8. Debate: The Law Derived from the European Union (Wales) Act 2018 (Repeal) Regulations 2018

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:10 pm on 20 November 2018.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 6:10, 20 November 2018

No, let me explain because I really think I need to be clear what the position is. We are today still members of the European Union, so we couldn't legislate tomorrow because we are part of a common European rulebook. Your party, as I myself would want to say, believes that we will be better off remaining in the European Union. If those powers were to be frozen, and they haven't been in that area or any one of the 26, all that freezing would do would be to guarantee that the current rulebook would continue. That's what freezing means. It means the current arrangements—the arrangements we all support as part of our membership of the European Union—would go on being in place until something else was agreed to be put in its place. And nothing else could be put in its place unless it was agreed and agreed by this National Assembly. That's why the anxieties that Dai repeated this afternoon about powers being gone from the National Assembly simply don't measure up to the facts of the matter. Nothing has gone. All those powers are here. They remain here as they always have, exercised as they are now and have been since the start of the Assembly through the common European rulebook. [Interruption.]