First of all, we’ve tabled all the amendments with the objective of having them all accepted. We believe that they deal with the issues that affect devolution particularly and they would remove the obstacles with regard to devolution that the Bill currently represents.

He asked the question: is support for the LCM dependent on a mechanism? At this moment in time, I would say ‘no’. I think the acceptance of the amendments might represent sufficient progress, but there’s no doubt that the adoption of a mechanism is now imminent. It’s needed. If the principle is accepted that it is a matter for the Governments to agree a common way forward, then it also must be the case that it’s accepted that a mechanism must be created in order for that to happen, and that means creating a UK council of Ministers.

The difficulty, I believe, is that there are many in Government at present in London who take the view that that would put the UK Government on a level of parity that they don’t want to see. They do not see themselves as being on a par with the devolved Governments, even in devolved areas, and find that difficult to accept. But, we live in times where we need new solutions and new approaches.

The reality is, when it comes to devolved areas, we are equal governments in reality. We would never accept the scenario where the UK Government, even though legally they can do it, would have some kind of right to interfere or change Welsh law and Welsh policy. That’s not the job of the UK Government in devolved areas and the Welsh people have decided on two occasions that that’s not their role either.

But I think the establishment of a mechanism is a natural corollary of an acceptance of the amendments. And this can be done quickly. The structure is there already. It wouldn’t take long to change the JMC into a proper council of Ministers. All of this could be done pretty easily before the UK finally leaves the EU, whatever date that might be.

The first job of the council of Ministers would be to agree what to freeze, jointly; there’s sense in that if you look at farming and fisheries. The second job would be to look at how to develop a system of state aid rules within the UK that affect the UK and an independent adjudicator to police those rules. That, I’d argue, is pretty easy: you say it’s the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court acts as the adjudicator of the single market, as the ECJ does in the European single market, as the US Supreme Court does with inter-state commerce in the US. That’s not difficult to do.

The question of state aid rules is more difficult. There are different views on whether there should be any at all among some of the administrations—or one of the previous administrations, anyway—within the UK. But that’s the forum where these things should be decided. I accept the amendments, but to my mind it leads on naturally to a much better way of working together to develop common frameworks within the UK and to produce that certainty that we accept that businesses want.