Taking that next step forward: the 2007–2011 Welsh Assembly, the Legislative Competence Order (LCO) process and the path to the 2011 devolution referendum

In introducing the Government of Wales Act 2006, the then Secretary of State for Wales Peter Hain expressed optimism that the legislation, the product of an intensely negotiated internal compromise within the Labour Party, would ‘settle for a generation – if not more – the whole constitutional obsession we have in Wales about the powers and the status of the Assembly’. Central to this legislation was the half-way house arrangement for the Assembly to secure law-making powers, where it would bid on a case-by-case basis for legislative competence from Westminster. This arrangement, known as the Legislative Competence Order (LCO) process, would last for just four years, before Welsh politicians triggered a referendum to jump to full law-making powers. However, the path to a referendum began as early as the coalition negotiations in the aftermath of the 2007 National Assembly for Wales elections, with overlapping sets of coalition negotiations resulting in every major party in the Assembly being committed, in principle, to a referendum. As this article demonstrates, while these discussions meant that a referendum was firmly on the political agenda, the experience of the LCO process would deepen and strengthen the case, and active political support, for a referendum to be held and for a Yes vote to be secured.