Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:00 pm on 21 March 2017.
I was disappointed that the First Minister’s response to the developments last week was what sounded like calls for an internal constitutional convention for the Labour Party. But in moving forward, we know that the Welsh Government-Plaid Cymru White Paper on Europe has been rejected out of hand by the UK Government. We know that the UK Government has broken its promise to have a UK-wide approach to EU negotiations before triggering article 50. This doesn’t bode well for the much-awaited repeal Bill and related legislation, but there is a clause in the Welsh Government-Plaid Cymru White Paper—I suppose we could call it article 132—that the First Minister could trigger, which would mean bringing to this Assembly a continuity Bill now, in anticipation of the repeal Bill, to defend the current Welsh constitution from a power grab from Westminster.