Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 1:42 pm on 6 June 2018.
Again, you gloss over certain terminology: 'access to the European single market'. Again, this is not about splitting hairs. The House of Commons next week will have an opportunity, as you know, to defeat the UK Government on a number of amendments that could protect the interests of the Welsh economy. One of those will be on a Lords amendment to keep the UK in the single market through European Economic Area membership. Now, if Labour MPs, along with Plaid MPs who will, supported the amendment, a Government defeat would be likely, forcing the Government in effect to deliver what could be seen as a soft Brexit, more helpful to the Welsh economy. Jeremy Corbyn, though, has ordered his MPs to abstain on the vote, opting instead for his own equally unfeasible, I think, idea of asking the EU to let the UK have its cake and eat it—the kind of fantasy politics that I don't think we can gamble the Welsh economy on. Now, on what will be one of the most defining votes for a generation in the interest of Welsh jobs, wages and industry, what advice will you give your Labour colleagues at Westminster to persuade them to back EEA membership and to dissuade them from going down in history as the enablers of a hard Tory Brexit?