Could I just begin by welcoming the, I believe, genuinely constructive way in which the First Minister has laid out the amendments he’s put forward, and the way in which he’s willing to work with the UK Government not to thwart the voice that was clear within the referendum, nor to thwart the EU withdrawal Bill, but to make it fit legally and constitutionally as well?

The First Minister may be aware that yesterday a large group of cross-party Assembly Members constituting our two committees—the committee of David Rees, the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee, and my Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee—sat for many hours with over 60 eminent authorities, both from a UK perspective and a Welsh perspective, looking at the legal and constitutional issues. It will probably come as no surprise to find that the shape of the amendments put forward by the First Minister reflect and respond to many of the concerns that were picked up by those people, and these included people from the Hansard Society and the Institute for Government in Westminster as well as Welsh authorities. There was no voice of dissent that there are genuine threats. To respond to Neil’s point, they recognise that this is indeed a mountain, not a molehill. It’s not technical issues that we are dancing over, but fundamental constitutional issues that should concern—and I think do concern, with some thought—all of us here within the Assembly.

So, the question I’d like to ask the First Minister in the amendments that he has put forward—. By the way, before I ask that question, it was interesting to note that, at one point, with no dissent, it was put forward by one participant yesterday that there would have been a different way to do this Bill, which would have been to actually shape it in a way recognising that there was no legal impediment to a very different EU withdrawal Bill—one that gave to Wales fully and clearly that which, on withdrawal from the EU, lies within our existing competence. It was seen that there was no legal impediment to doing a very different Bill. But let’s put that to one side. What it’d like to ask the First Minister is: does he feel, having said already that he cannot recommend an affirmative response to an LCM on the Bill as it currently is—does he regard it as essential that all of the amendments that he has put forward must be accepted, or brought forward in some shape by the Government, satisfactorily, all of them, in order to make, in the First Minister’s opinion, this EU withdrawal Bill fit for purpose? Secondly, does he also think that those additional mechanisms, both to resolve disputes in future and to seek agreement in future, are also essential as part of saying yes to this EU withdrawal Bill.