Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:15 pm on 18 September 2018.
He makes a very important point on the Irish border. The Prime Minister herself said that it would be unthinkable for any Prime Minister to agree to a hard border in the Irish sea, and that is one of the things that she now has to deliver in finding a solution to the Irish border question. And from a Welsh perspective, while we say every time—and I'll say it again this afternoon—that nothing that we will say or do will ever be done in the knowledge that we are creating any difficulties for the very important ground that has been gained in Ireland in recent years, from a Welsh perspective, we are, nevertheless, entitled to point to the additional difficulties that we would face were the border to be down the Irish sea, because of the ports of Holyhead, Fishguard and Pembroke Dock and so on, and we make that point to the UK Government whenever we have a chance to do so.
The Member mentioned the Brexit portal and it was, indeed, part of the two-year budget agreement between the Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru. It has been taken forward by a sub-group of the council for economic development because we were very keen that the portal would provide for businesses the things that businesses themselves tell us that they are most in need of when it comes to information and advice. And the portal will indeed provide the most up-to-date information that we can and provide advice on a range of relevant business topics. It has been difficult to settle on the content of the portal because of the significant uncertainty about the final form of Brexit and the implications that that has for Wales, but we're imminently hoping to be able to publish it. I'll think about what the Member said about us putting it in the library—the supplementary advice that we have provided over and above the technical notices when there are Welsh specific issues at stake.
Of course, he made a series of very important points about what a 'no deal' would mean, not just in some theoretical sense, but in the absolute day-in-day-out services that people in Wales rely upon. I can assure him that my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for health is discussing these matters very, very regularly with the advisers that he has in the pharmaceutical field, with the local health boards that provide services on the ground and with the NHS Confederation in Wales in relation to staffing matters, and we take a very close, direct and detailed interest in the way that Brexit could impact on the Welsh NHS.
Briefly, in relation to constitutional matters, what we have to do, Llywydd, is we have to move on from a grace-and-favour approach to devolution, which too often characterises the attitude of Ministers in the UK Government, where they appear to regard devolution as something that they have been good enough to give to people in Wales and in Scotland, and that they could take away again at any point when they appear not to like what we do with the responsibilities that we have. We have to have, the other side of Brexit, a far more formal, a far more reliable and a far more impartial form of interaction between the constituent parts of the United Kingdom. Of course, I don't follow the Member down his path of the break-up of the United Kingdom—we think that a successful future for Wales is best secured through a successful future for the United Kingdom. But we will not have that successful future unless, the other side of Brexit, we are able to conduct business between the constituent parts of the United Kingdom in a way that is based on parity of participation and parity of esteem.