Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:22 pm on 8 November 2016.
Can I thank the Member again for his thoughtful comments, because these are deep and fundamentally important issues for our constitutional settlement and for the constitutional arrangements for the UK for the future? He’s correct that I can’t give a full answer to that. There is actually a very interesting publication that came out recently, ‘Brexit and Beyond’, where I noticed this comment:
‘Brexit will have a big impact on devolution. It may lead to a recentralisation as the UK reconstitutes itself as a sovereign polity; or to further decentralisation with the devolution of EU competences. In either case, the process will be difficult and controversial.’
Of course, there are those issues, once we go down this process, which I think inevitably we will do, then these are these issues that will come about, and in my view this is exactly the whole point as to why this is a matter for Parliament in terms of the legislation, but then the scrutiny of that legislative and those constitutional processes.