Agenda and minutes
Venue: Presiding Officer’s office, 4th floor - Tŷ Hywel. View directions
Contact: Carys Evans, 029 2089 8598
No. | Item |
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Introduction |
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Introduction and apologies Minutes: No apologies had been received. |
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Declarations of interest Minutes: There were no declarations of interest. |
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Minutes of the previous meeting paper 1 Supporting documents: Minutes: The minutes were agreed. |
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Legal Services Directorate's Strategy paper 2 Minutes: The Legal Services Directorate
contributes to the Assembly’s strategy and aims to provide excellent bilingual
legal services to the Presiding Officers, the Commission, Committees and all
Members, as part of a fully integrated team of expert Commission
officials. Commissioners
received a report on the Legal Service’s strategy for the remainder of the
Fourth Assembly, to inform a discussion aimed at ensuring the best use is made
of the Legal Services currently and in the future. An area that the Director of Legal Services
had identified needed strengthening was the provision of legislative drafting
of Members’ Bills, while another potential area was the capacity to undertake
more commercial legal work. The legal team
had, as part of the Directorate strategy, received training in recent months to
increase their ability to advise on legislative
competence. However, specific expertise was required to undertake drafting of
Bills to a standard that would not create unacceptable risk to the Assembly’s
reputation. The Commissioners
discussed the options for providing legislative drafting to Members, which
included outsourcing to expert drafters, training the Legal Services team to
provide the resource in-house, and entering into an
arrangement with another public drafting Office. They also
discussed aspects of the role of the legal team in assisting Assembly Members
in Committees and whether there was a requirement and scope for expanding
in-house legal advice to areas such as employment law. The Commission
agreed to outsource the drafting of
Members’ Bills to expert external drafters in the short term and pursue
training for the in-house lawyers through those external drafters. Furthermore,
they asked the Director of Legal Services to: ·
explore the possibility of further training through
the Government legislative drafting Office and whether a legislative drafting
course, leading to a qualification, existed in Wales; · explore the possibility of the Government
legislative drafting Office drafting Members’ Bills, but to do so on the basis
that this was not the Commission’s preferred option and that there were serious
reservations about whether any such arrangement could adequately address the
key issues of independence, conflict of interest and confidentiality; · investigate whether there was sufficient demand for
commercial legal services, including employment law, within the Commission and
from Assembly Members to justify, on a value-for-money basis, an expansion of
the Directorate’s resource to undertake that work in-house; · determine whether there was other unmet demand for legal
services within the Commission or amongst Assembly Members. Action: The Commission asked to receive an update on options explored and progress after 6 months in order to make decisions about the longer term. |
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Any other business Minutes: The Chief Executive advised the Commission that the Director of ICT was
taking steps on two matters of current concern to Members: to implement a
simple PIN approach for Blackberry passwords and to extend the default retention
period for email synchronisation to one month.
These changes were expected to be available that day. The Commission commended the way that ICT had
been responding to and resolving issues. The Chief Executive agreed to bring a discussion paper to the Commission
on national events due to take place over the next few years, in order to
enable the Commission to influence future plans. Officials would investigate and report back on the following matters: ·
the accessibility of Assembly Members'
diaries, and ·
safety and practicality issues with the new china mugs in the café. Secretariat June 2013 |