But meeting the goal of becoming a Parliament of course requires more than simply a focus on name and numbers, as we all know. We should have the confidence, as well, to test the parliamentary procedures and ways of working against the best equivalent examples anywhere in the world. And it's incumbent on us, as well as tackling the high-profile reforms, to look at the machinery that underpins scrutiny, challenge, legislating and executive action, which the committee referred to in their report, as we become a new Parliament. If we grasp those challenges, it will put us in a strong position to contribute as equals to building on the relations between Parliaments and Assemblies across the UK, and we support the committee's imaginative recommendation for a Speakers' conference to focus on that particular issue.

However, I want to focus on the relationships between Governments. Everyone agrees inter-governmental relations are important, but all too often that's looked at in the context of problem solving, or managing disagreement, or issues that need to be resolved. That's an essential part of the picture, but it's not all of it. Good inter-governmental relations should also be about more than managing our differences; they should be about identifying and addressing the policy challenges that we share across the four administrations of the UK. No-one has a monopoly on good ideas or good policy development, and no-one has all the answers. So, inter-governmental relations also need to be about sharing best practice and working together where it makes sense to do that, and that can only benefit the people that we serve.

Devolution itself, of course, has contributed significantly to policy innovation across the UK, and that hasn't been about taking on powers in an abstract, in a vacuum. It's about using those powers, yes, from a position of principle, but also a position of pragmatism, so that the powers we have are deployed in a practical way to improve the lives of people in Wales. And it's the same consideration with this, with the constitutional architecture, if you like, how Governments relate to one another. This is not an exercise in constitutional lawyering, but in developing a way of working and a basis of principle that supports the Assembly and Government in using the powers that we have in a way that we feel best suits Wales. That was implicit in the comments that Mick Antoniw made.

So, turning specifically to the committee's recommendations, we entirely agree that the JMC plenary needs to start fulfilling the functions of the annual heads of Government summit that it was, in fact, initially conceived to be. We also agree that we need to add new committees to the existing JMC format. We called for exactly that in our recent trade policy paper a few weeks ago. And we agree that the memorandum of understanding needs a fundamental overhaul. It has not been updated since 2013, and a great deal has happened, as we know, since then. It simply does not address the new circumstances of Brexit. We'll be pressing for agreement on commissioning an overhaul of that at the next JMC plenary. Jane Hutt, in her comments, referred to the significant shortcomings in the current arrangements, so we need to tackle those.

So, we agree that improvements can be made in the short term; however, it's clear that, in the longer term, the existing JMC structures will not be able to bear the weight that Brexit will place upon them. So, we welcome the committee's call for a UK council of Ministers, which echoes the proposals we set out in 'Brexit and Devolution' for a council of Ministers, as David Melding referred to in his contribution, which would be able to make binding decisions with an independent secretariat and an independent adjudication mechanism for disputes that can't be resolved by any other means.

The constitution of the UK after Brexit can't just stumble on in the way it's doing at the moment—imbalanced, ad hoc and informal. So, we have also said that we should look at how we could place inter-governmental relations on a statutory footing. The committee's report notes and endorses, of course, the recommendation made by a number of parliamentary committees for such a statutory footing, and we think further work would be needed to work through the implications of that, but we fundamentally agree with the committee's recommendation.

Finally, in respect of recommendation 8, I can confirm that the Welsh Government is happy to discuss with the committee the content of an agreement on inter-governmental relations. In doing that, we'll want to consider carefully the agreement between the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government to which the committee refers in the report.

I want to conclude by recognising that both our proposals in 'Brexit and Devolution', and those of the committee in this excellent report, are challenging and perhaps a little frightening for the UK Government, but we are in uncharted territory now. The constitutional catalyst, which Brexit represents, has created a new dynamic that is going to further change the way in which Britain is governed. The constitutional history of these islands has generally been piecemeal, rather than part of a coherent vision, and the romantic interpretation of that is that it has stood us in good stead. I'm not at all sure that that is the case.

The UK Government needs to recognise it can't keep trying to muddle through. It needs to commit to a root-and-branch review that will put our system of inter-government relations, and the UK constitution itself, on a firm footing for the future. The Welsh Government is ready to be a partner in that process of change, and the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee's report adds to the chorus of calls for such a review. I hope the UK Government will soon begin to listen and embark upon a journey of reform that will enhance the constitutional resilience not just of Wales, but of all parts of the United Kingdom.