Authority & jurisprudence in the land of our fathers

 

An interview with

Leanne Wood AM

Leader 
Plaid Cymru, Party of Wales

The Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542 were parliamentary measures by which Wales became a part of the Kingdom of England, thereby the legal system of England was extended to Wales. Prior to this and since the final conquest of Wales by the English King Edward I, from 1284 AD the Statute of Rhuddlan had provided a constitutional basis of law, which had replaced the original codified system of Welsh law Cyfraith Hywel (Laws of Hywel Dda) dating back to the reign of King Hywel Dda (AD 880-950). 

Leanne Wood is a passionate believer in a devolved justice system for Wales. Before becoming the first female leader of Plaid Cymru, she had worked as a probation officer including serving as the co-Chair of the National Association of Probation Officers between 1998-2000. She had also lectured on Social Policy at Cardiff University until her election to the National Assembly for Wales in 2003. 

TheLawMap: What would be the principal benefits of a devolved criminal justice system for the people of Wales?

I have long been an advocate of devolving the criminal justice system to Wales. This is not just for devolution’s sake but so that we can craft a criminal justice system that works better for Wales. The advantages of such a system are fully outlined in our policy paper Making Our Communities Safer which is available through the Plaid Cymru website.

The thrust of the paper is to show that the criminal justice system is not working as well as it can for Wales. Re-offending rates are too high, we have an overcrowded prison population and levels of suicide and substance misuse are also too high. With more emphasis on treating the causes of crime rather than the symptoms, we could develop a system here that is much better for society.

TheLawMap: What makes you believe that the legal fraternity in Wales would support efforts to establish a devolved jurisdiction?

Why would they not? The criminal justice system has already been devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland so there is clear precedent for this. It is in everybody’s interest to have a system that works smarter and delivers better outcomes for offenders and communities. Evidence show a majority of the Welsh public are in favour of the devolution of the criminal justice system as well as further powers in general and it makes sense now that the Assembly has primary law making powers.
 
TheLawMap: You have an extensive knowledge of the probation service. Latest reports are suggesting that our prisons are in crisis due to staff shortages, violence, bullying, self-harm and suicides soaring, and many young prisoners in particular laying idle behind their locked doors during the working day. Is there an easy fix? 
 
As the policy paper Making Our Communities Safer argues, much of these problems have stemmed from successive Westminster Governments seeking to treat the symptoms, rather than the causes of crime. There are no quick and easy answers to remedying decades of bad policy in the criminal justice system that has delivered an overcrowded prison population and unacceptable re-offending rates.

The privatisation of the probation service is the latest example of ideologically driven policy that pays little or no attention to the views of professionals on the ground or to what works in terms of reducing offending rates.  Many of the solutions are long-term ones such as Plaid Cymru's proposals for a 20 year substance misuse strategy that concentrates on harm reduction. We have also advocated a generational strategy to tackle hate or power-based crime which would be part of a child’s primary school education.

These should be a policy goal to reduce the overall prison population.  Too many mentally ill people are incarcerated.  And the overcrowded prisons tend to be the ones where the bullying, self-harm, violence and suicides are more prevalent. The high prison population plays is key in creating these conditions.
 

TheLawMap: Recently, there was a UK government consultation on domestic violence which reads as “at present, there is no specific offence of domestic abuse outlining that coercive and controlling behaviour in intimate relationships is criminal. These behaviours are captured in stalking and harassment legislation, but this does not explicitly apply to intimate relationships. Some experts have argued that this means the law is ambiguous and perpetrators of domestic abuse are committing criminal acts but not being brought to justice. Does the current law sufficiently capture the Government’s non-statutory definition of domestic abuse? Additionally, as a former support worker for Cwm Cynon Women's Aid, do you feel that the current law on domestic abuse needs to be strengthened to offer better protection to victims?

Plaid Cymru believes the law needs tightening to ensure coercive and controlling behaviour can be prosecuted. My party colleague Elfyn Llwyd MP has carried out some sterling work to try and tighten up the law and has recently met with the Home Secretary on this very subject.  He intends to table amendments to the Serious Crime Bill, which if implemented and enforced properly, should result in a sharp rise in reporting, prosecutions and convictions of these offences. It will usher in a degree of protection for victims of domestic abuse that are currently vulnerable.

From my experience in the field, I'd say that this strengthening of the law is long overdue. I can recall numerous cases where this law would have made a difference to the lives of women and their children that have been marred by domestic abuse.

With special thanks to Leanne Wood AM for her valuable time. She can be followed on Twitter and recently held a Facebook questions and answer session. 

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“To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world”

An interview with

Dr Paul Bernal

Lecturer 

Information Technology, Intellectual Property and Media Law

at University of East Anglia Law School

Paul Bernal is fascinated with the concept of privacy and what is means to us in this socially connected world. His background is unusual for a legal academic. His first degree was in Mathematics and he has been a Chartered Accountant, done pioneering work in the early days of the internet, and had been the finance director of a mental health and criminal justice charity.
 

TheLawMap: Is privacy a modern concern? Did we think about privacy differently as a society before the age of the internet?

It’s interesting – privacy gets attacked from both directions. Some say privacy is a modern concern, that we didn’t care about it in the past – they often put forward some kind of image of an idealised ‘village’ or ‘small town’ life where everyone knew everything about everyone else and all was harmonious and wonderful. Others say that privacy is out-dated – Mark Zuckerberg’s famous comment that ‘privacy is no longer a social norm’ is perhaps the best example of this.

I don’t think either are right – I think the desire and need for privacy is something inherent in our humanity. It manifests itself differently depending on the circumstances, but we all want it, and we always have. Look at the Catholic Church’s system of confessions – behind it lies the idea that we have things that we want to share only with God, not with people in the ‘material world’. Almost all religions have something similar. It’s not about hiding things – but about what matters to us. Zuckerberg and others’ ideas that young people don’t care about privacy are equally misguided and misconceived – as anyone with a child should realise. My daughter already valued and demanded her privacy when she was three – she wanted to do things privately, have secrets shared with her friends and so forth. Teens who share stuff on Facebook can be devastated to know that their parents or teachers have access to them. What we like about privacy depends on what our situations – and on who has power over us.

TheLawMap: In a recent blog post you referred to ‘the death of privacy’. Does privacy pose the same level of threat within a democracy as it may do to an authoritarian state?

Actually I think precisely the opposite. Privacy doesn’t really threaten a democracy – in helps it and supports it. It’s a contentious view, I realise, and something I’m working on putting into written form. Ultimately, privacy increases trust and supports the key civil liberties that are the lifeblood of a democracy. Without privacy, we can’t have freedom of speech – people are far less likely to speak out, or seek out information that the ‘authorities’ might view as suspicious if they feel they’re under surveillance. A true democracy should be willing to trust its population – not view everyone as suspicious, as a potential terrorist or subversive. It’s hard for authorities to make the philosophical leap required – but in the end I suspect they may have to, or lose the trust of the people.

TheLawMap: Each day we create new social media entries and participate in shared content. You wrote an academic paper about 'A right to delete' published in the European Journal of Law and Technology. Is the notion of a privacy friendly internet just a dream? 

In some ways the right to delete hangs in the balance right now. From a legal perspective, the reform to the Data Protection regime which includes the formal ‘right to be forgotten and to erasure’ is the subject of intense negotiation. There is a vote on Monday 21st October – but even after that there is a long way to go. In California what’s been labelled a ‘poor man’s right to be forgotten’ has been voted through – but it’s not nearly as potent as the real thing.

On the other hand, people are starting to demand the right to delete, and service providers are beginning to respond. It’s possible (though hard) to delete your Facebook account these days, for example. As people demand it, companies will respond. In many ways this is likely to be a much more practical way than demanding laws. Ultimately, when people want it enough, companies will respond.

TheLawMap: I read your thoughts on the Draft communication bill with interest. What concerned you the most about this draft bill?

The Communications Data Bill was withdrawn, after a great deal of pressure and hard work from advocates – my submission was one of thousands – so from a legal perspective it doesn’t exist. The real problem, though, is that all the information we’ve now got from Edward Snowden has made it pretty clear that the surveillance envisaged in the Bill was already taking place – the Bill seems to have been some kind of attempt to get retrospective authority for something GCHQ and others were doing regardless of the law! All those concerns, therefore, are still concerns – all those risks are still real risks, and need to be taken seriously. I think the politicians are starting to wake up to the fact that the wool was pulled over their eyes by the intelligence services, and they’re not happy about it. They shouldn’t be!

TheLawMap: In your opinion, Is there any difference in how privacy is viewed by citizens across the world?

As I said in my answer to the first question, I think privacy is something that we all care about – and always have. There are cultural differences – different things matter to different people in different ways – but we all care about our privacy. There are those who would like to claim, for example, that in parts of Asia they don’t care about privacy, and to suggest that privacy is some kind of ‘western’ concept being imposed upon them. From my experience I would say they’re quite wrong. When I teach Asian students – and in my main privacy class at the UEA last year we had Chinese, Thai and Indian students amongst others – it is very clear that they do care about privacy, and care about it very much. Generally when people say things like ‘privacy isn’t a value for us’ I find there is some kind of self-interest involved: it suits authoritarian regimes, for example, to say that it’s OK for us to use surveillance because our citizens don’t care about privacy. It’s a similar story to that with Mark Zuckerberg – Facebook would very much like privacy no longer to be a social norm. it serves them to suggest that, just as it serves a dictator to suggest that the citizens of their country don’t mind being under constant surveillance. That doesn’t make it true.

TheLawMap: I was intrigued by your Symbolic Web Theory. What would be the human rights implication of this theory if it could be implemented across the world? 

You’ll have to wait for my book ‘Internet Privacy Rights’ to come out next year for a proper answer to that question – but ultimately I believe that understanding the implications of the theory is one of the keys to building a more privacy-friendly internet. The theory suggests that we’re in a symbiotic relationship with the big providers on the internet: we depend on their ‘free’ services, they rely on being able to gather and use our data. If we understand that relationship – and understand our power within that relationship, we can start to take a bit more control over how the internet works, and help to demand a more ‘privacy-friendly’ net. A more privacy-friendly net can aid human rights all over the world. That, however, is very much a simplification. The book will come out in early 2014 – you can learn more then.

TheLawMap: What attracts a student to study the areas of law that you take a special interest in?

Three main things, I would say. Firstly, it is an area that they can relate to – all students use the internet, the vast majority use Facebook, Twitter and so on, and most have concerns about their privacy. Secondly, they can see that this is an area of increasing interest and concern – and might well be an area where work opportunities expand. Thirdly, they think it could be fun! This is far from a dry area of law.

TheLawMap: If you could change something within the legal profession, what would it be?

It may not seem to have a direct relationship to my own work, but the thing that bothers me the most at the moment is the way that access to justice is being attacked, and the way that poorer people, more vulnerable people, are almost certain to be squeezed out. What Grayling is doing to Legal Aid is nothing short of disastrous – so we need to do everything we can not just to oppose it but to reverse it.

TheLawMap: I understand that you are a passionate supporter of Wolverhampton Wanderers and love football. English Premiership clubs spent over 620 million pounds in the recent player transfer window with many lawyers and agents taking a significant role in the negotiations between the clubs and the players. Is money ruining the beautiful game?

I’m afraid money isn’t ruining the game – it has already ruined the game. Football isn’t the game it was. I still love it, and even when my team are doing very badly (we’ve just suffered two successive relegations) I don’t in any way lose interest. Now, however, it’s much more a commercially packaged experience, much less about real passion. There are good things about the new game – more ‘family-friendly’ games, far less racism (though it hasn’t gone away completely) and much more comfortable and attractive stadiums even in the lower divisions – but the depth of feeling seems to have gone. I suppose it’s inevitable, but that doesn’t make it particularly good. Mind you, I still get a lovely feeling of tension and excitement with pretty much every game, so it can’t be all bad!

With special thanks to Paul Bernal for his valuable time. He maintains an active social media presence through Twitter and his engaging personal blog sharing thoughts on law, politics and society, but usually with a subtext of privacy.  


The title of this interview, 'To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world' is a quote from Homage to Qwert Yuiop, by Anthony Burgess, published in the United States as But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?

How far could compassion take you? Is there a case for compassion within the Criminal Justice system?

An Interview with

Trystan Owain Hughes,  

writer of 

The Compassion Quest 

Justice and compassion are seldom mentioned in the same breath lest we forget the victims of injustice. It is as if compassion is a right that is automatically sacrificed the moment an individual commits a crime or acts in a manner that is counter to the norms of  acceptable polite society behaviour. In his latest book 'The Compassion Quest', academic and theologian Dr Trystan Owain Hughes makes a compelling case for extending compassion to all living beings, including social pariahs. 

The writer's grasp of popular culture, frequent mention of films, music and books that most of us have read or at least have heard of makes 'The Compassion Quest' not just a compelling read but a most enjoyable one too. There is almost no sense of preaching here, not even a slight hint of the stuffy that so many treatise on Theology tends to be guilty of. Naturally, I was most grateful when on a bitterly cold afternoon earlier in March TheLawMap finally caught up with Dr Hughes and asked him the following  -
 

TheLawMap: Are you arguing for a moral system grounded in the belief that the present set of laws that govern our everyday lives ought to take its authority from what compassionate people would recognise as moral virtue or morally compassionate?

My book The Compassion Quest suggests a radical way of viewing the world around us, which will affect every part of the social matrix, from the law courts to our health service. The principal thrust of the book is that, in every part of our lives, we should recognise our common humanity. It is, therefore, not those things that divide us that we recognise to be significant, but those things that we hold in common. With this recognition, whether we are dealing with ethics, education, health issues, or the laws that govern our everyday lives, compassion has to come first.

Both the Hebrew and the Arabic word for compassion are linked to their words for “womb”. In other words, whoever people are and whatever they have done, we should be treating them as if they had shared the same womb as us, as if they were our brothers and sisters. The English word “compassion” furthers our understanding of this concept. It comes from the Latin cum (with) and pati (suffering). In other words, just as we stand alongside those in times of success and celebration, we must also strive to truly understand their predicaments and to “suffer with” them. As an old German proverb puts it: ‘a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved; a joy shared is a joy doubled’.

Showing compassion must not, of course, undermine the fact-finding process of the legal system and should never lead us be blind to the “facts” of any trial, case, or situation. Our call, though, is still to show compassion to all those who are part of the trial process, not only those who we deem to be in the "right". After such a process too, we must continue to show compassion. All are entitled to our compassion, regardless of the outcome of a trial. So, we show compassion to both genuine victims and those shown to be telling lies, to both criminal offenders and to those who are wrongly accused. After all, as Professor Arthur Dobrin wrote recently in Psychology Today, without compassion “the law is merely a tool for the strong to rationalize their position, not an instrument for social justice in the service of all”. 

TheLawMap: Should the need for compassionate living require a more compassionate justice system? How could this be achieved?

At the core of a compassionate justice system is the way that we as individuals view those with whom we come into contact, whether they are victims or perpetrators. As such, the process of compassion must be one of recognising our common humanity with each other, and taking seriously the backgrounds that others hail from.

Compassion is certainly not a case of allowing people to avoid “justice” or letting people “get away with it”. Still, we should never forget that people are not open books. Situations, traumatic upbringings, and backgrounds are not always apparent to us, and so we should take care not to judge others directly on what we do see them do, how we see them act, or on what others tell us about them.

In the recent Hollywood film Dredd [2011], Judge Dredd is stopped from implementing the death penalty on an individual when his psychic sidekick is able to reveal the abuse and humiliation to which the character had been subjected. Life is not like a superhero blockbuster, but our role is still to take seriously the paths, often relating to broken childhoods, that people have trod.

Too often our politics, legal system, and especially the press want to separate people into saints and sinners. Compassion, though, demands from us a recognition that our inclination towards good and bad is, very often, related to suffering in our past. As such, we have to face the reality that if we had the same genes and the same upbringing as others, there is a good chance that we would be acting the same way. That is a huge challenge to the way that we as individuals, as well as every part of our society, including the legal system, treat other people. 

TheLawMap: From your experience of visiting prisons and engaging prisoners, do you believe that the penal system is rather more aimed at retribution rather than rehabilitation?

In the past I have taken groups of young students to a prison for young offenders, as part of a University course on social action. After the visits, the students would reflect on their experience. Almost all of them would explain that, as they chatted to the inmates there was a dawning realisation that these young men were not ‘evil’ or ‘bad’. In fact, they were, by and large, young, energetic people like themselves, with similar interests, dreams, and aspirations. The only real difference was that most of the prisoners had either fallen in with the wrong crowd, had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or had experienced unfortunate childhoods which had influenced their later actions.

Of course, every crime and each convicted criminal is different, but rehabilitation always needs to be at the forefront of a compassionate penal system. The five guiding principles of sentencing (punishment, deterrence, rehabilitation, restitution and public protection) are certainly a good place to start, but each of those principles need to be immersed in compassion. Retribution, on the other hand, should play no part in sentencing in the criminal justice system, even if some seem to blur the line between punishment and retribution, not least the press and media.

From what I hear from my friends who are lawyers, though, it seems that criminal justice professionals themselves do recognise that rehabilitation is the most effective deterrent to reoffending. This rehabilitation, however, needs to start by educating individuals in the paramount importance of compassion. Psychological and sociological research shows that being compassionate towards others ultimately leads to more fulfilled lives. The more we give to others, the more we get back. Conversely, the more selfish and egocentric we are, the more unrewarding lives we lead. “Care about ‘the other’ is not really altruistic, but it is the best form of self-interest”, writes Desmond Tutu.

In fact, such an education must start early in all our lives – we should all be championing compassion to our children and teaching it in our schools, above the desire for success and achievement. After all, individuals, communities, and societies are enlivened and brought hope through compassion. Like ripples on a pond, our actions, whether good or bad, have far-reaching effects on many more people than we realise. 

TheLawMap: Are there individuals locked in correctional facilities who could be beyond compassion & should compassion be the basis of a penal system that reflects the pain and suffering of the victims?

Certainly, the pain and suffering of victims should never be devalued, as our love and care towards them is paramount. But compassion towards the victim and the perpetrator are not mutually exclusive. As such, no one is beyond our compassion. After all, compassion challenges us to recognise our common humanity with all, even convicted criminals.

A few years back I took a group of students to a former Nazi concentration camp. At one point, as we all stood silent in the midst of our thoughts of the horrors the prisoners had faced, one student said: ‘imagine if we had been one of the guards here’. At that moment, it dawned on me that, yes we could have been one of the prisoners, but we equally could have been one of the oppressors. We are so used empathetically to putting ourselves in the shoes of the oppressed, that we forget that the oppressors are also human, just like you and me.

However heinous we regard the actions of others, our call should always be towards compassion. The sickening actions of Myra Hindley were clearly abhorrent. However, the reaction of our society after Hindley’s death reveals how little self-awareness we have of the capacity for the most horrendous evil, as well as the greatest good, that is present in us all. The Sun exclaimed that ‘Myra the Devil’ would never be forgiven, The Daily Mail bemoaned the fact that she had a peaceful death, while The Daily Express’s front page headline simply read ‘Go to Hell, Myra’.

The temptation is certainly to demonise offenders and regard them as ‘different’ from us and our loved ones. By doing so, we are led to believe that reform, redemption, and restoration are naïve and implausible. We, therefore, separate and stigmatize those who act in ways that go against our moral codes.

In my own Christian tradition, Jesus Christ certainly held a rich concept of justice, but he also clearly held that nothing or no one was beyond redemption. His love, acceptance, and compassion had no boundaries, a fact that even many parts of the Church today fails to live out. The recent film Beasts of the Southern Wild [2011] beautifully summarised the concept that our common humanity challenges us to show care for even the most broken and lost souls: “The whole universe depends on everything fitting together just right. If one piece busts, even the smallest piece, then the entire universe will get busted”. 

TheLawMap: In my experience, students of law or trainee lawyers often tends to have strong conviction on legal and moral issues. How could these convictions, which I sometimes see as a desire to 'undoing the wrongs', be maintained within the framework of a more compassionate outlook on life?

It is wonderful if students of law and trainee lawyers are motivated by values and convictions, rather than by status and finance. This is certainly something which should be commended and encouraged within the legal community. It needs also to be held alongside a healthy dose of realism about our shared humanity with both the victims and perpetrators of crimes and a deep compassion for all those involved in specific cases. While justice is a necessary function of our legal system, we must not ignore the ultimate need for forgiveness and mercy.

Mercy is rare in today’s world, with the desire for revenge and retribution seems far more common. Yet, mercy is certainly one thing that my own Christian tradition can teach the secular world, as it is one of the cornerstones of our belief. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa was remarkable precisely because it is so unusual for such a political movement to be driven by forgiveness, rather than punitive justice. It is of little surprise that faith played a definitive part in the process, with each day beginning with prayers led by the chairman of the meeting, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who wore his clerical collar and episcopal shirt throughout the process. At the Commission, those who were the oppressors during the apartheid regime came face-to-face with those whom they oppressed and persecuted.

In interviews with Tutu, both during and after the process, he emphasised that both torturer and tortured were ‘fellow children of God’ and were, therefore, deserving of our love and compassion. Forgiveness was certainly not easy or cheap for those who had been wronged. After all, Tutu pointed to how difficult it is for us to either forgive our own husbands and wives in the privacy of your own kitchens after an argument, let alone to forgive those who have tortured and killed our friends and family! ‘I'm afraid we are following a Lord and Master who, at the point where crucifying him in the most painful way, can say ‘pray for their forgiveness’;’ Tutu told an American television channel, ‘we follow the one who says: ‘forgive one another as God in Christ forgives you’. That is, for us, the paradigm – we may not always reach that ideal, but that is the standard’.

It is that dichotomy that has driven truly compassionate people down the ages, from the Catholic Mother Teresa to the Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh; the paradox that we should be both realistic and idealistic in our outlook. When law students come to see me at my University, I give them that very advice – realism is necessary, but idealism is absolutely essential. 

TheLawMap: Does the technologically interconnected nature of modern living allow us to be more compassionate and concerned about human rights issues across the globe?

At the heart of life is relationship. We are as a species utterly dependent on each other. The French Cistercian monk Charles de Foucald suggested a concept of the ‘universal brotherhood’. In other words, all of us are intimately connected as one large family and should treat each other with this in mind. As Desmond Tutu put it: ‘I hope we can accept a wonderful truth – we are family! We are family!”

Yet, in our everyday lives, we often revel in our separation from each other. Television shows such as The Jeremy Kyle Show and The X Factor, for example, fail to recognise our unity and common humanity, but instead rejoice in our dissimilarity with those whom we are watching. We almost delight in the rejects of these shows, and enjoy the feeling that we are so very different to them. Our enjoyment at the appalling vocal performances of early contestants in the auditions for The X Factor, or the poorly spoken guests on The Jeremy Kyle Show, help to make us feel better personally, but always at the expense of the weak, powerless, or ignorant.

One might think that the technologically interconnected nature of modern living would help us feel more connected with the world around us, but, in fact, in many ways it serves to distance us from others. In our workplaces, we don’t have to see people face-to-face these days, or even chat to them on the phone, but we simply fire a quick email away to them. With regards to the law, this detachment from others has led to a new kind of criminal activity. Internet crime is the ultimate faceless disconnection, where the perpetrators do not have to look us victims straight in the eye when they carry out their crimes.

On the other hand, technology has been at the forefront of liberating social change, as shown in the prevalence of social media during the Arab Spring uprisings, and it is also helping to highlight the centrality of compassion and compassionate actions in our daily lives. Movements like the Charter for Compassion, Compassion It, Compassion International, Compassion in World Farming, and Compassionate Action Network themselves utilise technology either to advocate concern and care for the environment, human rights, and issues of poverty, or to simply to urge people worldwide to practice compassion in their everyday lives. ‘I know we are all pretty small in the big scheme of things, and I suppose the most you can hope for is to make some kind of difference’, muses Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt [2002]. He then asks two questions that all of us, whether we are working in the legal profession or not, should ask ourselves as we reflect on our lives and careers thus far: ‘What kind of difference have I made? What in the world is better because of me?’

With special thanks to Rev. Dr Trystan Owain Hughes for his valuable time.

Trystan Owain Hughes is Chaplain at Cardiff University. He attained an MTh from Oxford University, with a thesis on suffering and contemplative prayer, and a PhD in church history from the University of Wales, Bangor. He is the author of Winds of Change: The Roman Catholic Church and Society in Wales 1916-1962 (UWP, 1999), Finding Hope and Meaning in Suffering (SPCK, 2010), and The Compassion Quest (SPCK, 2013). Trystan is a regular voice to be heard on BBC Radio 4's 'Prayer for the Day' and BBC Radio 2's 'Pause for Thought', as well as on BBC Radio Wales and BBC Radio Cymru. He runs well-attended meditative retreats and quiet days at parish, diocesan and university level, he is on the theological commission that assists the bench of Welsh Bishops, and he lectures at Cardiff University and St Michael's Theological College, Llandaff.