I SOMETIMES wonder whether Counsel General and likely next First Minister Carwyn Jones exists in the same legal world as the rest of us. writes Clive Betts from the National Assembly press gallery.
Giving the first cabinet briefing in the wake of the Assembly’s week-long half-term break, he declared himself most satisfied with Cardiff’s progress in winning Legislative Competence Orders from Westminster.
These LCOs enable Cardiff Bay to create its own legislation. The third year’s legislative programme is about to be revealed by the coalition government.
For the second year’s programme, “all matters are up and running”, said the Counsel General.
But to where are they running, Mr Jones ?
Straight into a brick wall, is the common-sense answer.
Mr Jones boasted to the press of the clear lines of governance that are being created as the LCOs wind their way (very slowly) through the Welsh Affairs Select Committee in Westminster.
He hailed as a brilliant success that there had been no blocking of the new system by Westminster for the sake of blocking.
Now Mr Jones has a barrister-politician’s supreme ability to deflect awkward questions with answers that aren’t worth writing down..
But my claim that on the LCO issue Mr Jones is living on a different planet to the rest of us is spelled out in simple English by none less than Richard Wyn Jones, once of Aberystwyth and now of the Wales Centre of Governance at Cardiff University.
In the new issue of the Constitution Unit Monitor (from University College, London), Prof Jones lays into the way that the new Act governing the Assembly is working (or, more correctly, not working). He refers to the fears that so many people had harboured that the complicated method of passing LCOs would be a recipe for the “antis” to create blockage after blockage.
Prof Jones does not blame what has happened to the housing LCO on “antis” – although evidence was to be had everywhere in the way the Welsh Select Committee dealt with this particular LCO. Prof Jones refers to Welsh Select members having undertaken “pre-legislative scrutiny” – which is not their job. As the Lords have pointed out.
He then writes, “It is the sceptics that have been proven right.” He adds, “A number of LCOs have become bogged down in seemingly endless consultations with Whitehall.”
He goes on that “the system so obviously failing”. The result has been that the Assembly has been driven to try and unblock the log-jam created by MPs in London.
The result of one of these attempts has been a farce. And a very dangerous farce.
The issue was over the housing LCO. Cardiff wanted to follow public opinion in Wales by halting the right of tenants to buy council houses in attractive seaside areas where house prices have shot up to levels unreachable by locals because of the influx of rich English seeking retirement or holiday homes.
Tory-minded MPs – and all MPs seem to be Tory-minded where the rights of Wales are concerned – tried to take every possible measure to bar Cardiff’s Assembly from halting the sale of council houses.
Eventually a compromise was arrived at between Cardiff and English-minded MPs. The Secretary of State – wearing no doubt his Governor General ostrich plumes – would be allowed to veto in certain circumstances the Assembly’s suspension of the right-to-buy legislation.
Unfortunately, another part of the Commons (presumably one less affected by the anti-Welsh views of Welsh MPs) declared that under the current Government of Wales Act, any such action would be ILLEGAL.
So, Mr Jones is happy with the way things are going ? He is happy that illegalities are being proposed because the constitutional (un)settlement is so unworkable …
Perhaps Mr Jones would fancy a spell in jail. Could we suggest Parc, in his own constituency. The privately-run jail that is turning out to be not so well run …
