What do the People Want?

The Richard Commission report is an impressive document for many reasons. One of these is the thoroughness of the research on which it is based. In the case of public opinion, the Commission weighed up the evidence so judiciously that its account in the third chapter of the report reads as a highly authoritative summary of public attitudes towards devolution in Wales. Here we seek to complement rather than compete with the account provided by the Richard Commission. We do so by considering three central questions:

1. What evidence exists about public attitudes towards devolved
government in Wales?
2. How reliable is this evidence?
3. Most importantly, what does the evidence tell us?

After considering each of these questions in turn, and given the strong likelihood that the Richard proposals will require endorsement in a referendum before they can ever be implemented, we conclude by briefly discussing the implications of our findings for such a plebiscite. As part of this discussion, we will examine evidence that has been produced since the publication of the Report.