Today, as has already been set out, the Plaid Cymru group will vote against this legislative consent motion for the reasons clearly set out by Leanne Wood, and reasons that I recollect Dafydd Elis-Thomas setting out in a Plaid Cymru group meeting as well. I will be voting with my group, as I respect that decision and the process and the discussion by which we have arrived at that decision. However, there is a strong Plaid Cymru and nationalist case for voting for this LCM, and I wish to set that out, if only for political students of the future.

The first thing to say is that this Wales Bill is already a relic of the past. As a lasting settlement, it is as redundant as the Christmas tree I took to the recycling last week. It’s a bright and shiny Westminster bauble, tempting, flimsy, but ultimately empty. The Bill really suffers from a disease that I think we should now call ‘Westminsterism’, because it’s a condition that affects all the unionist parties and isn’t just confined to the Conservatives alone. Welsh Labour are sadly not yet cured of this condition, as we’ve heard of the amendments in their own party policy that they refused in Westminster, though it is encouraging to see a number well on the way to recovery in the present Welsh Labour group in this Assembly. But for too long, Westminster has assumed that sovereignty in that institution, and not with the people. So, rather than a lasting settlement, both Westminster and Whitehall have scrimped and paired the reserved-powers model, granting us only the minimal possible settlement at all times in order to enact and ensure ongoing Westminster superiority. Powers have come in, powers have gone out, they shook it all about and a game of constitutional hokey cokey has been played with the future of Wales.

But in the same year as taking this rather gothic approach to our future, Westminster itself unleashed of its own volition the dark forces that will ultimately destroy the unitary British state. The genie is out of the bottle, and no impotent talk today of national values, British values, coming together will save the current United Kingdom.

Much talk has been made of this being the last opportunity to secure further devolution for at least a decade. That may be true, but it’s not the same as saying that Westminster will be unchanged for a decade. Hard Brexit, which is what we are likely to get, will lead to the dissolution of the British state. Scotland will seek independence, the island of Ireland will come together, and we in Wales will be faced with a stark choice: become the appendix of a withered English political entity or seek our own independent path. So, in many ways, and in the long run, this Bill is irrelevant. The last gasp of Westminster pretending it decides the future of the nation of Wales and not the people of Wales deciding our future.

I think, however, there can be given three reasons for moving ahead with the Bill in order to give us powers to guide us in the next five to 10 turbulent years. Firstly, the Bill will help prevent further land grab by Westminster, by ensuring Sewel in statute, and by ensuring that the reserved-powers model gives us some defence against further land grabs—though the Bill itself is a land grab—after the Brexit vote. Secondly, in devolving to the Assembly the power to decide future arrangements, the Bill allows us to deepen and strengthen our democracy. This is our opportunity to extend the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds, to introduce the single transferable vote to local and then national elections in Wales, and to attain the recognition of the Assembly as Wales’s sovereign Parliament. And finally, by facilitating fiscal devolution and some control of our natural resources, the Bill will make any Welsh Government more responsive and accountable to the people of Wales.

Without the tax powers that this Bill permits, we will not mature as a democracy, and we will not prepare ourselves fully for the challenges of leaving the European Union. While Welsh Government remain in an infantile relationship with Westminster, that so-called mother of parliaments, not yet weaned off Whitehall, blaming their failures on insufficient funding, passing the political buck at every opportunity, we will never be prepared and ready enough to take responsibility for our own futures. So, as this Bill today looks like becoming an Act, we should use the limited powers that it gives us in these three areas to prepare the way for the real constitutional future of our nation, towards a time when we once more will share responsibility and joint endeavour with our European partners, but this time as an independent state.