You mentioned the interrelationship between the 1978 Act and what is proposed in this Bill. The cutting and pasting that you referred to is not something that we are proposing. I hope we will be able to secure a point in time for the second part of the Bill to become law that is easy to remember, so that Members and users of legislation in the future will know clearly that Assembly Acts passed after that date are subject to the new interpretation provisions, and ones passed before that date are subject to the 1978 Interpretation Act. So, it should be very clear which of the two Acts applies. I think that's important from an accessibility point of view.

She talked about the learned society's points in relation to the duty to keep Welsh law and the accessibility of it under review. There are two duties, of course, in this Bill, and the interrelationship between the two is the important thing. There's a broad duty on the Counsel General to keep Welsh law under review, and that will provide opportunities to embed that in the process of developing legislation, developing policy within the Government as legislation is being brought forward. But then the second duty, which has a much broader application, applies both to the Counsel General and to Welsh Ministers, and that's where the meat of the duty lies in bringing forward a programme in each Assembly term to take specific steps to consolidate, codify, and make law more accessible. So, I hope that the interrelationship of those two duties together will provide the meat on the bones, if I can use that term.

She spoke about legislation being more than good intentions. That's absolutely what this Bill has at its heart. She will know there is existing activity around consolidating law, which happens, if I can use the term, on a piecemeal basis, really, and the point of the duties in this Bill is to move from a piecemeal set of arrangements into one that imposes a duty that brings with it, obviously, an obligation to meet that duty and to attract resources in order to be able to make that a reality. So, the whole point of the Bill is to move beyond good intentions into something concrete and dynamic, which builds up its own momentum over successive Assemblies.

The last point she made is important as well, in relation to how the activity and the product envisaged by this Bill relates to the availability of commercial publishers' services at the moment. The truth of the matter is that the users of Welsh legislation passed in this place and statutory instruments by Welsh Ministers will be disappointed if they go online to look for a current, comprehensive, up-to-date, consolidated, bilingual version of the Acts that we pass and the statutory instruments that Ministers bring into law. The position, despite significant effort, is nowhere near where it needs to be, and I'm in discussions with the National Archives about how that can be improved and what we can do as a Government to deploy, in particular, Welsh language resource to move that forward, and we will, I think, be taking on more responsibility for some of the publication of the product of this institution. The other proposal that is under way at the moment—and I mentioned this when I launched the consultation, as you may recall—is inspired by the DefraLex plans in the UK Government, which are being rolled out in Northern Ireland as well, which is to co-locate statutes and law and SIs when they're published, rather than to publish them by date, which is in some ways a very unhelpful way to publish legislation. To do it in subject headings I think is much more intuitive and I hope to have something to say about that at some future point.