Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:37 pm on 2 May 2018.
Diolch yn fawr iawn. I'll begin on that point: we have come a long way. It's an argument that Mick Antoniw also made, and certainly when it comes to clause 11, we certainly started off in a very dodgy station on this particular journey, and there's no doubt that as the journey moved on, we moved to a better place. But I cannot feel any other way than to see that the Government has decided to get off this train just as it's parked at the top a cliff. And I would rather be continuing now to see how much further we could be going on this journey. And it may well be that the clock is—[Interruption.] It may well be that the clock is against us, but we do see, whatever your thoughts are on what's happening in Scotland, that there is a relevance, and that the finance Minister for Wales has sat alongside Scottish Ministers as part of these negotiations, and they, with the support of Labour, of course, in Scotland, have decided to continue to fight. I would rather we were continuing to try to make a stand to protect Wales's interests, because you're right; we don't agree that we have got the best deal possible for Wales.
What happened to make the Labour finance Minister change his mind so fundamentally last week? I'm still not sure, because we know that that change of mind happened in a very short period of time. What we do know, though, is that the climb-down, as we see it, will have long-term implications for devolution and for Wales. Government was defiant to the last minute: 'Would you accept the sunset clause?', 'No, it's a matter of principle, give us real assurances that only when consent is given here in Wales can UK Ministers make regulations in areas devolved to Wales.' What we have now though, bizarrely, is an agreement that UK Ministers can legislate in devolved areas once a consent decision has been made, because a consent decision could include a rejection of consent. And that is something that our lawyers again confirmed to us this afternoon. It may be a point on which we disagree, but that is our analysis of what that means.
Picking up on what David Rees said—that we somehow are continuing project fear that was related to European referendum in the eyes of some, or the Scottish referendum—we're not objecting to UK frameworks here. We're not objecting to UK frameworks and the need to work pan-UK on a number of issues. We simply believe that those frameworks should be the result of working consensually and collaboratively across these islands, and we think that what we have in this agreement—that the other parties in the Assembly are about to sign up to—is a threat to devolution.
I'll very quickly pay tribute, if I can, to Steffan Lewis for giving us the seeds of the continuity Bill that today, I think, should be forming the basis of a continued stand to protect Welsh interests. It's thanks to that that the negotiations were able to go on as long as they did. Devolution is still young. Neither processes nor events can happen overnight. I know, as many of us here know, that devolution still has its enemies. We here have all been trusted to nurture Welsh democracy and not to bow to pressure or underhand UK Government tactics to give it away. You may have a limitless trust in the UK Government, but we here feel that Wales deserves a more cautious approach on that front, and so did you on the Labour benches until very, very recently. But also, we think we need a bolder approach in terms of protecting Wales's interest. So, let's stand up and be counted and support our motion today.