Montgomeryshire & Glyndwr prospective MPs give their take on devolution

Candidates looking for your support have been invited to share their views on a range of issues.

As part of our election coverage ahead of the poll on Thursday we asked all candidates a range of questions, with a theme based collection from all candidates below. You can also read individual answers to all the questions here on our Election 24 page, plus links to party manifesto, supplied bios for candidates and links to find out where exactly your polling station is!

Question: What are your views on the current devolution arrangements from Westminster to Cardiff, and what change if any, would you support?

The present arrangement of devolution appears to be working well. The Welsh government has proven itself to be responsible in many areas, such as developing the Well-being of Future Generations Act and our now world beating Recycling record under which Wales is now ranked 2nd best globally for recycling. The Welsh Government has also shown more willingness to be open minded to changing with the times, for instance the element of proportional representation in the Senedd elections, and reducing the voting age to 16.
Some issues are more controversial. I realise many people believe that the NHS in Wales is not as good as the NHS in England, and this may be right. When allocating funding to the devolved regions it is not easy to determine what the right level of funding is for different regions, for instance how to compensate fairly for the sparce population in Wales and many people in Wales believe that the funding formula disadvantages Wales.
For the devolved regions to work properly the allocation of funding from Westminster must be fair, transparent and non-political, and it is time for this to be reviewed to make sure this is still the case.

The Liberal Democrats have always believed that much power should be as close to the people as possible. We have supported devolution to Wales, but it has been badly managed by Labour in a lot of respects. We want to hold the Welsh Labour Government to account for its failures.
We also want to see communities given more funding and powers. Local people know their communities and their needs best.
However, we would be fully against Plaid Cymru’s plans for independence, which would devastate border communities like ours. Can you imagine a hard border preventing you from going to Oswestry or Shrewsbury? Or preventing your children from being able to study at English universities?

I passionately support devolution. I also support both further devolution – for currently un-devolved policy areas, such as criminal justice and a better and fairer system of funding for Wales.
First we lost our EU funding under this government and the promise of ‘Levelling Up’ turned out to be one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated against the British people. We were forced to pay Wales’ share into HS2 and then the line that would have serviced us was abandoned! We should have been given that money back, but the Tory Government in Westminster pocketed it to fill potholes in the southeast of England instead!

Westminster needs –
to stop undermining the devolution settlement. It should –
devolve the Crown Estate as it does to Scotland allowing the profit to be invested in our communities and not taken to the Treasury.
Devolve the justice and policing as is the norm in Ireland and Scotland. Even Manchester has more powers over policing than Wales has.

The Senedd is a failing institution, possibly a consequence of the lazy rule of the Stalinist-style Labour Party now in its 25th year of governing Wales. Failing institutions should be expanded. Reform is committed to making the institution work properly; our number one priority is improving attainment in Wales’ secondary schools, which have the worst GCSE and A Level results among the UK nations by a considerable margin. We object to Labour and Plaid Cymru’s proposals to hugely expand the Senedd; what we need is a better quality and calibre of representative in the Senedd, rather than more of them. We are also committed to abolishing the Police and Crime Commissioner roles, which seem to us to be a total waste of time and money.

No response to our Q&A has been received

You can read more Q&A answers here on our Election 24 page along with more election information – remember to GO VOTE ON THURSDAY!

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