Rt Hon , Counsel General for Wales:
Today I am laying before the Senedd the Welsh Government's
second Programme to Improve the
Accessibility of Welsh Law, prepared in accordance with
section 2 of the Legislation (Wales) Act 2019.
This month marks fifteen years since the Welsh Government first
set out its ambition to develop an accessible and bilingual
statute book for Wales. In October 2011, the then First Minister,
, spoke at the Legal Wales conference
about the growing body of distinct Welsh law and the need to
improve its accessibility, including through consolidation. In
the same month, my predecessor as Counsel General, KC, made a statement to the
Senedd on Access to Welsh Laws and Developing a Welsh
Statute.
Much has changed in the fifteen years since those statements were
made. The Senedd has become a constitutionally entrenched
legislature with primary law-making powers, and a substantial and
increasingly distinct body of Welsh legislation has developed.
The commitment made in 2011 has also been placed on a statutory
footing through the Legislation (Wales) Act 2019. That Act
requires the Welsh Ministers and the Counsel General to prepare a
programme in each Senedd term to improve the accessibility of
Welsh law. The first such programme, The Future of Welsh
Law, covered the Senedd term ending in May 2026.
The Legislation (Wales) Act 2019, as amended last year, is itself
a significant development. As well as encapsulating the
Government's long-term commitment to consolidate and codify Welsh
legislation within devolved areas, it sets out rules for the
interpretation of Welsh legislation and the procedures for making
subordinate legislation. It also imposes duties on the King's
Printer for Wales to publish Welsh legislation and on the
National Library of Wales to maintain an archive of our
legislation.
As Counsel General, I regard this work as both a practical
necessity and an important part of the continuing development of
our nation. The ability to make our own law carries with it a
responsibility to care for that law: to ensure that it can be
found, understood and used by the people whose rights and
responsibilities it determines.
I am very proud that we are developing a distinct and codified
body of law in two languages, drawing on a legal tradition of our
own while creating a statute book capable of meeting the needs of
modern Wales. Our task is not simply to add new legislation to
the statute book, but to ensure that Welsh law becomes an
increasingly coherent, accessible and recognisable body of law in
its own right.
The programme I am laying today builds on the considerable
progress made to date, most notably through the development of
Codes of Welsh law on the historic environment, planning and
tourism, as well as the creation of a distinct body of Welsh law
on social care and taxation. It includes projects to further
consolidate and codify the law, including the consolidation of
allotments legislation; the codification of wildlife management
and forestry legislation; the establishment of a code of
tribunals law; and the beginning of work to consolidate and
codify agricultural legislation. We will also incorporate
subordinate legislation into the existing Planning Code and
continue to identify areas of law where further consolidation
would bring real benefits.
But accessibility is about more than consolidation and
codification. The programme also includes work to improve the way
Welsh law and information about it are presented; make
explanatory material easier to access; keep revised legislation
up to date; identify and correct errors and ambiguities; and
remove provisions that are no longer of practical utility or
benefit. We will also further explore how technology, including
artificial intelligence, can responsibly support the preparation,
maintenance and understanding of legislation.
Central to the programme is our commitment to Welsh as a language
of law. We will continue our work to establish authoritative
Welsh legal terminology, publish bilingual glossaries for every
new code of Welsh law, make more use of technology to make
Welsh-language law easier to access, develop and understand, and
support the practical use of Welsh in the Welsh tribunals.
These individual projects are important, but collectively they
represent something more. A mature legislature needs legal
infrastructure to support it. Improving the accessibility of
Welsh law therefore contributes to the wider development of Wales
as a nation: strengthening the practical operation of devolution,
supporting Welsh as a modern language of law and helping to
establish a body of law which is recognisably, coherently and
confidently our own.
We have always known that this work will take a generation and
more to complete, but fifteen years on, we have come a long way.
This programme sets out the next stage of that journey. Our
ambition remains straightforward: that the law made for Wales
should be law that the people of Wales can easily identify,
understand and use, in either of our national languages.
