6. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance: The European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:41 pm on 25 April 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 4:41, 25 April 2018

Well, Llywydd, I feel sure that when the Member has an opportunity to study what has been agreed, that some of the anxiety he has expressed this afternoon will be assuaged. He is a reasonable individual, I know, and I genuinely believe that when he comes to look at the detail, some of the points that he has made he will feel can be regarded differently.

He said that inversion of clause 11 was not enough, and of course he's right, and of course we agreed with that. And then he asked what had happened yesterday to reach such a rapid agreement. Yesterday was a very rapid day of to-ing and fro-ing between all three participants in the Joint Ministerial Committee. It was a judgment: it was a judgment that this Government made, that if we had not indicated yesterday that we were prepared to bring a legislative consent motion before this National Assembly, that everything that we had achieved during these negotiations, everything that I've set out this afternoon that is different and an advance for devolution on the original clause 11, that without an agreement with ourselves and without an agreement with the Scottish Government, the UK Government would simply revert to the original amendment that it had put down in the House of Lords. Everything that we had achieved, everything that the Scottish First Minister refers to as 'substantial advances': none of that would have been secured. And that's what changed yesterday: the statement from the Scottish Minister; further negotiations and discussions between ourselves and the UK Government; and the securing by this Government of everything that jointly we had secured over weeks and months of painful and detailed negotiation. I think that that is why I think of this as a major achievement.

Dr Lloyd asked a very important question about who decides on the frameworks that will emerge as powers are handed back to the devolved administrations. Well, decision making will happen in two different ways. First of all, we have secured a parity set of arrangements in which all three—and if we have a devolved administration in Northern Ireland, all four—Governments will jointly work to secure those frameworks. It will not be a matter, as it far too often has been in the past, of the UK Government working on these things alone and producing a piece of paper at the eleventh hour and saying to us, 'There it is, you can have it if you want it.' No. This is completely different. We all work together on the frameworks, and that's how they are agreed.

And then, who decides? The National Assembly for Wales decides. Because where these frameworks require a legislative underpinning, whether that is through primary or secondary legislation, the Sewel convention will apply. And that, as well, is a major step forward in this agreement. For the first time, Sewel is guaranteed in regulations. It's always applied to primary legislation, and it will if frameworks need primary legislation. Now, it will apply to frameworks that require regulation making as well, and that will come here, to the floor of this National Assembly to decide. That's why, in the end, if you are negotiating in good faith with other governments, trust has to be allowed to operate.

It's not a trust, of course it's not a trust in the policy programme of a Government with which we have so many profound disagreements, but it is a trust-based arrangement between Governments when those arrangements are set out in legislation, when they are accompanied by an inter-governmental agreement, and to which all parties that are prepared and able to do so have formally and publicly signed up.