Even more than First Minister Rhodri Morgan, Presiding Officer Lord Elis-Thomas is surely the key to the gradual success of the National Assembly. Rhodri Morgan is certainly the figure-head, known throughout Wales and Britain, the politician with the common-touch, the master (almost always) of his administration’s policies, who has succeeded in scotching for ever the old canard about a council on stilts despite the amount of truth contained in those words.

By Clive Betts 

The master of the future lives at the very heart of the Senedd building, formally opened but a year ago. In the Cwrt, the lobby on the ground floor – or is it the basement? – surrounding the debating chamber stand a suite of glass-fronted offices.

Most are earmarked for temporary use by the First Minister or by the political parties. But one has been taken over as his office by the Presiding Officer. Instead of being, as formerly, hidden somewhere in the adjoining Crickhowell House office block, Lord Elis-Thomas is now every minute reminded of the reason for his existence – the chamber, and the committee rooms around the corner.

For a Nationalist, his vision is clear – more power for Wales; as his party’s last election manifesto said, a law-making Parliament for Wales. If you fancy a political discussion of some depth, ask the member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy whether his aim is “independence” – a concept apparently equally unknown in past centuries to the mighty powers of both East and West, China and Rome.

For now, the concern of the Presiding Office (which includes deputy John Marek, the Wrexham Forward Wales member) is to gaze into a crystal ball and try to foretell how much work the newly-elected Assembly will try to embark on using its new powers under the Government of Wales Act 2006.

This Act was a follow-up to the report of the Richard Commission of two years before. In comparison, the Bill was a costly let-down; Wales Secretary Peter Hain had to struggle to draw up proposals acceptable to that strange and deracinated creature, the average Welsh Labour MP, who seems fearful of both his status at home (much affected in constituencies where the elected constituency AM manages to reach even average Assembly standard), and indeed of the very existence of his job, as Tories and the English in general sniff around the possibility of reducing Welsh (and therefore Labour) representation, votes and power at Westminster.

In order to keep them happy, Mr Hain engaged in a bit of Assembly-bating from Westminster, threatening that Parliament would chose between accepting or rejecting the Measures that Cardiff submitted to the Commons and Lords for preliminary approval.

Sometimes, that bating seemed specifically designed to annoy David Davies, the Tory AM for Monmouth who has also been elected to the Westminster seat, and who remains an Assembly sceptic – giving more powers to the Assembly is “like giving a latchkey, a bank account and a shotgun to a 10-year-old”, he told the Commons during a debate on the devolution Bill.

Lord Elis-Thomas and his colleagues take a relaxed view of Mr Hain’s threats; they point out he speaks differently in London to Cardiff. The staunch devolutionist argues more authoritatively in Cardiff that he has no aim to bar Orders in Council from covering certain controversial areas – such as education vouchers; instead, he would merely try to ensure that a request for an Order in Council would not be so broad that such an item could slip through unnoticed. Some AMs, prominent among them Liberal Democrat leader Mike German, would certainly find Mr Hain’s view a cardinal point of argument. But that is because Mr German has argued that requests for Orders in Council should be as broad and vague as possible so that whole sectors of legislative powers would be gradually transferred to Cardiff. Of course, Labour MPs don’t agree. And neither does Mr Hain – or at least, not while he’s seeking the support of those same MPs in his bid for the deputy leadership of his party.

Lord Elis-Thomas is careful in what he says. He admits that Labour MPs “do not like” the Act, as “they do not want to see the Assembly becoming more powerful than them”.

It is sometimes difficult to be sure what is sometimes happening when a Cardiff newspaper which hardly ever attends the Assembly plays up clashes between Lord Elis-Thomas and conservative elements in Labour’s Cardiff ranks.

For instance, how much work will the Assembly perform under the new Act? In a major speech in Cardiff to Tomorrow’s Wales, chaired by the Bishop of Bangor, the Presiding Officer said he was planning for 18 pieces of legislation. Rubbish, said an unnamed Labour functionary. “Four or five,” was his answer. But last month’s meeting of the all-party Shadow Commission preparing the ground for the new set-up considered three workload scenarios for the initial year – 12, 17 and 25 measures of various types. The members (including Labour loyalist Lorraine Barrett, (Cardiff South and Penarth)) plumped for the middle figure, and decided to staff up the legal section to cope.

Perhaps, indeed, that newspaper forgot that legislation will be submitted, possibly equally, from three directions – the administration, Assembly committees, and ordinary AMs (ie, the political parties). Lord Elis-Thomas said, “We have to be prepared for members actively using the new powers.” Adverts have been placed for extra lawyers, and the administration has joined the game, too, appointing to the new post of First Legislative Counsel Prof Thomas Glyn Watkin from head of the law school in Bangor.

Will enough legislative ideas be submitted to AMs and the Government. Is Welsh civic life lively enough to produce enough? At various times, figures as differing as Rhodri Morgan and Jenny Randerson (Lib Dem, Cardiff Central) have appealed for more activity from pressure groups (which is what “civic society” really means).

Mrs Randerson contrasted the number of proposals which every MP receives when he wins the ballot for a private member’s Bill with the “blind panic” from AMs winning the Cardiff equivalent.

Perhaps the difference is really not so surprising when the convoluted extent of Cardiff’s old-style powers are teased out of the legislative conundrum which the initial Assembly was presented with.

Lord Elis-Thomas is sure there will be no shortage of legislation to deal with. He talks of the bills being prepared by the Welsh Local Government Association, the Welsh Council of Voluntary Action, and others.

Perhaps he spoils his point a bit when he says new legislation is “the talk of the bar room”. Which bar, I ask. “Oh, the Eli Jenkins and the Packet,” he quickly replies. The Eli is the Assembly’s “house-pub”, opened in Bute Crescent opposite the Millennium Centre just before the Assembly arrived, and the Packet is the more characterful and local Brain’s house at the bottom of Bute Street opposite Tesco.

Of course, there may be another reason for Labour to play down Cardiff’s law-making powers. The Richard Commission worked out how many laws the Assembly might embark upon, and quickly came to the conclusion that 60 AMs was too small a total to cope; Richard suggested 80, to be elected by the single transferable vote method from constituencies each returning about five members (as imposed on Ireland by the British in 1912, and still used in the republic – with Cardiff probably as a single constituency).

Lord Elis-Thomas trots out the committees that the Assembly is likely to set up after the election; committees for Measures, Scrutiny committees for Cabinet subjects, and Standing committees for such as equal opportunities and Europe (as today).

No longer is he thinking of the three-weekly cycle that Labour tried to impose in order to reduce the work-load, which of late has been quietly dropped; the Presiding Officer sees weekly meetings as probably necessary. No more will we see meetings in the regions (so Labour AMs could go shopping, it has been said); a three-hour meeting takes a complete day, and the time can no longer be afforded.

There is no sign that Lord Elis-Thomas is thinking of giving up. “There is a job to do here, to carry on with the development of the constitution,” he said. He’s thinking ahead to the next great challenge, to the referendum for full legislative powers (when the Measures that the Bay passes become known as Acts). Target date is 2011, at the same time as the next election. It is the need to prepare for the big change that leads him to favour a Lab-Plaid coalition if the figures fall the right way on the night of May 3; both parties, he says, think similarly, and his colleagues can think of only two Labour AMs still opposed to extra powers – the same two who voted in favour of delaying the pub-smoking ban for three months to the English date – a period which saw the deaths of a further 100 people due to passive smoking - Ann Jones, Vale of Clwyd, and Karen Sinclair, Clwyd South.

Of course, a wee small voice (ie Liberal Democrat leader Mike German) pointed out in a press conference the same day that a referendum would fail to deliver the Scottish powers so many say it would. What about Home-style affairs, such as prisons and criminal justice? And the pages in the 2006 Act listing powers that are not to be devolved?

Then there’s the possibility of the Presiding Officer becoming First Minister in a rainbow coalition ? That’s a question he dodges. “I’ll be voting for my party leader [Ieuan Wyn Jones] as First Minister, if his name is put forward,” he replies artfully.

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