I now call on the party leaders to question the First Minister, and, first of all, the leader of the opposition, Leanne Wood.

Diolch, Lywydd. First Minister, last week the Scottish Government’s Brexit Minister met with the UK Cabinet Secretary for leaving the EU in order to discuss what role the Edinburgh administration could play in the UK’s negotiating stance. Two weeks ago in Chicago you said that Wales cannot afford to be—and these are your words—

‘passive observers in this most momentous of decisions’.

Will you therefore now reconsider your decision not to appoint a dedicated Brexit Minister, or are you prepared to consign Wales to irrelevance?

It is the responsibility of the First Minister to take forward the issue of Brexit, not to offload it to another Minister. I will not be doing that; it’s my responsibility.

Well, I think it’s a shame, First Minister, that, unlike Scotland, Wales will not have a Minister dedicated solely to looking at Brexit and nothing else. First Minister, I understand that you established an expert advisory group on Brexit back in August in order to secure the best possible outcome for Wales from the Brexit negotiations. Can you tell us: has that group met yet? My understanding is that that group hasn’t yet met, and so please explain why not. Then we have the Brexit liaison committee—and I’m the Plaid Cymru representative on that committee—and I’m wondering why no meeting of that committee has yet been held. I’ve yet even to receive an invitation to attend such a meeting. So, First Minister, isn’t the real reason that you’ve not appointed a Brexit Minister and that you’ve not yet held these meetings the fact that you’ve got no plan, you’ve got no vision, and no clue as to what Wales should look like outside the European Union?

Well, she sent me a letter last week and I’ve seen the reply to that letter—I don’t know why she hasn’t received it—because, in that letter, it suggested a date when we should meet to discuss these issues. It may be that she’s not received it yet, but it’s certainly something that I’ve given my permission to be sent to her. I do not believe that a First Minister should abdicate responsibility. ‘For Wales, see Scotland’ is not the way forward as far is Wales is concerned. It is for the First Minister to take responsibility in terms of the way forward as far as the EU is concerned. The advisory group will meet at the end of this month. The sub-committee of the Cabinet has already met. The day after the referendum we outlined our six priorities. I called the British-Irish Council to Cardiff, together with leaders from around the UK, the Crown dependencies and, indeed, the Republic of Ireland, to start to fashion a response, and there’s been constant contact on a ministerial level. I’ve spoken to the Brexit Minister, but we’re a long way from agreeing on anything because his view is that tariffs don’t matter. Those contacts have been kept up throughout the summer. I’ve also discussed the issue with the Prime Minister personally.

First Minister, you say, ‘For Wales, see Scotland’, but it looks more like you saying, ‘For Wales, see England’. Everything that they do, you are happy to go along with, and your position on Brexit is full of contradictions. Let’s have a look at what you’ve said, for example, about a Welsh veto. During your recent visit to the United States, you stated,

‘Whatever deal is finally negotiated, its acceptance should be subject to the support of the four parliaments that now legislate for the UK.’

Yet, by Sunday, you’d abandoned that view. Now you don’t believe that there should be a veto from this Assembly if the Brexit deal is not a good one for Wales. Will you today justify your decision to submit to Theresa May and her Tory Government by giving them the final say as to how Brexit will impact on this nation?

She’s got the issue confused. What was suggested was that I wanted the Welsh Government to have a veto. No—I’ve said that all four Parliaments in the UK should be able to ratify any deal. I stand by that. I was the first to say it.

So the Assembly should have a veto.

Of course the Assembly should have an opportunity to ratify any deal that’s on the table, and rightly so, because it wouldn’t be right for the UK Government to agree issues such as farming and fisheries policy without input from the devolved Parliaments, because they have no role in farming and fisheries as far as Wales and Scotland are concerned. I think there’s practical sense in doing that, because if you want to get the widest possible buy-in for any post-Brexit deal, it makes perfect sense, if you’re the UK Government, I would argue, for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to give express ratification to any deal. If a deal goes ahead without the support of this Assembly or Scotland or Northern Ireland, that deal will inevitably be weakened and will not stand the test of time.

The leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. First Minister, in recent press reports, and namely this morning, you talk about your new position on the free movement of people, should there be an agreement with the European Union to maintain access to the single market. You seem to be referring to some sort of period where no movement should be allowed over a given period, such as when the new eastern European countries came in, in 2004. In June of this year, you were very clear that goods, services and people were interlinked and could not be divorced. Is it the position of the Welsh Government now that the free movement of people is not a red line for the Welsh Government, and merely goods and services are the points that you are promoting?

Well that’s exactly, of course, what many in the UK Government believe. For me, access to the single market in terms of goods and services is a red line. That’s something that cannot be negotiated away. I have made the suggestion of a seven-year moratorium; I think that offers a possibility as far as the UK is concerned—I’m trying to be helpful as far as the UK Government is concerned here—in order to maintain access to the single market. But, no, for me, it’s access for goods and services that is the red line.

So, for you—and I’m questioning you as First Minister—you are saying that is the position of the Welsh Government, which, obviously, within that Government, has a Liberal Democrat Member, and collective responsibility. So, therefore, all Members around the Cabinet table agree that the position of the Welsh Government does not now relate to the free movement of people, which, as I understood it, was a red line for you back in June. Is that the case?

No. Access to the single market for goods and services is the red line; the issue of free movement of people is something that will need to be examined and discussed as part of the negotiations.

The position has completely changed, First Minister, and you’ve signed your Government up to dropping the prerequisite that the free movement of people is a requisite that you wanted back in your declaration in June. You also have the agreement of Plaid Cymru supporting you in your endeavours, and so I’m assuming that these discussions have been undertaken with Plaid Cymru and you are not making these decisions solo. What is concerning here, as the answers are slowly coming out from you, is that, very often, you are appearing on camera and making up policy on the hoof. How are you arriving at the collective responsibility of the Welsh Government so that your position as the lead on the Welsh Government can be taken seriously when you are discussing these matters in Westminster? You have moved on a fundamental principle here, which you said was a red line for you in June. That has now been discarded in September, and one of your Members in the Cabinet has signed up to that who is a Lib Dem—and Plaid Cymru, by supporting your Government.

Does anyone here know what Conservative policy is, either in the UK or Wales, in terms of Brexit? Do you know what they say about Brexit? ‘Brexit means Brexit.’ Brilliant. Brilliant. What a fantastic leap of logic. I have no idea what his position is on Europe—absolutely no idea whatsoever. What I can say to him is that all of us on this side of the Chamber know full well that access to the single market for goods and services is vital for Welsh industry. Will he support that? Will he support that? Will he support the proposition that we need to be able to sell in one of the biggest markets in the world—bigger than America and Russia concerned—without any trade barriers? That is the question that was being asked of me by US investors when I was in the US. If he had been there, he wouldn’t even have given them an answer.

The leader of the UKIP group, Neil Hamilton.

Diolch yn fawr, Lywydd. Well, I’m delighted to welcome the First Minister to signing up to UKIP policy on immigration. We’re making progress. But I’m sure the First Minister is looking forward with as much relish as I am to the result of the Labour Party leadership election being announced on Saturday. Does he agree with me that the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party would be very good for Wales, because, in the memorable words of Lord Kinnock, it’s very doubtful we’ll see another Labour Government again in his lifetime?

Well, two things I have to say to the leader of UKIP: firstly, it seems that his party’s policy is to treat people who are refugees from war as economic migrants. We’ve heard that from a Member of his own back benches. Secondly, I can guarantee him—[Interruption.] I can guarantee him that the party he was once a member of in the 1980s is the party that is most disliked by the electorate in Wales. They remember what he did, and his party, after that 1981 budget that he was so proud of. They remember what he did, supporting the miner’s strike against our own people—shut down our mining industry, shut down our steel industry. If that’s UKIP policy, by all means go out and sell it to the people of Wales.

Can I bring the First Minister back to today, rather than 30 years ago, which is rather more relevant? By the way, Gareth Bennett did not take the view that people coming from Syria are all economic migrants, but the whole point about the law on refugees is that you’re entitled to refugee status in the first country to which you go for protection from the country from which you’re coming, and that, in most cases, is Turkey. Once they get to Turkey, from there on, they are economic migrants. Would the First Minister first agree with me that that is the law?

No, I don’t agree with that at all. People will look to go to the first place they can get to as a place of safety. From my perspective, it’s important—. He is the descendant of an immigrant. All his Members are descendants of immigrants. It’s all a question of when their families came to this island. Every single one of us in this room is the descendant of an immigrant. It all depends on when our families actually came here and, from my perspective, it’s absolutely right that where people are fleeing war and oppression they get the opportunity in a civilised country—in a civilised country—to be able to live their lives in peace, and that is something I’ll never compromise on.

Everybody agrees with that general principle and it has nothing whatever to do with the EU because we’re signed up to international conventions under the UN and the Geneva convention. Of course it’s right that refugees should be given asylum and protection from the countries where they can’t live in safety. But economic migration is a fact of life in Europe. Millions of people are queuing up on the borders of the European Union, which are porous, and there has to be a European solution to this. It can’t just be left to chance where millions of people manage to get through the system, end up at Calais, and are queuing up to come across the channel. There has to be a managed process, but there has to be a limitation because, if immigration is uncontrolled into this country, all kinds of social complications are created and the people who lose out most of all are those at the bottom of the income scale, the most disadvantaged, the most under privileged in society, whom the Labour Party, I thought, was actually brought into being to protect.

Well, I’m not going to take lectures from somebody who was a Thatcherite trumpet blower back in the 1980s. But I’ll agree with him on one point: there should be a European solution. But the problem is we are now not going to be part of the European solution because we won’t be in Europe. That’s the issue. We won’t have a voice in it. But he’s right: it’s hugely important this is treated as a European challenge and that all European countries rise to that challenge. Let’s not forget that it’s within living memory that millions of people were actually refugees within Europe and were moving from one country to another in massive population exchanges at the end of the war and, indeed, in Yugoslavia in the 1990s. So, sometimes we forget our own history when we talk about refugees. I welcome what he said about the need to make sure that people who are genuine refugees are given help and asylum. I understand the point he makes about uncontrolled immigration. I don’t argue for uncontrolled immigration; of course there have to be limits on what any country can accept. We must be hugely careful not to suggest that those people who are fleeing war and are desperate and have seen people drown in the Aegean sea in the eastern Mediterranean somehow are simply looking for a better paid job. I just don’t buy that, I’m sorry.