4. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance: Update on European Transition

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:53 pm on 17 July 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 3:53, 17 July 2018

First of all, could I apologise to any Members who had a late sighting of the statement that I've made this afternoon? As Members will be aware, this is a very rapidly moving scenario, and the statement has been under active development right through the morning and into the early part of the afternoon.

Let me say that I entirely reject what the Member has said. We have been focused not on the fact of Brexit—that was settled in a referendum—but on the form of Brexit. In that, there are very many different ways in which the UK might leave the European Union, some of which will mitigate the harm that will be caused, some of which will exaggerate the harm that will be caused, and we have been relentlessly focused on trying to persuade the UK Government to adopt an approach that would minimise the harm that would be created to the Welsh economy and to the future the people in Wales can look forward to.

Trying to do that, we were prepared to offer a modest welcome to some parts of the Chequers White Paper. Unfortunately, our ability to do that has unravelled as the Prime Minister's ability to make that White Paper stick inside her own party has unravelled even faster. So we face a position today in which we saw the genuine absurdity of a UK Minister having to resign in order to support the position that his own Prime Minister had been in only half an hour earlier. That just tells you something about the complete chaos that reigns at the other end of the M4 and I didn't envy the Member's task in getting up to try to defend the position of the UK Government, because he couldn't be confident that by the time he sat down, the position he stood up to defend would still be the one that the UK Government was supporting.

In relation to his specific questions then, we will continue to engage wherever we have the opportunity, no matter how unsatisfactory the forum, no matter how unsatisfactory the nature of the engagement. There will be a meeting here in Cardiff on 1 August where UK Ministers will attend, where Ministers from Scotland will attend, where my colleague Rebecca Evans and I will both represent the Welsh Government, and we will, once again, take the opportunity to try to impress on the UK Government that their mandate as they approach the European Union should be one that puts the jobs and the livelihoods of people in the United Kingdom first.

I've listened again to Mark Isherwood offer us this nostalgic view of the world in which we can turn our backs on our European neighbours—the people we have worked with for 40 years—because there is a Commonwealth out there that remembers how things were in the good old days and are just waiting to recreate the past in the conditions of the future. It has no possible chance of being delivered in practice and as a prospectus for a modern Wales, trying to make its way in contemporary circumstances, it's an entirely false prospectus. Where there are opportunities, as I say, and where the Secretary of State for International Trade looks to work closely with the devolved administrations, then, of course, we will always be there to make sure that Welsh interests and Welsh priorities are known to the UK Government.