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Legal Information and Aspects of Devolution
BACKGROUND
The Government of Wales Act 1998 (GOWA) established the National Assembly for Wales but it was generally seen as having limited legislative powers in that its competence was restricted to the power to make subordinate legislation in certain areas under the Transfer of Functions Order. However Marie Navarro presents research which "shows that having been given subordinate legislative powers the Assembly exercised them in a way which was quite different to that of the Welsh Office prior to devolution and to that made in England post-devolution."2Osian Rees states "When one considers the fact that, as has been emphasized, the law-making powers of the Assembly were limited under the 1998 Act, some of the developments that came about between 1999 and 2006 were quite remarkable."3From the very start it seems the National Assembly grasped the nettle and used the powers devolved to it.
GOWA 1998 was followed by GOWA 2006 and under Part III of the Act, the National Assembly was able to make primary legislation for Wales, known as Measures, in certain designated areas. This was extended following the 2011 referendum which brought Part IV of GOWA 2006 into force, thereby allowing the National Assembly to pass primary legislation, known as Acts, in 20 designated areas as detailed in Schedule 7 of the Act, as qualified by the exceptions and restrictions in that Schedule and in s. 108.
To quote Sir David Lloyd Jones again, "The recent implementation of Part 4, Government of Wales Act 2006 means that, for the first time in over 450 years, it is meaningful to speak of Welsh law as a living system of law. The law of Wales is now made in Brussels, Westminster and in Cardiff Bay - but the fact that a democratically elected National Assembly now possesses direct legislative powers in certain specified subjects means that Wales has some laws which are peculiarly its own, as Professor Thomas Glyn Watkin puts it. Welsh law in this sense extends to England and Wales - it is part of the law of England and Wales - but it applies only in relation to Wales ..... inevitably, in the years to come...