Diolch, Llywydd. I'm delighted to speak today in favour of the National Assembly for Wales giving our legislative consent to the European Union withdrawal Bill. This is, of course, the UK Government's legislative mechanism for leaving the EU with maximum certainty, continuity and control, and I'm delighted to support it.

Back at the first First Minister's questions after the summer, I was rather critical of the First Minister for the degree to which he had, I think, been palling up to the SNP Scottish Government over the summer. I questioned why he was working hand in glove with a Government that wanted to break up the United Kingdom and with a Government that was impeding our exit from the European Union. And he responded by saying that he was only doing so to the extent that we had a common interest in protecting the devolution settlement. Now, I was surprised by that, not least because the First Minister and Welsh Government had spent considerable time working with Plaid Cymru to come to a joint paper on what the objectives should be for the future migration or the future trade arrangements of the United Kingdom. I feared that the First Minister and the Welsh Government, potentially working with Plaid Cymru, would use this process of legislative consent to this Bill as a way to seek to impede the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. It has not done so. The First Minister has been as good as his word. The Welsh Government has succeeded far more than I would have expected in improving this Bill to protect the legitimate interests of our devolved settlement. And I think they deserve respect and congratulations for doing that.

Of course, some people have a different objective—one of staying in the European Union, even though the majority of people in Wales voted to leave, or the intention of being independent from the United Kingdom, even though only a tiny minority of people in Wales support that. And, of course, they will, therefore, oppose this, just as Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP will oppose it, because almost nothing would've settled what they were requesting, because their objective isn't to make this withdrawal from the European Union work while protecting the devolved settlement; it is to impede Brexit and to break up the United Kingdom. And of course—