Call for review into drafting of laws for Social Services Bill

The flagship Bill to revolutionise social services in Wales is so large and poorly drafted that a review should be carried out by the Welsh Government to address whether it has the capacity to make laws properly, the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats has said.

Kirsty Williams said the Social Services and Wellbeing Bill, which AMs are preparing to vote on next week, was so large that service users would have no idea how the Bill will affect them.

And she hit out at the number of so-called “technical amendments” and changes to the Bill, which will be debated in a two mammoth five-hour sessions starting next week, which she said was down to poor drafting and akin to “forgetting to do the spellcheck”.

Ms Williams said: “It makes it much more difficult for lay people to be able to gain an understanding of what this law will now mean for them as individuals. One because it is so large, and two because of the way it is then drafted.

“It’s very much a framework Bill and the policy detail will actually flow out of regulations that come out of this Bill. That’s one of the reasons the Liberal Democrats have consistently opposed this.”

She said the hundreds of amendments due to be debated by AMs raised questions over the capacity of the civil service to do the job, adding a review would be the “wise thing” to do.

“I think there’s an issue about the capacity and the ability to do that when you’re getting so many technical amendments this late in the process,” she said. “You would have thought that the legislation would be drafted in a way where you would not need to be introducing such large numbers of technical amendments at this stage.”

She added: “We need to ensure that the civil servants that we’ve got have got the technical expertise to do it…capacity could be about numbers, but it could be about the ability of the people that we’ve already got.”

The Bill, led by Deputy Minister for Social Services Gwenda Thomas, proposes an overhaul of how social care is delivered, including safeguarding measures for adults, emphasising preventative care and how people are assessed for care.