Measure of the National Assembly for Wales

A Measure of the National Assembly for Wales (informally, an Assembly Measure) is primary legislation in Wales that is a category lower than an Act of Parliament. In the case of Contemporary Welsh Law, the difference with Acts is that the competence to pass Measures is subject to 'LCOs' or Legislative Competence Order, which transfers powers to the Assembly by amending Schedule 5 of the Government of Wales Act 2006.

It was a lower form of primary legislation as it did not contain a large bulk of powers compared to the power to make acts. In Wales each Assembly Measure had to be accompanied with a Matter which was transferred using the Legislative Competence Order (LCO) system. Each Assembly Measure, like an Act of Parliament, would had to have made provision for a matter within the remit of the legislative competency of the Assembly.

Following a referendum held in 2011, the assembly gained powers to make primary legislation known as Acts of the Assembly. These powers came into force after the 2011 assembly elections and the assembly is no longer able to pass Measures. Existing measures will remain valid unless repealed by the assembly in the future.

Like Acts, Assembly Measures face the same style of scrutiny. There were around four stages where the proposed legislation was scrutinised. The first stage is the agreement of the principles of the Assembly Measure, which means the first approval of the legislation for it to be scrutinised, then it will have to be scrutinized at committee level, where a committee of Assembly Members can debate and add more to the Measure which is then accompanied with debates in 'plenary', which would be required to approve the amendments.

Once everything above has been completed, the Assembly can then start the final scrutinising before the Assembly Measure gets passed and becomes law. Of course, like in other legisative systems, some laws will fail, or might end up withdrawn.

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