Prime Minister Andy Burnham ruled out on September 25 handing the Welsh Government the power to hold an independence referendum, three days after First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth’s government put that request in its four-year plan. The other nations of the United Kingdom do not hold such a power, Burnham said, and he did not “think we can create a different arrangement for Wales.” He told BBC Wales the decision should be taken jointly with Westminster, because the UK Parliament has to have a “say on an issue of that magnitude.”
The request is written into “New Ambition for Wales”, the four-year plan ap Iorwerth laid before the Senedd on September 22. It commits the government to asking Westminster to hand Wales the power to decide when an independence referendum happens, what it asks, and how it is run, and it is framed as a formal request rather than an assertion of any power to act alone.
The wording is a single line in a chapter the government titled “Powers for a purpose.” The plan says the administration will “Formally request the devolution of the right to decide on the timeline, question, and process for an independence referendum.”
Wales cannot hold a legally binding vote on leaving the United Kingdom without Westminster’s agreement, which is why that one line governs everything else Plaid Cymru has said about independence. Plaid has ruled out holding a referendum before the next Senedd election in 2030, so the request is for a power the party does not plan to use in this term.
The referendum line sits inside a much longer list of powers the government wants moved from London to Cardiff. The plan commits to pursuing “the full devolution of justice and policing to Wales with the urgency this deserves,” to formally requesting full control over water, to prioritizing the devolution of the Crown Estate, and to seeking powers over broadcasting, welfare, energy regulation and pricing, port regulation and Air Passenger Duty. It commits to standing up a Shadow Broadcasting and Communications Authority for Wales while the broadcasting question is unresolved.
The plan also creates a body to do the constitutional groundwork. The government will “Establish a new National Commission for Wales to provide independent advice to the Welsh Government on Wales’s constitutional future, building on the work of the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales.” The commission is to “build the evidence base for debate and decision-making, and provide advice on devolution priorities and wider constitutional reform.” Plaid has said it would lay the foundations for a possible white paper on Welsh independence, Herald.Wales reported.
Burnham’s answer on Wales follows the same line he has taken on Scotland, though his language there moved this month. At Prime Minister’s Questions on September 10, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said of a second Scottish referendum: “I am not aware that there is majority public support for another referendum, and until that changes, there will not be one.” Scotland’s First Minister, John Swinney, called that a shift. “For the first time since 2014, a British prime minister accepts that majority support for a referendum should mean one takes place,” he said. Burnham restated his position on September 25, calling himself an “absolutely plain unionist” and telling STV News, “I don’t think now is the time for another referendum.” The Welsh ask arrives days after ap Iorwerth appeared in Cardiff alongside the leaders of the SNP and Sinn Fein, where the three signed a memorandum on their shared constitutional ambitions.
Ap Iorwerth has acknowledged that Wales sits further from independence than Scotland or Northern Ireland. The plan argues for the powers in terms of what they would let a government do rather than where they would lead. “Every citizen should have a voice in the debate on their nation’s future,” it says.
Wales did not ask Westminster for independence. It asked for the standing to put the question to its own people, and three days later the Prime Minister answered that the decision is not Wales’s alone to make.
Photo: the Senedd, Cardiff Bay. Public domain.
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