Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I begin by congratulating Steffan Lewis on a most lucid speech? I think anyone that quotes Robert Peel is going to find some support from these benches. Perhaps there are Tory sympathies that lurk deep, deep within your political soul. I just offer that, by the way; I hope it doesn’t reduce the authority with which I’ve no doubt you will now speak in your group. It was an excellent contribution.

I will return to the point of policing and the administration of justice at the end, but, if I can focus on the content of the Conservative amendment, I think the first place to start is that we do need to work towards a fuller constitutional settlement, and the best way is to take the current Bill as introduced and improve it. It’s already a great advance on the draft Bill, but it will be the fourth piece of constitutional law making that we’ve had in Wales within 18 or 19 years, so it needs to be as complete a settlement as we can find a reasonable consensus for at the moment. I am encouraged that the Welsh Government and the UK Government are working together and seem to share this very noble ambition.

Now, it is true there are still some substantial areas of difference. The First Minister has indeed written to the Secretary of State to outline some of the issues that he still thinks need to be addressed, and he’s referred to the issue of a single jurisdiction. The Bill does suggest a way of moving forward a bit in this area, recognising a body of Welsh law. I think we can argue about the philosophical differences here, but I think it is acknowledging that a body of Welsh law and a legislature is at some point going to be recognised in terms of the legal vocabulary as something approaching a single jurisdiction.

The number of reservations is, in Welsh Government’s view, still too large and I suspect that, as we scrutinise the Bill, that may be the view more generally in this Assembly. There’s been partial progress on UK ministerial consents. Again, anything we can do to have a more complete and logical dividing line in areas like this I think would help the clarity of the constitutional settlement. And, in the First Minister’s view, taxation powers need to be linked to fair funding. I’m not myself convinced that it needs to be automatically linked, but it clearly does inform the debate and, whatever taxation powers come to us, the issue of a fair formula—a needs-based formula, basically—for the distribution of centrally-gathered moneys within the UK state is clearly very, very important. All strong fiscal unions have this; it is an essential part of an effective form of fiscal devolution.

So, I think we do need to work together to improve the Bill as it now proceeds through its parliamentary stages, and of course we will have an opportunity here in the Assembly to do some of that work as well and to send our conclusions up to Westminster. And I think, in being effective in this area, we will bring greater balance to the British constitution and so strengthen the union. Now, I realise this is not a direct benefit as far as Plaid Cymru are concerned, but insofar as we remain in a union I’m sure you’ll want to see the constitutional arrangements as robust as possible.

Plaid’s motion focuses principally on policing and the administration of justice. What I would say here is that this is a debate that needs to be had, but it needs to be had, I think, separately to the current debate on the Bill, because there are major issues to discuss. It is something we need to be aware of is a part of the devolution settlement in Scotland, and it’s now increasingly part of the devolution settlement in Northern Ireland. So, I myself think it should be discussed, and there was indeed a Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee report on this under my chairmanship in the fourth Assembly. But it is a big political question. Community policing in most federal states is devolved; I mean, that has to be recognised. But, as our report concluded, if you’re looking at these areas then it really does make sense to address them completely and devolve criminal justice and sentencing policy. And I’m not sure that the Welsh electorate are ready to make that decision. We certainly need to have a full debate about it. It’s one where I have views that may not always be in total accord with some of my colleagues at the moment, but you will understand that, as the official spokesman on the constitution for my group, I cannot go into greater detail on those matters now.