Local Government (Wales) Measure 2009 (Consequential Modifications) Order 2010

I rise not to debate the content of the order but because, like the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Conwy, I am rather intrigued by the procedures and processes by which this order has arrived here. Am I right in believing that my noble friend told us that a legislative competence order for local government allowed the Welsh Assembly Government to create the Local Government (Wales) Measure 2009? Will he tell us when and how? I presume that, during the passage of that measure, someone discovered that the original order did not allow the provisions in this order to be put into the measure. I think my noble friend said that this was outside the original legislative competence order. We are being asked to repair an omission that occurred when the original LCO was brought forward to cover the situation. I find that interesting and intriguing. Although the 2006 Act clearly anticipated that possibility, and the order is being proposed under that Act, would it not have been possible, and perhaps more consistent with the whole process, for a new LCO to have been brought forward empowering the Assembly to amend its legislation in the proper manner and therefore adopt what is included in this order? Am I right in believing that that option was available to the Assembly Government? It would have been more consistent with the way in which the original competence was achieved. One consequence of this process is that the order has not been scrutinised by the Welsh Affairs Select Committee. As we will see when we come to the next order, the role of that Select Committee, and indeed of the Assembly committee, has been very important. Legislative competence orders have been drafted, and in many cases redrafted, as a result of very good scrutiny by both the Welsh Affairs Select Committee and the committee in the Assembly, and, as I know from having recently been a member of the Constitution Committee, by this House’s Constitution Committee. There have been a number of examples where, as a result of our scrutiny, changes and amendments have been made, and in the next order we will be looking at where that clearly happened. However, as I understand it, this order has not been the subject of any form of scrutiny by the Select Committee. I went to find out what it had said about the order because I have very much admired the work that it has done on legislative competence orders. I was informed that it had not done anything because this is a parliamentary statutory instrument and therefore does not fall within the committee’s scrutiny remit in the context of LCOs. If, in order to achieve the purpose of this order, the Assembly Government had come forward with an LCO to acquire such a power, they could have proceeded by amending their own measure in that way. I hope that I have not got hold of the wrong end of the stick.