Bob Oliver

Bob has over twenty years' experience as a practitioner in the fields of policy development, evaluation and implementation in central government and the EU. For much of that time he has been involved in the development and delivery of training in these fields and more recently in providing training, individual coaching and team mentoring in the fields of legislative process, parliamentary Bill management and developments in Welsh devolution.

Bob's key strengths lie in the field of legislation management, where he has extensive experience of formulating and securing the passage of legislation in the UK and EU legislatures. He has managed the passage of all or part of five EU Directives and over 35 government Bills, including 9 Finance Bills. Bob is the author of the 'Rough Guide to the Parliamentary Legislative Process' a practitioner's guide for policy and legal staff in Devolved Administrations.

His civil service career encompassed posts in the Departments of Transport and Environment, in the Treasury, Cabinet Office and Wales Office, at a major Executive Agency and in the EU and the National Assembly for Wales and Welsh Assembly Government. He has been at the sharp end of major policy and strategic development issues for most of that time as a policy advisor and as head of a sizeable policy team.

As a policy professional Bob worked on housing reform, waste management, road safety, motoring taxation, tax harmonisation, driver licensing and vehicle registration and led for the UK on five EU Directives in the transport and environment fields. Other roles have been as Head of Strategic Planning in a newly formed executive agency, as a member of the Modernising Government Task Force and a brief period in Holland working on integrated transport.

Bob saw out his time in the civil service as a full-time Bill Manager with the National Assembly for Wales, responsible for all Bills in Parliament affecting Wales in the Health, Social Care and related fields - twenty-one in all. Key elements of this included:

• Policy co-ordination and decisions on Bill content;
• Drafting Bill material;
• Management of consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny;
• Relations with Parliamentary Counsel, Cabinet Committees, House authorities, Select Committees, Whips Offices and other Departments;
• Advising and supporting Ministers through the Parliamentary process; and
• Advising on the continuing changes to legislative process resulting from the parliamentary modernisation programme.

Bob works with training providers and in an individual capacity delivering legislative process training to policy teams. He specialises in all stages of bill management including the pre-legislative stages and provides legislation awareness training, coaching and mentoring services to policy and legal services staff and bill teams. More recently he has been providing devolution awareness training for central government bill teams and legal and administrative staff in the newly established Welsh Assembly Government. Bob is an Associate Lecturer with the National School of Government, has chaired a Community Council for eight years and is a qualified pilot.