3. What progress has been made to establish a proper mechanism for resolving disputes between the governments of the UK? OAQ53385

Can I thank the Member for the question, and say how much I look forward to answering what must be his first question to a First Minister since the very first year of devolution? And the answer to his question is that, at best, modest progress was reported on this matter at the last Joint Ministerial Committee plenary in December. The inter-governmental relations review commissioned in March 2018, when the Member represented Wales at the JMC, is yet to produce a report. 

I thank the First Minister for his answer. Does the First Minister share my concern that the current arrangements for dispute resolution are inadequate, because we know that the UK Government is the arbiter of disputes, despite frequently being a party to those disputes? And if he agrees with me on that, what kind of system would he like to see in its place?  

Diolch, Llywydd. I entirely agree with Carwyn Jones that current arrangements for dispute resolution are inadequate, like so much of the inter-governmental machinery in the United Kingdom. It will come under greater pressure in the future as a result of Brexit, and as report after report of select committees at the House of Commons and the House of Lords and committees here have reported, the current machinery simply cannot bear the weight of the issues that Brexit is producing for the United Kingdom. What we need, then, is a set of arrangements that are based on principles, parity of esteem, parity of participation, the principle that disputes are always best avoided where they can be. Those principles should lead to a set of rules, and those rules should have within them an element of independent expertise and arbitration.

Llywydd, Members will be, I think, glad to know that in the work that is being carried out under the JMC plenary, and that the former First Minister helped to get started, Wales is taking the lead in drawing up the principles for future inter-governmental relations. And as we saw in the inter-governmental agreement, if you get those principles right, then the practicalities of a dispute resolution system are always likely to be more robustly put in place.

Disputes, generally, centre on money and power. First Minister, you're generally thought to have had a fairly successful record at negotiating the fiscal framework with the UK Government to resolve the funding coming to Wales. Your predecessor, I would say, did a good job negotiating with the UK Government about the powers of this Assembly and the devolution settlement in the Brexit context. Doesn't that show that the essential mechanism for resolving disputes will generally be that of negotiation?

Well, I thank the Member for what he said and I don't disagree with him that negotiation is always going to be the main way in which disputes are resolved. What we are talking about in this question, in the way that the former First Minister put it, is what happens when negotiation runs out of road. And you do have to have a set of arrangements in place in order to deal with the point at which attempts to resolve disputes—by avoiding them, by resolving them, by negotiating them—don't get you to the end point. And as Carwyn Jones said, we cannot have is a system in which the body that is responsible for resolving the dispute is a party to that dispute. That's what happens at the moment. It's not acceptable now, it's certainly not acceptable in the long run. When negotiation runs out, then you have to have a mechanism that is genuinely independent and commands the confidence of all the players involved in it.  

In your view, First Minister, is time pressure and the pressures of work in dealing with the additional legislation emerging from Brexit—is that all a sufficient excuse to take powers away from our Senedd here in Wales and take them back to Westminster?

Well, Llywydd, just to restate: as I've said many times, there is no single power that has been taken from this Assembly to Westminster. Everything that comes to Wales after Brexit is going to come here, and it's only with the agreement of this place that powers will be able to move anywhere else. We haven't agreed to anything moving, and nothing has moved.

And in the report that was published only last week, Llywydd, into the matter that was a subject of controversy on the floor of this Assembly, the UK Government, in its second three-monthly report, confirmed what I've just said, that not a single power has left this Assembly. Not a single use has been made of the mechanism that is in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 to deal with powers returning and there is no intention on the part of the UK Government to use that mechanism, because we are able—we have demonstrated an ability to resolve matters that lie between the component parts of the United Kingdom on the basis of agreement, as the Welsh Government said we would be able to from the very beginning.