Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:05 pm on 5 March 2019.
Thank you, Llywydd, and I do move the amendment in the name of my fellow Member Rhun ap Iorwerth. We, of course, are co-submitters of the motion tabled by the Government, and we welcome the opportunity to work with our Celtic cousins in Scotland. It is an innovative approach that we should also, perhaps, adopt in future in other contexts. We, of course, agree entirely with what the motion has to say about the deal that the UK Government has brought forward and the damage that that would do in terms of Wales's position, but more than that, the calamity that would emerge from a 'no deal' Brexit in just a few days' time.
But, of course, the reason why we’ve tabled the amendment is that we would have wanted to see the motion going further. One of the lessons that I would suggest to Government is that we should have been included in the negotiations that clearly took place in drawing up this motion. I assume that those negotiations happened in Scotland—or that’s my interpretation of the situation—but they hadn’t happened here. So, it’s difficult for us to participate in the process in that sense and create the kind of unity that the Government wishes to see, unless we are included in those negotiations.