Shadow Counsel General and North Wales MS Mark Isherwood has questioned the Counsel General this week over Welsh Government action to help support Welsh Law firms.
Speaking in Spokesperson’s Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for Delivery during yesterday’s meeting of the Welsh Parliament, Mr Isherwood referred to a report which states that law firms in Wales will face a series of external challenges by the end of the decade and asked the Counsel General how the Welsh Government intends to help them through these difficulties.
He said:
“The ‘From Caernarfon to Caerdydd: Reimagining Justice in Wales 2030' Consultation and Discussion Paper, published by the Law Society in September, states that ‘Law firms operating in Wales will face a series of external challenges by the end of the decade. These include specialisation, recruitment and retention, technology, including AI, and the sustainability of the small local high-street firms’.
“How, therefore, have you responded, or will you respond, to the related statement in the Paper that ‘the Welsh Government is well placed to support the legal sector through increased support as an essential sector. We believe', they said, 'that The Welsh Government could...make renewed attempts at working in collaboration with the UK Government around these issues’.”
In her response, the Counsel General said she has discussed the paper with the Law Society and that she shares Mr Isherwood’s concern.
Mr Isherwood added:
“Clearly, this relates to the external challenges that they said lie ahead, and the many factors that have led to the situation currently applying. But whilst the Paper states that it ‘is unashamedly Wales-centric’, it adds that ‘considerations and recommendations within this Paper are applicable to areas of England with similar socio-economic and demographic characteristics to Wales, such as the North-East and rural North-West England’.
“Although I emphasised to your predecessors on many occasions that ‘the cross-border nature of criminal activity must be central to the operation of justice and policing in Wales’, the Paper also identifies cross-border transactions as one of the key areas in which we do not have accurate, up-to-date data.
“What action have you therefore taken, or will you take, to both engage with the regions of England where the considerations and recommendations within the Law Society's Paper are also applicable? And how have you responded, or will you respond, to the Paper's statement that the Welsh and UK Governments should ‘analyse the current available data sets’ and ‘use this intelligence to initiate a systematic improvement in data in relation to the legal sector in Wales’?”
The Counsel General again agreed and said she’s hoping to raise it at the Law Officers meeting.
Mr. Isherwood also referred to discussion of “The Prison Problem” on Radio 4’s “The Briefing Room” programme, when a former Prison Governor, Inspector of Prisons and Head of the Anti-Corruption Unit stated that, given that many of the services required to manage offenders, ex-offenders and promote rehabilitation are already devolved to England’s Metro Mayors, Criminal Justice should also be devolved to them, with prisons for serious crime retained at UK level, where many of these services are also already devolved to Wales.