Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:36 pm on 27 February 2018.
Llywydd, overriding Sewel would be a major constitutional issue. I don't like using the word 'crisis', because it's bandied about too often here, but the UK Government has never been in a position where it agrees that the consent of this National Assembly is needed to a piece of legislation, and then if it didn't secure that consent, to go ahead anyway. And if it were to find itself in that position, it has found itself in some of the most difficult constitutional depths.
I agree entirely about the need for JMC reform—it was the last point I was making to Steffan Lewis. It is difficult to engage UK Ministers in the need for that. Their reflex action, whenever anything is said about the need for reform and governance arrangements, is to say, 'Oh, you're looking for a federal United Kingdom'. They've been reading Mr Melding's thoughts on this matter too assiduously, it seems to me. But it's not a real engagement with the issue; it's just a reflex way of trying to sort of brush past the points that are being made, and in the end that will not do. The United Kingdom, the other side of Brexit, will need a more powerful set of institutional arrangements through which it can continue to operate successfully, and the JMC does not provide the blueprint for that in the longer term.
Of course Mick Antoniw is right about financial autonomy. Those discussions do not form part of our discussions on the withdrawal Bill, and they haven't featured heavily so far in the JMC. I give him an assurance, however, that I certainly have raised them with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, as has the Scottish finance Minister, and we continue to pursue the points that he made there. Those who voted in Wales to leave the European Union did so on a promise that, at the very least, Wales will be not a penny worse off than we have been as a result of our membership of the European Union, and that promise has to be delivered.
Finally, Mick Antoniw was absolutely right to point to the interlinked nature of the trade Bill and other pieces of legislation we expect at the UK level with the EU withdrawal Bill. It's part of the reason why I think we've put such effort, and indeed such patience from time to time, in trying to get that Bill right. Because if we can get those things put right in the withdrawal Bill, then I think the solution that we craft there will cascade into the trade Bill, the trade Bill will be amended in the same way, and we will have solved the problem not just for the withdrawal Bill, but for legislation that will follow, and that's why we think it's worth putting in the effort we have to get that right.