Nick Clegg's Five Year Plan
If, like me, you have already highlighted May 7, 2015 in your five-year diary as the date of the next elections to the Welsh assembly you make have to think again.
Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg announced today that he wants to offer the assembly the power to delay (or bring forward) the election by up to a year, if two thirds of AMs agree. Currently, the date can only be varied by one month.
The roots of the announcement lie in the furore when the UK Government announced that the next general election would be held on May 7, 2015, the same day that Wales goes to the polls.
Today, Nick Clegg told me: "When we announced at the beginning of the coalition government that we would hold the next general election, the UK-wide general election, in 2015 there was quite understandably a lot of concern expressed in the Welsh Assembly that that would fall on the same day as the election for the next Welsh elections.
"So we've been having a debate, listening to what the party leaders of all parties in Wales have been saying. We've now said it should be for the Welsh Assembly and the Welsh Assembly alone to decide the date of the next election, either a year before that 2015 date or a year later, in other words deferring the election until 2016 so there's no clash at all."
David Cameron's "respect agenda" towards the devolved institutions has not always run smoothly, but Mr Clegg said of today's announcement: "I hope that will be welcome to people in Wales and to all political parties. It's very much intended as a sign of our respect for the separate political identity which of course is so strong in the Welsh Assembly."
You will have done the maths and noticed that if the Assembly elections are deferred by a year then on current terms there would be another election clash in 2020.
Nick Clegg: "That's why the longer term thing we need to look at is whether we think there's a case and whether the public think there's a case to move permanently if you like to a new five year term for the Welsh Assembly, something which I think is almost universally demanded by all the political parties in Wales.
"That isn't something we think we need to resolve overnight, let's take it step by step. We will start a public consultation process to look at the case for that."
So AMs elected in May should perhaps prepare for a five-year stretch, a term that could become the norm in Cardiff Bay before the decade is out.
Hello. I'm David Cornock and I'm parliamentary correspondent for ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Wales. This is the blog for the latest news and gossip from the Westminster village - with a Welsh accent.
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