We are asked to say that the UK Government hasn’t set a detailed plan. I’m not sure that is entirely fair. I felt that the Prime Minister’s speech was pretty substantive in her 12 points and what she put behind those, and we then did get a White Paper, putting some more detail around that. We are then asked to recognise the result of the referendum about the UK’s membership of the European Union. I am very happy indeed to do that.

We’re then asked to recognise the result of the referendum about the UK’s membership of the European Union. I’m very happy indeed to do that. Usually when I hear that phrase emanating from a Labour source, it is followed by the word ‘but’. In this case, instead of the word ‘but’, we have points 3 and 4: to welcome the publication of the White Paper ‘Securing Wales’ Future’ and to endorse its priorities. I’ve previously spoken about some of the discrepancies between ‘full and unfettered access’ to the single market and ‘full participation’ in the single market. I was assured by Lesley Griffiths, I think, on Thursday that those two phrases are equivalent. So, I will accept the tone of what the First Minister said, both in that White Paper and earlier. He said he wants to stay in the single market, I believe, and in the customs union. He wants to see an open labour market where anyone from the EU can still come to this country with a job offer, or indeed just to come and look for a job albeit within a period of time. He says he wants to carry on paying into the budget, and he wants a long transitional period before anything much changes.

I think Julie Morgan was perhaps rather franker about what that position implies. It implies, in her words, keeping all the key elements of the EU. Now, she may want to do that representing her Cardiff North constituents, but the First Minister is meant to represent the people of Wales, who voted by over 52 per cent to leave the European Union. I fear that he hasn’t grasped why many people voted ‘no’. I think there are many good reasons about trade—many good reasons about opening our economy and trading freely with the whole world, rather than just one declining part of it according to a single set of regulation that everyone must obey in order to trade at all. But I think the idea that simply by having some restrictions around benefits, or clamping down a bit more on the exploitation of workers, and undercutting of the minimum wage, while important, and something we would support, is not sufficient. I think, for many people, the issue is unlimited numbers of people from much lower wage economies being able to come into our country and compete away their opportunity to work for what might be a higher amount than the minimum wage. The minimum wage fast becomes a maximum wage.

And it seems he has finally decided, after a period of indecision, and some waxing and waning, to say that he wants to be in the single market even if the implication of that is we are unable to move away from free movement of labour. That is his decision. But I think it makes it very difficult for the First Minister and this Assembly, or certainly his Government, to engage constructively with the UK Government if the bottom line of the Welsh Government is, essentially, single market membership and all the factors that I have listed. That is very clearly at odds with where the UK Government is. Full and unfettered access—we could look at that, along with the free and frictionless trade; membership of EFTA as a way forward.

Perhaps he could have found common ground with other parties in this Assembly. However, he has chosen instead to try and reach a deal with Plaid Cymru, which it appears, in their amendment, they go back on. There’s some great negotiation, and, in point 6, we’re asked to note the UK Government’s intention to seek to trigger article 50. Even Jeremy Corbyn, in Westminster, is whipping his MPs to support triggering article 50. Yet the First Minister and his troops are unable to do that. Instead, they seek some sort of compromise to paper over the cracks with Plaid Cymru, and merely note it, yet then have Plaid coming and putting this amendment against the spirit of what they thought they had agreed.