There can be few better examples of the inefficiency and lack of transparency inherent in the current devolution settlement than the continuing saga of the Welsh Language LCO.

The Welsh Assembly Government first announced its intention to bring forward a proposal that would confer on the Assembly some law-making powers over the language as far back as early summer 2007. Since then the date for publishing the LCO has been delayed from ‘before Easter’ to ‘before the summer’ to ‘before Christmas’ and now ‘the new year’. We assume that 2009 is the year in mind!

It would seem that the reason for the delay is that it has taken this long for the Welsh Assembly Government to agree with Whitehall officials a text which is acceptable to both sides: one which confers enough powers for Welsh Ministers to be able to carry out their policy commitments, but not so much that Whitehall loses control of this potentially controversial policy area completely. If previous LCOs are any guide, the matters over which the Assembly will be able to legislate will no doubt be clearly defined, and may well include several exceptions.

What is ironic is that throughout this drawn-out process, there has been on the statute book a definition of the Assembly’s powers in this field which reads as follows:

Welsh language
Exeption -
Use of the Welsh Language in Courts

Yes, that is how the Assembly’s law-making powers over the language are defined in Schedule 7 of the Government of Wales Act 2006: the part of the Act which set out what the Assembly’s law-making powers would be after a referendum. This definition is clear and easy to understand and gives the Assembly a broad scope for action.

Of course, if all goes according to plan then this part of the Act could be in force in as little as two years time. When that happens the Welsh Language LCO, like all other LCOs, will be obsolete, as we will have moved from the narrowly defined matters of Schedule 5 to the broad (but not full) law-making powers of Schedule 7. Whatever powers over the Welsh language that will not have been conferred on the Assembly by the LCO will be conferred upon it at that time, with the exception of the Welsh language in courts of course. A similar scenario will be replayed in all 19 other policy fields too, including the Environment, which has been the subject of another long-running dispute over an LCO.

The most extraordinary aspect of this whole Welsh Language LCO saga (and, indeed, the Environmental Protection and Waste Management LCO) is that whoever has been responsible for delaying it, for trying to get its scope narrowed or the powers within it more clearly defined, have spent a lot of time and energy, and of the Assembly’s time and energy, in doing something that could count for nothing within a very short period of time as all the powers will be transferred anyway. 

Surely, it have been better for everyone if those time and resources had beeen spend on making policies and laws which could have a lasting inpact on the lives of the people of Wales? Moving ahead to a referendum on primary law-making powers is the only way of putting and end to this waste.