There is already grumbling amongst some MPs at the Presiding Officer’s scheduled speech at the National Eisteddfod today. David Jones is particularly exercised at the claim by Dafydd Elis-Thomas that a Tory-dominated Welsh Affairs Select Committee could attempt to thwart new powers coming to the Assembly.
Mr. Jones points out that the Welsh Affairs Select committee currently has three Conservative members. It also has one member from Plaid Cymru. He adds: ‘Every report of the committee on legislative competence proposals has been delivered unanimously; not once has a Conservative demurred from the contents of a report or sought to deliver a minority opinion. Nor, for that matter, has the Plaid Cymru member.’
On that he is correct though in my view both men are missing the point. It is not the attitude of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee that is the problem it is the LCO system itself. There is no point getting partisan about this, MPs as a whole have misinterpreted their role whilst the Welsh Government has bent over backwards to make ridiculous compromises when they should have been demanding broader powers under each LCO.
The Presiding Officer does make an important point though, which highlights the absurdity of this supposedly devolved process: “With a parliamentary general election approaching, there is an increasing risk that important orders which have not completed the process when an election is called will therefore fall, and will need to start the process again following the election.”
Back in 2006 the PO predicted that 18 pieces of legislation would be put before MPs in 2007-08 as part of the LCO process. In actual fact only four Legislative Competence Orders have completed the process and have come into force in the first two years of the new Act.
It is not the imminence of a Conservative Government that makes the case for a quick and decisive referendum to abolish the LCO process but the fact that the system is wasteful, time-consuming and unworkable.
Related posts:
