General Overview of the Act Part 1 .The Social Partnership Council Section 1 – Social Partnership Council for Wales
5.Section 1 establishes the Social Partnership Council for Wales (“SPC”) and describes its core function together with the purposes for which it may exercise that function.
6.The SPC’s core function is to provide information and advice to the Welsh Ministers on certain matters. This function is wider than merely advising the Welsh Ministers and could include the creation or provision of, among other things, statistics, factual summaries, copies of documents (whether publicly available or otherwise) and so on. There is no explicit restriction on the type of information or advice that the SPC can provide.
7.The purposes for which the SPC may provide information and advice to the Welsh Ministers are to enhance the four types of well-being (economic, environmental, social, and cultural) promoted by the Well-being and Future Generations Act (Wales) 2015 (“the 2015 Act”). A key element of this is adopting social partnership principles to improve public services in Wales. These purposes are deliberately broad to reflect the wide range of topics the SPC will discuss.
8.The SPC may provide information and advice on, essentially, those matters dealt with by the Act:
In relation to (b), the SPC’s remit includes the “pursuit” of the “A Prosperous Wales” goal by all bodies required to carry out sustainable development under section 3 of the 2015 Act. For example, the SPC would be able to provide information or advice to the Welsh Ministers about activity they were taking to improve the economic well-being of Wales if that activity was linked to the “A Prosperous Wales” goal.
9.The Act provides for flexibility as to how SPC advice or provision of information is instigated (it can be initiated by either the SPC itself or the Welsh Ministers). The SPC is therefore able to act on its own initiative if it becomes aware of a topic in relation to which it determines it should provide information or advice. Where information or advice is requested from the SPC by the Welsh Ministers, it must be provided as soon as reasonably practicable.