Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:09 pm on 25 April 2018.
Can I thank Jane Hutt, Llywydd, for what she has said? She asks about the process of inter-governmental agreement. It was a point that Simon Thomas raised and I failed to address it in my answer to him. It's there in paragraph 7a of the memorandum of understanding, and that is one of the very late additions to this agreement, secured in the very final run of discussions between the Scottish Government, ourselves and the UK Government, because it commits us all to a process that lies behind the bringing forward of regulations. It guarantees that there will be discussion between the Governments on the basis that we have been conducting discussions to reach this agreement, to agree the scope and the content of the regulations. As I said earlier, it will not be a matter of the UK Government alone coming forward with proposals for us to accept or reject. We will have been there at the table on the basis of equality, and that's why this does represent a way forward. Of course, it doesn't achieve everything that we want to achieve in the way that Simon Thomas set out, but you have to find a way into these discussions. You have to find a step forward that allows some things to change for the better, and then to use that as a platform for achieving more. That clause in that part of the agreement will allow us to do just that.
Jane Hutt is absolutely right to say that there's a simple message at the heart of all of this. When we started on this process, we had a clause 11 that said, 'Nothing comes to the National Assembly, everything stays at Westminster, any decisions on what happens after that will be for UK Ministers alone to decide and we can't tell you how long it's all going to take'. Now, we have exactly the opposite of that: everything comes to the National Assembly unless we agree that it should be retained at Westminster, while it is at Westminster, the only use that can be made of these powers is use that we agree, and we have a final backstop beyond which no powers can be held away from us, and everything will return here. That's why this agreement is such a difference, and that's why people in Wales do indeed deserve to know all about it.