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Content Features Clive Betts-The Devolutionary Settlement i-Cambria March-April 2008 Clive Betts-The Devolutionary Settlement
Content Features Clive Betts-The Devolutionary Settlement i-Cambria March-April 2008 Clive Betts-The Devolutionary Settlement | Clive Betts-The Devolutionary Settlement |
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Page 2 of 3 In fact, the process is likely to take months longer. Alun Davies is one of the brightest figures in the Labour group in the Assembly. It is he who has emphasised how little the Assembly will have achieved by the time of its next election in 2011. He was speaking to the committee considering the LCO on affordable housing - which proposes that right-to-buy be suspended in areas of housing pressure, such as the pretty rural areas being flooded into by English people, thus pushing out the locals. Just as happens in similar areas of coastal south-west England as well as in the likes of the Lake District. His comments were pretty blunt: “We are nearly a year into the four-year term of this Assembly. … I accept that this has been done as quickly as possible. … We will, hopefully, pass a Measure by Christmas or early in 2009. When you complete your work on your general housing strategy and policy, that may require further legislation, and we will therefore require an LCO, probably in the second half of 2009. We will then legislate in terms of passing Measures to give life to that policy in 2010. In 2011, we will face another election and what we will have achieved in this Assembly is process: the passing of legislation and the creation of legislative competence. What we will not have done, because you simply will not have had time to do it, is to have an impact on homelessness and housing in Wales, which is the purpose of all of this.” In fact, the situation could get much worse. There are no signs of the LCO being referred to Parliament for its scrutiny. And then you’ve got the problem of Mark Isherwood, the Conservative AM for North, a former housing professional. He made plain that the Tories would oppose the LCO. He argued that the answer was to build more affordable homes; banning sales would not provide a single extra home as the current tenants would, on average, continue in residence for 15 years. Interfering with the right to buy a home wherever you wish - even if this means pricing out locals in pretty seaside resorts beloved by rich Londoners - brings one, of course, very close to the heart of a Tory belief that is only as yet being effectively challenged in the Tory strongholds in south-west England, hardly in Wales. Expect serious trouble when this LCO reaches Westminster. Tories in the Assembly expect a lot of furious noise - before the LCO is whipped through by Labour. Yet it is becoming clear that the LCO procedure is being abused by both the main parties. What should have been a reasonably simple procedure has become one of deep complications. It had been hoped that London would simply glance at the subjects proposed for transfer to Welsh legislative competence, say Yes (unless it proved too close to a non-devolved area), and then Wales would get on with the detail. In fact, both Tory and Labour MPs are demanding precise detail of everything being proposed for the Measure which follows (in the Senedd, such questions in LCO committees from AMs are barred). David Jones, MP for Clwyd West (and previous AM for North) wants to see a complete change in procedure - and close Parliamentary scrutiny of everything: “The process has not proved entirely uncontroversial,” he says in an understatement about the education SEN LCO. That LCO led to shuttle-diplomacy down the Great Western route to Paddington as Cardiff and London squabbled over the definition of “disability”. Endless time was wasted in both legislatures. Some Welsh politicians laugh at the sheer unimportance (except to the very few who will be directly It is becoming clear that the LCO procedure is being abused by both the main parties. What should have been reasonably simple has become deeply complicated. It had been hoped that London would simply glance at the subjects proposed for transfer to Welsh legislative competence, say Yes (unless it proved too close to a non-devolved area), and then Wales would get on with the detail. affected) of the subjects of most LCOs - they deal almost solely with the smallest of political change, with the farthings of the political world, certainly not with the fivers. With pressure for contested paragraphs to be submitted to a second Parliamentary scrutiny to check that the eventual Cardiff-London agreement is acceptable, it is no surprise that only two of the 10 LCOs from Cardiff have reached London in nine months. |
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