When I think of this idea of parliamentary sovereignty trumping everything, when I look at my political history from 1979 on—from the miners' strike, from the erosion of workers' rights and trade union rights to the poll tax, to austerity as a result of the crash—I don't see parliamentary sovereignty protecting the people of Wales. I see it as an entrenched narrative to justify inequality and privilege, and I see that it needs to be challenged time and time again until we get a better narrative of where power comes from amongst our people and how it's held by Parliament in trust for our people and then utilised. I think the disruptive forces unleashed by the referendum on Brexit are ones that will change politics, and it's actually not Plaid Cymru that's talking about the break-up of the UK as a result of this—it's the Cabinet Secretary himself, last night, who said he was convinced that there was a real threat. In his speech last night—a real threat to the future of the UK, which was why he made this agreement. And I'm going to argue over the next couple of minutes that he's made the agreement too early and he's sold out too short. I hope to do that by recognising the fault line that's between us, but by challenging this Government on what they said they would achieve, and what they've actually brought to us today and asked us to vote for.

I fundamentally believe that I trust the people of Wales to exercise all these powers that were exercised at the EU level responsibly and in solidarity with other nations in these islands. I thought the Welsh Government also took that view, because we were told at the outset that they wanted to negotiate from the point of view of equality and parity between the nations here, that they wanted to negotiate from the point of view of having a constitutional approach to how these things get sorted out—the council of Ministers was suggested—that they wanted to negotiate from the point of view that there would be a legal framework, including a disputes mechanism, for working out how this would be resolved, and they wanted to negotiate from the point of view that they could always be reviewed from the point of view of equal partners coming together.

So, I invite you to look at the inter-governmental agreement and ask yourself: are those features there? They are not. There is a political agreement and a sense of trust that has grown up between the Welsh Government and the current UK Government, but that sense of trust, we are told, to take on trust ourselves, but then to extend it not only for this Assembly, but for the forthcoming Assembly, and also to take into account goodness knows how many changes in Parliament and Government that might happen in Westminster as well—I'm not prepared to take that risk. I'm not prepared to take that risk for Plaid Cymru, and nor, I think, should we as Assembly Members take that risk. It's clearly set out in the report of the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee. Yes, as David Rees said, as the Chair, that committee set out principles that went further than the Welsh Government's position, but so it should, because that committee should protect the Assembly, not the Welsh Government—the Assembly. And those principles—six principles: two of which have not been met at all; two of which, you could argue, if you want to take a very generous view of the Welsh Government's position, have been met in part; and two, the report says, have substantial progress. But I don't think that's sufficient to have trust in this process.

The Welsh Government itself said that it wanted, in order to take this forward, a proper council of Ministers, and proper approach post Brexit to the fundamental relationships between the nations of this United Kingdom currently put. We don't have that in this inter-governmental agreement, and a reliance on temporary party agreements, which is what an inter-governmental agreement is, is not constitutional, it's not legislative and it's not a strong enough legal ground for us to give our consent to this legislative consent motion.

Now, this debate has revealed some of the weaknesses in the individual aspects of the agreement: whether the consent decision is consent or not—we've looked at that; the 40-day period; the fact that the Welsh Government itself said, 'No sunset clause, thank you very much', and has now agreed to a sunset clause; the fallacy that England is treated the same as Wales. It is not. It may be novel to have England included in an inter-governmental agreement like this, but it's not treated the same—Wales and Scotland are constitutionally frozen. England has voluntarily put itself in the deep-freeze. Well, let's see how long Michael Gove decides to stay in the deep-freeze when it comes to changing environmental policies. There's a fallacy here that this is new constitutional ground being made. But it's not—it's just an inter-governmental agreement. That's a political agreement, not a constitutional agreement. And the Gina Miller case itself does demonstrate that, ultimately, this can be challenged.

My final point, if I may—the final point I would make to the Welsh Government—is that you threw away your strongest weapon. What was your strongest weapon in challenging what was happening in Westminster and clause 11 as it was? Your strongest weapon was time. The Westminster Government is up against it. They can't negotiate their way out of a paper bag at the moment, they've got two sub-committees of Cabinet just to see what their customs union options are. You had time on your side to grind this out through the Supreme Court, to grind this out until the Westminster Government gave you a better deal. Time is a wonderful wearer away of entrenched positions in politics. You sold out too short and you sold out too soon.