SOME PEOPLE believe that the Assembly is about Legislative Competence Orders and such law-making business, writes Clive Betts from the Assembly press gallery.
But to those who remember the old-style and sadly-departed ministerial committees, the running of a country depends much more on administering policies and in deciding HOW things happen.
Rhodri Morgan played up strongly the massive range of powers that the Assembly possesses and the successful way that they had been carried out as he bowed out at his final press briefing as First Minister.
It was all part of his strong argument for a Yes vote in the coming referendum on extra powers for Cardiff Bay.
The retiring First Minister ridiculed the No group in the two past referenda on devolution for Wales.
Such folk had assumed that Wales would be incapable of governing itself; the Assembly would be beset by scandals; that all jobs would be filled by the “boys”, and that these folk would all the Welsh-speaking (although Mr Morgan failed to mention that point).
Talking of how well the Assembly had done, he managed not to mention (LCOs) – perhaps because their subjects were usually so minor.
Instead he focussed on events that had happened, and on how the Assembly had acquitted itself.
Interestingly, he focussed partly on the early days. When the Assembly was still young; and thus perhaps more likely to make mistakes. Also the days when Carwyn Jones, the new First Minister, possessed a strong ministerial subject brief (agriculture).
Mr Morgan spoke about the BSE livestock crisis when at one point it was reported officially that the virus had jumped from cattle to sheep.
From Edinburgh it was reported that the leap had happened. Officials from all the devolved administrations were present, and it seemed that the entire UK sheep stock would have to be slaughtered, and eventually restocked from Australia and New Zealand.
The evidence was to be found in a fridge in Edinburgh, and it would have been an open-and-shut case in pre-devolution days.
But Mr Morgan told us that the Welsh civil servant present in the meeting demanded a re-testing of the evidence. It was not just that sheep are far more important to Wales than to the other countries of the UK.
More important, his minister (no less than Carwyn Jones) demanded a re-test. So, one had to be carried out.
That’s when they found that they had muddled the brains. The test had been performed on a cow, not a sheep.
Devolution and the extra powers and rights it had given to Wales had saved the lives of at least five million sheep. And avoided chaos in an entire industry.
Then Mr Morgan gave a current example – unfortunately without spelling out the sort of detail that would have been provided to the old committees. Those committees would have been supplied with reports to the minister from civil servants, giving us the detail we would have wanted.
This week, Chancellor Alistair Darling announced that the massive plan to store the personal medical details of every patient on a central NHS computer. The £12bn scheme was too costly.
But Mr Morgan pointed out that Wales was dealing with the subject in a different way. England was trying to introduce a top-down system.
But Wales was working differently. Introducing links between the computer systems which currently exist.
Unfortunately, that was about all we were told. Looks like a case for an old-style report to committee.
The Assembly is far too concerned with getting the legislation right that it is forgetting about the administration. And there’s far more administration than legislation. Which we are never hearing about now that some people are trying to ape Westminster-style procedures.
