Some of the UK's leading legal and constitutional experts will come to the Senedd next week (14 October 2019) to give evidence to a new inquiry examining the future of Wales and the changing constitution of the UK.
Mick Antoniw AM, Chair of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee said:
"The United Kingdom and Wales face a constitutional crisis. The potential removal of the EU constitutional umbrella, within which we have lived and worked for the past 40 years, has exposed widening fractures in our constitution.
"Bringing together some of the best constitutional minds in the UK to discuss the pressing issue of Wales' changing constitution is an important step in our inquiry.
"However, the constitution is no longer an issue consigned to academic debate and for the first time in my political life ordinary people are raising the issue with me in the street. This sea change in public interest has been fuelled in part by high-profile Supreme Court cases and of course, by speculation around whether Wales and the Union can survive Brexit."
Experts from across the UK will grapple with debates about the future of the Union, and Wales' position within any potential new landscape. The discussion will look at the challenges, opportunities and threats that Wales could face over the coming months and years. They will also look at the issue of sharing sovereignty, the implications of Brexit on the Sewel Convention and the need for a constitutional convention to help build a consensus about future changes to the existing UK framework.
The experts attending the Wales' Changing Constitution session are:
- Professor Michael Keating, Director, Centre on Constitutional Change, University of Aberdeen
- Dr. Andrew Blick, Director, Centre for British Politics and Government, King's College London
- Professor Jo Hunt, Wales Governance Centre
- Akash Paun, Institute for Government
- Professor Alan Page, University of Dundee
- Professor Aileen McHarg, University of Strathclyde (moved to Durham University 1 September)
- Professor Michael Gordon, Director of Research, Liverpool Law School – TBC
- Professor Alison Young, Director, Cambridge Centre for Public Law
- Dr Jack Simon Caird, Senior Research Fellow in Parliaments and the Rule of Law, Bingham Centre for the Rule of Law
- Dr Huw Pritchard, Wales Governance Centre
- Professor Dan Wincott, Wales Governance Centre