Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:52 pm on 8 May 2018.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 1:52, 8 May 2018

The way she presents—. This has been the case since 1999; it's not new. The reality is that it's always been the case, both in Scotland and in Wales, that the UK Parliament—the expression is 'would not normally legislate' in devolved areas, but it's always been able to do it because of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. The agreement's not going to change that. Now, in the future, I agree that there needs to be a debate about whether parliamentary sovereignty is appropriate—and I've said it before—publicly, for the future. I think we do need to move to a constitutional settlement that recognises that there are different centres of democratic legitimacy within the UK itself. But, as far as the current devolution settlement is concerned, we now have a situation where, in effect, there will be a very high political cost for any UK Government to pay if it wished just to ram through whatever it wanted to. Can I say as well, if it was the case that the UK Government wanted to ignore completely the Assembly or Scottish Parliament, it would've done so already? It hasn't done so—not for me to defend it, and I don't do it often—but, in reality, the UK Government has come to an agreement where they have conceded, I recognise, a great deal of ground. And we are in a position where—whilst we would have preferred to get rid of clause 11 completely, we are in a position where safeguards, sufficient safeguards, have been put into clause 11. A level playing field has been created in terms of the making of legislation that we were nowhere close to a year ago. I certainly pay tribute to my colleague, Mark Drakeford, for the work that he did on a week-to-week basis in coming to the agreement that we did.