發展來說，我們要確保社會大眾的持續繁榮，同時保證我們環境的持續改善。我們制訂了可持續發展的規劃，以及具體的行動計劃：規劃對於未來若干年內，我們在推進可持續發展方面需要實現的任務並加以歸納陳述，而行動計劃述明我們準備如何行動。我們把可持續發展視為我們前進的積極方向，同時我認為這個任務也表達了有關威爾士現政府理想的一個正面訊息。

類似於香港，威爾士也常因雙語及法律問題而備受困擾。威爾士語目前的地位如何，以及您如何面對此挑戰？
大約20%的人口操威爾士語，總人數大約有50萬人。威爾士語曾經在整個威爾士地區普及，但是伴隨該地區工業化的進程，人們從全球各地雲集威爾士，英語在威爾士很多地區已成為一種混用語—當然，人們依然還常為其威爾士人身份感到自豪。結果是，儘管威爾士語目前在部分城市的教育體系中取得了長足進展，但還是逐步退化為西部和西北部的一種社區生活語言。
在國會的法律草擬部門中尋找到能夠使用威爾士法律語言來起草法律文件的人員並不容易。對於這些法律草擬人員來說，使用威爾士法律語言已經是相當新鮮了—上一次使用威爾士語言起草法律文件，該追溯到11世紀。所以，挑戰在於，我們需要創立一套過去不曾存在過的術語體系。舊有的威爾士法律並非基於普通法：它自成獨立的體系，顯然更傾向於與早期的一些斯堪的納維亞法律體系相關聯。因此，即使在人們使用威爾士語起草法律文件的時期，普通法的術語也並不存在。創設這種術語體系極為重要，而且因為我們要使用雙語立法，便必須同時確保兩種語言表達的流暢性。

您是否同意其實很多訴訟是使用威爾士語進行的？
不是很多。很多年前開始，英語其實就已經是官方語言。當1536年《聯合法令》通過而將威爾士與英格蘭連為一體時，法庭上便禁止使用威爾士語。這種狀況持續到1942年，直至《威爾士法院法令》獲得通過。之後威爾士語得以在法庭使用。經過這一歷程，儘管威爾士語已經成為日常使用語言，而且歷史上它曾經是宗教語言，人們從歷史的眼光看，並未認為它是一種法律語言。儘管我們很少使用威爾士語審理案件，但的確有一批出庭律師和法官們能夠在必要的情況下，在法庭使用威爾士語辦案。

最後一個問題：關於英聯邦之的拉弟摩學院有關問責制及政府三權分立的原則。這些管治原則如何適用於發展中及尚欠成熟的半自治體制？
這些原則對我們都是適用的。威爾士政府與英國基礎的憲政體系有一點是一致的，即我們的立法與行政體系並非完全分立—比如，我們沒有美國式的分立體制—但儘管如此，三權分立在法律和實務上確實存在。我想，完全有可能—事實上很多年的實踐也表明，政治家在他們作為大臣行使職能，而非僅作為國民議會成員履行公職時，完全有能力賦予分權實際意義。我是立法機構的成員，也是行政體制的一員。由此來說，我雖然肩負兩份職務，但要區分它們絲毫不難。


祁秉麟