IF LANGUAGE and heritage minister Alun Ffred Jones is confused about what is happening to the Welsh government’s legislation on the Welsh language, he would be far from the only one, writes Clive Betts from the Assembly press gallery.
Of course, he knows what is happening.
Particularly when Secretary of State Peter Hain is busy throwing additional obstacles in its way. The latest of course is that toothless, political party dominated talking shop the Welsh Grand Committee which is so useful that it hardly ever meets.
Except of course when someone wants to use it to blow the Assembly off course … in this case, the course which is winding so incredibly slowly to the passage of the Welsh language Legislative Competence Order.
Of course, Mr Jones may be the only person in either Cardiff or Westminster who really knows what’s happening !
But what can anybody make of a hearing of the Welsh Grand Committee windbags – producers of nothing other than hot air – being suddenly inserted into the process. Giving them a say in the LCO procedure is NOT in the Government of Wales Act.
With this current language LCO Mr Jones had discovered the hard way what a colossal cat’s-cradle of time-wasting was drawn up by anti-devolution Welsh Labour MPs in the so-called devolution “settlement” produced by the that Government of Wales Act.
When there have been two such Acts in just a decade, it is clear that this is in no way a “settlement”.
Despite all the problems that have been thrown up by Westminster, it seems we can be pretty sure by now, says the minister AM for Arfon, that the language LCO (or Elco, in spoken parlance) will be in operation early in the new year.
Thus, no risk of it running into the period of the inauguration of a new Tory Government – which would perhaps mean that months of negotiations with London ministers will have to be reopened.
Always, of course, that someone in Westminster doesn’t invent yet another time-wasting procedure …
After discussions throughout the summer, Mr Jones revealed this week what is something like the final version of the LCO.
Everything would seem at last to be going swimmingly.
One just hopes that the not-so-Grand Committee doesn’t decide to resurrect some all-but-forgotten power and cause yet another delay. Mr Hain’s decision means that the Assembly is now facing not one, but two, revising chambers.
The LCO has of course already been sent around the Welsh Select Committee, which has forced changes to be adopted. The Select Committee has been acting as a sort of House of Lords – we always knew that this was a possibility, but we always hoped that the Select Committee wouldn’t take a maximalist view of its own powers.
This maximalist view of Commons power links neatly with the minimalist decision taken by the London Labour government about the breadth of power that any LCO can transfer to Wales.
Bearing in mind what most people think about their MPs – despite the fact that none on the Welsh Select Committee possess duck ponds – it is hardly appropriate for them now to be acting like the Lords.
But that on earth are the Grand Committee planning to do ? Who are the Grand Committee ?
It’s a body which hardly ever meets because it has for years been seen as an internal Labour Party committee. A membership restricted almost solely to Welsh MPs means that it is totally unrepresentative of Wales – compare the percentage of voters in Wales who put their crosses beside Labour candidates with the vastly inflated percentage of the country’s MPs that Labour manages to attain.
The Grand Committee is of so much (or little) use that no-one will ever give it anything worthwhile to do.
How has it now muscled in ? Presumably some half-wit members of that gallant band of Labour representatives who are by now so unrepresentative of Wales managed to pull a few strings with a Welsh Secretary who is pro-devolution in the hope that they can throw a spanner or two into the works.
We shall have to see.
