Well, of course, Mr Hamilton is right: we have profound disagreements between the position taken on the whole business of Europe and leaving the European Union, between the position taken by the Welsh Government and the position that his party—as he himself has regularly outlined it here on the floor of the Assembly. But, in the ecumenical spirit of his contribution this afternoon, let me make two or three points: first of all, I think it is a sobering conclusion that has to be drawn that the UK Government has struggled so much to carry out negotiations with its very closest neighbours here inside the United Kingdom at the point when it's about to embark on trying to conclude the most complex negotiations with 27 other European states. Successive UK Ministers tell us just how easy this is going to be, just what a breeze it's going to be, to get all the agreements that they say are necessary as we leave the European Union, yet they have failed to be able to come to an agreement on a matter where—and I definitely do agree with what Neil Hamilton said here—a dispute was unnecessary from the very beginning. The very first time David Davis, as the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, said at a JMC that there was to be an EU withdrawal Bill, I said, on behalf of the Welsh Government, that we agreed that it was important that that Bill was brought forward and we wanted that Bill to be a success, because the Bill is about an orderly transfer of law that we have relied upon as a result of our membership of the European Union into the law that we will need the other side of Brexit. And picking a quarrel with a group of people who were on your side in that endeavour has been mystifying to me when the UK Government has its hands full—so very full you might say overfull—with trying to navigate and negotiate all the other complexities of leaving the European Union. I think that in many ways that does explain the dilatory nature of their response. It's a Government overwhelmed by the task that it faces and it struggles to find the time and the energy and the effort that is needed to pursue matters, which, when they're not pursued, become really difficult problems that could have been resolved far more easily.

I said here in the Chamber in the last week or two, Llywydd, that, at last week's meeting, David Lidington was to be the fifth chair of the JMC on European negotiations, in a body that has been going for less than 18 months. That just tells you something about how difficult it is to create a momentum in that forum, because the key individuals have been changing so rapidly. And that's why we didn't have a paper tabled that would've allowed for a proper discussion at a point in the process where that would've allowed that to happen. That's a step backwards from where we were in the autumn, where the JMC was conducted on a more orderly basis, where we had agendas, where we had papers, where we had minutes, where we had a room that we could be sure that we would meet in that didn't change as we were in the train between Cardiff and London. Last week's meeting—constructive as it was—represented a step backwards from the stability that we'd seen in the autumn. Nevertheless, we press ahead in the way that I've described. Our job is always to try and be as constructive as we can to find ways of coming to an agreement, of bridging positions that are not in the interests of either the United Kingdom or of Wales, and the Welsh Government's part in all of this is always to try to look for ways in which difficult situations—even ones that need never have happened—can in the end be successfully resolved.