Let’s be clear about one thing, that there is little to celebrate—nothing to celebrate in fact—about the actions of the UK Government in the last couple of weeks. The only virtue of serving the article 50 notice is that it puts to bed the question of whether or not we are embarking on a process of leaving the European Union. What we now have an opportunity to do is to fight for the kind of Brexit that we want in Wales’s interests, and, unlike Mark Isherwood’s somewhat partial recollection of the paper between Welsh Labour and Plaid Cymru, I think that sets out a very clear direction of travel for the kind of Brexit that we want for Wales.

But we also need, in tandem with that, to be addressing the kind of Wales that we want to be after Brexit. For those who campaigned to leave, leaving the European Union was the first step, not the last word. And they have a very different vision of Wales and of the UK than most of us in this Chamber. We’ve heard Philip Hammond talking about a new economic order, and Theresa May arguing for fundamental change as a result of the decision. The majority in this Chamber do not want to see that, and vast though the task is of handling Brexit, we all need to engage in that bigger battle against those values as well as that version of Brexit and argue for the kind of Wales that we want to be beyond that.

Turning to the issue of the Plaid Cymru amendment on the continuation Bill, this comes down to a question of powers and a question of funding. In a sense, the proposal for a continuation Bill is an alternative to putting our faith in the UK Government to protect our interests in the European repeal Bill. It would have the effect of putting into Welsh law the body of EU law in relation to devolved areas, giving Welsh Ministers the right to amend that in technical terms and asserting the right of this Chamber as a body of accountability and also asserting its legislative competence. In a sense, it would be a made-in-Wales version of the repeal Bill, designed to protect the Welsh devolution settlement. It seems to me, for reasons that other speakers have already given, that that settlement is very likely to need protecting.

Both the original White Paper and the paper we saw last week describe powers coming to Wales ‘where that is appropriate’. What neither of those two documents say is that powers will come to Wales in accordance with the current devolution settlement. Now, you might argue that a continuity or continuation Bill in relation to the devolved areas might be seen as a first step rather than as a safety net, and I suppose that is the case in some ways, unless you reflect on the fact that, in this Chamber, it’s not just about the powers that we have, but the funding that we have, and that, actually, is a much bigger question.

We focus on receiving our powers from statute and that’s right, but we still receive our funding, basically, on the basis of a handshake. We know that Barnett is broken; we’ve known that for a long time, and though the fiscal framework takes forward issues around reflecting need and independence of adjudication, that is not enough. Surely, what Brexit has done is throw into stark relief that now is the time to put our funding on a statutory basis, both in terms of the baseline funding—what we get through Barnett—but also on a fair deal for European funding, for the lost European funding.

I think we need a funding statute—a kind of small constitution, if you like—that sets out the obligation to fund, the principles on which we will be funded, which would be redistribution and reflecting need, and the judicial mechanism for resolving disputes between different parts of the UK. Most modern states find that pretty natural. The UK Government finds it something that they have to struggle with, but I think, coming out of Brexit, the one thing that people do understand is the importance of funding for the future of Wales, and I think—