Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I’m grateful as well that I’m following my colleague, John Griffiths, who has covered in detail the policy context that his committee has considered. The Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee has a much more narrow remit in looking at this Bill and I’m going to speak to that particular remit. Can I, in so doing, thank, as always, my fellow committee members for their very robust and diligent scrutiny of this small Bill, as it went forward, but very important Bill in the matters that we considered, and also thank the Cabinet Secretary for making himself available for quite robust questioning and also for his robust and considered answers?

We reported on this Bill on 7 April, and the report is available both in hard copy and online. I recommend it not only to Assembly Member colleagues but also to members of the public who are interested and other interested observers to the progress of this particular Bill.

When we reported on the Bill on 7 April, we made three recommendations to the Cabinet Secretary. I’ll go to those in detail but, before doing so, if I could quickly make some general remarks, which are important on the clarity of our consideration of this particular Bill. As with our scrutiny of all Bills, we consider matters relating to the competence of the National Assembly. However, in doing so, and as we state in our report, it is not our role to express a view on whether a Bill is within or outside the legislative competence of the National Assembly. Rather, it is to highlight any issues that Assembly Members may wish to take into account in deciding whether to agree to the general principles of the Bill or to table or support amendments during the later stages of scrutiny.

So, on this Bill, we explored the Llywydd’s statement on competence, which she is obliged to provide, with the Cabinet Secretary. As part of her statement, the Llywydd indicated that while the Bill was, in her opinion, within the Assembly’s competence, she noted that the issues were not straightforward and that her consideration was, in her words, a finely balanced one.

Now, our report highlights the evidence we took from the Cabinet Secretary and the questioning and the evidence we heard, and I hope that that will be helpful to Assembly Members in making their decisions on this Bill. But ultimately, any question about whether a Bill such as this falls within the legislative competence of this National Assembly could indeed ultimately be a matter for the Supreme Court to decide if the competence is duly challenged.

So, I turn now to our three recommendations. Our first recommendation relates to the Cabinet Secretary’s decision to table an amendment to the Bill at Stage 2 to prohibit the use of agency workers during strike action on Welsh public authorities. Now, our preference as a committee, as we state in the report, is that a provision of such policy significance should ideally have been included within the Bill on its introduction. Including the provision on its introduction would have allowed the Cabinet Secretary to take account of a committee report that explores and considers the views of stakeholders on the use of agency workers during strike action. Whilst we do acknowledge that the Welsh Government undertook its own consultation on this specific proposal, as the Cabinet Secretary has outlined today, such a consultation is a different process from a committee of the National Assembly engaging with the principles and the actual wording of a Bill as part 1 of the Stage 1 legislative scrutiny process.

So, our first recommendation sought an explanation from the Cabinet Secretary about why the Bill did not include a provision on its introduction about the use of agency workers during strike action, and, in a similar vein, we asked why the Bill could not have been the subject, perhaps, of a short delay to accommodate such a position. But I am very grateful today for the Cabinet Secretary’s detailed response and further explanation and justification. I note that, as we’ve just heard, the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee—whether through serendipity or, otherwise, perfect planning, I don’t know—was able, indeed, to take evidence on this issue during its own Stage 1 scrutiny and incorporate it within that, including wide stakeholder engagement, and that is reassuring in terms of our first recommendation.

And the second and third recommendations we made relate to the single power contained in section 2 of the Bill to make subordinate legislation. And, as we've heard from the remarks of the Cabinet Secretary this afternoon, great reassurance on that, and I welcome the proposed changes to the Bill that the Cabinet Secretary has outlined this afternoon when he was on his feet. Our analysis of this Bill is very technical and very precise and narrow in its remit, but I do recommend to Assembly Members the report if it will help them in their consideration.