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

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:34 pm on 25 April 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 4:34, 25 April 2018

Llywydd, can I thank the Member for what he has said and for the very careful attention that he has paid to all of this and for the opportunity along the way to discuss developments with him, as I have with other parties here? He is absolutely right to say that this agreement delivers a strengthened role for the Welsh Government and for the National Assembly for Wales across a whole swathe of very important responsibilities.

The UK Government have said today that everything that we have agreed will be made available to the Scottish Government, and I believe that the Scottish Government has also indicated that, despite the fact that they wish that this agreement could go further and we continue to work with them on that, they too will operate fully within the frameworks that our agreement has laid down, and that means not simply that our powers have been strengthened, but that devolution across the whole of the United Kingdom will be in a different place than it would have been had we not been able to reach the agreements that we have. And the equal treatment principle that we have secured, in which English Ministers will be in exactly the same position as Welsh Ministers and Scottish Ministers is, indeed, a fundamentally important new piece of ground that we have gained, and I think it will put a new impetus into the whole of this agreement to get the processes that it sets out done, completed, and powers entirely returned to the institution in pretty short order.