It is very appropriate that the title of the housing conference organised at Cardiff university concludes with a question mark.
“Housing and Government: A Decade of Difference ?” will examine the results of devolution in the various countries of the UK.
When the conference is organised by the Housing Studies Association and the flier for next April’s conference is distributed in the Welsh Housing Quarterly, it’s a good guess that a fair amount of the proceedings will deal with social housing.
Which brings us immediately to whether the Welsh Assembly possesses any worthwhile powers over such housing.
In principle, Yes. In fact, No, it would seem, after the Welsh Affairs Committee in London tried to demolish and delete as much as it could of the content of the draft Legislative Competence Order on housing.
Now, had the Assembly tried to get Westminster to agree to the entire “field” of housing being devolved to Cardiff, Tory MP David Jones (Clwyd West) would have immediately flown into orbit, to join Lemit Opik and his asteroids.
In fact, all the Assembly wants is to halt temporarily the sale of council houses in areas of housing pressure (usually defined as small pretty villages overlooking Cardigan Bay).
Mr Jones would, I am sure, be opposed to any halt to sales – on party political grounds. But the Tories possess only three seats on that committee. So how did they persuade the rest ?
Probably by descending to legalisms; by demanding that each LCO is worded so narrowly that we might as well allow Westminster to pass all of the Measures (the eventual Welsh form of an Act).
It seems to be true that members of an organisation quickly acquire that organisation’s ways of thinking. At least two members are (or were) strong devolutionists – Sian James and chairman Hywel Francis.
Failure by MPs to follow the legal lead set by members of a directly-elected Assembly in Cardiff plays straight into the hands of those believing that the UK should adopt a federal governmental set-up.
And that Scottish powers – at the least – should be given to Wales.
If you had wondered how many powers the Assembly in fact possesses, it’s worth perusing Welsh Housing Quarterly. Once a slim production, it contains now almost 60 pages.
And that is to keep track of the legal minutiae that is all the Cardiff at present can produce.
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