Last week, leader of the house, I asked you whether we'd be likely to discuss a legislative consent motion arising from the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill and you assured us that was highly unlikely. Since then, however, the Lords have voted in favour of requiring the Secretary of State to pass primary legislation within a period of six months following Royal Assent of the Bill—that's the EU withdrawal Bill—to place on public authorities a duty to apply EU environmental principles after Brexit and setting up an independent body with a purpose of ensuring compliance. 

Now, those requirements and duties are precisely what was suggested in our amendments to our still extant continuity Act—long title available. You told us at the time not to press, though we did press, the amendments, but they were rejected by the Government on the basis that you'd take the first legislative opportunity to do that yourself. But here we have the Lords—. Because public authorities are not defined as England only. This is the problem, it just says 'public authorities', so it could easily be seen, in the context of an EU withdrawal Bill that is England and Wales in terms of legislative application, as applying here in Wales. So, we have the Lords suggesting that this should happen, we have the promise from Welsh Government of doing another thing, and it strikes me that this is, in fact, something that this place should assent to, except, of course, we can't, because it's all bound up in agreements. If things are ping-ponged and then the Lords and the Government agree, it doesn't get back to the House of Commons, doesn't get debated again, and, in effect, having been assented to in the Lords, this is now part of the Bill, and us passing an LCM is symbolic—or not passing it, as the case may be, is symbolic. But I would nevertheless be interested to know whether the Government intends, in the interest of procedure but also of visible transparency, to present an LCM to the Assembly so that we can have our say on this debate.

Plaid Cymru is particularly interested because we tried to make the amendments, but I think other Members here are also interested in some aspects of this. It just draws to attention this crazy way of trying to legislate for devolved Governments and devolved Parliaments when you're actually caught up with the most archaic way possible that Westminster performs its legislative duties in ping-ponging back and fore without the ability for anyone, really, to have a proper say in things that really impinge on our powers. So, I would appreciate a statement on that now. 

And, if I can turn to one other matter that's happened this week, which I think is of great relevance to the Assembly, the Assembly itself voted on a backbench debate, I think it was, to support the legalisation of medical cannabis and the availability of that. We were ahead of the debate in doing that, and recent events, of course, and a very particular family—but other epileptic children, I know, are affected by this, and there's been some very limited prescribing of medical cannabis. The curious thing is that the UK leads the world in the production, development and exporting of medicinal cannabis, and we can't legislate to have it available for patients ourselves. Cannabis can be a dangerous drug, and this is a separate argument to whether we should decriminalise cannabis or not for the purposes of drug control, but a powerful drug—all powerful drugs—have medicinal effects, and if we can allow opiates to be used on a prescription and led by a GP, then why on earth can't we allow cannabis or cannabinoids to be used in a similar way?

Now, the UK Government has said that it will set up an expert commission to do this, but this is an area that is devolved in terms of prescription policy and in terms of payment. So, can we have a statement from the health Cabinet Secretary in particular saying how Wales now can be part of this debate? It's one thing to have an expert panel in London—we want to be part of that, we want to know how it applies in our communities, and, since we have voted as an Assembly, I assumed there would be a lot of support for that to happen.