It’s increasingly clear: the existing devolutionary settlement hampers Assembly’s competence to deliver for Wales. 

The brief note of triumph from minister Jane Hutt the day that the first Legislative Competence Order was finally passed by the Commons hid far more than it revealed.
Our education minister wrote that it is “wonderful’ that the first LCO put forward by the Assembly, to change special educational provision for children in Wales, has at last been approved by the Commons.
In fact, the agreement was a disaster. The House of Lords had also been through the LCO which will enable Cardiff to bring forward a Measure to the Assembly, and thus change the law on SEN pupils as it affects Wales.
But in almost every way, the promises about what the Government of Wales Act 2006 would deliver have been smashed.
I wrote in the last issue about how that Act had caused immense damage to the openness of working within the Assembly, replacing openness of government with processes which govern behind heavy curtains and private (or secret) methods of working.

Our methods of governance have now become akin to those of a secret state. And now we are discovering that similar perils are befalling our methods of legislating. We were told the new system would be simpler and quicker.
In no way. This education and training LCO was introduced in the Assembly last June. Six weeks later fantastically fast, compared with other LCOs - it went to Parliament. By the latter half of March this year, it was finally signed off by the Commons. It now comes back to the Assembly, which will write a Measure for Cardiff to pass into law.
The Measure will be fundamentally different from the LCO. The LCO merely listed - although in great detail - the sorts of issues on which Cardiff wished to pass legislation. The Measure will have to spell out in
detail precisely the terms of the new law. How long it will take to write all those clauses I do not know. Perhaps, it has already been done – although a contact in the Assembly said she had not heard of that having happened.
If everything is ready to go, what happens next ? A special committee is established to consider the Measure. It may well decide to call for evidence, giving perhaps two months for outside experts to respond. After the closing date, it is likely to take two months for the committee to consider the responses and publish its report. Only then can the committee consider any amendments proposed by AMs to the text of the proposals.
Somewhere along the way, the Measure will be shunted off to the first of its two readings (Commonsstyle) in plenary. The first considers the general principles of the Measure. The second reading is the important one - when the main bunch of amendments are decided on.
After AMs have finally agreed that the Measure is in fit state to become law, a copy goes to the Queen who, during one of a couple of slots set aside each week, raises a pen and inscribes her signature.
It has been suggested within the Assembly that the LCO on special educational needs could perhaps become law by June, a full year after it was first tabled (and that tabling followed some time after a long series of committee sessions had taken evidence on the subject, showing up en route a number glaring gaps in the law).