Thank you, Hugh. I will definitely ask NLW and Aled about the footage. When I get near the interview stage I would love to talk to you and to Carys as well about a range of things related to this project. And so should other researchers, as you have in your brains more material than I can accommodate in my study, I am sure!
I’m enjoying this, it’s a la recherche du temps perdu!
A tangential point, as you mention the NLW: you might want to ask them if they ever received from the BBC the probably hundreds of hours of fly on the wall film they shot in the period Nov 97 to July 98 showing how we in the then Welsh Office developed the policy and delivery of devolution following the 97 referendum; there was a short series on BBC Wales, but it didn’t begin to make use of all the stuff they had. (Aled Eurig negotiated the access with Jon Shortridge, so Aled might know what happened to this material, which ought to be of considerable historical interest).
As you will probably be aware, Carys Evans wrote the Richard Report, and she then handed the baton to me; I was seconded to the Wales Office to write what became Better Governance for Wales. Getting BGW through ‘the process’ was an interesting exercise given the prevailing culture at that time in the Wales Office (which had been out of the loop re Richard); it’s a testament to the quality of Carys’ work that they recognised they had to respond to Richard at least to some degree, albeit without enthusiasm. Hence the excruciating experience of what later became known as LCOs (though that is not the language of the 2006 Act). But from a civil service standpoint, it was the separation between the Assembly and the executive function that was the most important aspect of BGW.
Thank you, Hugh. I will definitely ask NLW and Aled about the footage. When I get near the interview stage I would love to talk to you and to Carys as well about a range of things related to this project. And so should other researchers, as you have in your brains more material than I can accommodate in my study, I am sure!
I’m enjoying this, it’s a la recherche du temps perdu!
A tangential point, as you mention the NLW: you might want to ask them if they ever received from the BBC the probably hundreds of hours of fly on the wall film they shot in the period Nov 97 to July 98 showing how we in the then Welsh Office developed the policy and delivery of devolution following the 97 referendum; there was a short series on BBC Wales, but it didn’t begin to make use of all the stuff they had. (Aled Eurig negotiated the access with Jon Shortridge, so Aled might know what happened to this material, which ought to be of considerable historical interest).
As you will probably be aware, Carys Evans wrote the Richard Report, and she then handed the baton to me; I was seconded to the Wales Office to write what became Better Governance for Wales. Getting BGW through ‘the process’ was an interesting exercise given the prevailing culture at that time in the Wales Office (which had been out of the loop re Richard); it’s a testament to the quality of Carys’ work that they recognised they had to respond to Richard at least to some degree, albeit without enthusiasm. Hence the excruciating experience of what later became known as LCOs (though that is not the language of the 2006 Act). But from a civil service standpoint, it was the separation between the Assembly and the executive function that was the most important aspect of BGW.