I’m pleased to contribute to this debate as a member of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee, and may I congratulate the Chair for an excellent summary of the situation, because this agreement is crucially important? This is an agreement between ourselves as the legislature and our Government here to ensure that we know what’s happening so that we can promote the scrutiny process.

With the background of Brexit, especially, as we’ve already heard—because what led to the development of this report was the ongoing Brexit process—there’s a natural tension. We have discussed it on many occasions—this tension between the possibility of losing powers from here to Westminster, but there’s also another tension, as Suzy Davies mentioned, of powers being subsumed from the legislature to the Government here. So, there is a risk in two ways of losing powers from the legislature to our own Government and to another Government at the other end of the M4.

So, that’s why this agreement is so crucially important, because we have seen powers lost. I’m not going to rehearse issues around the Wales Act 2017, but, of course, at the committee every Monday, as Suzy’s mentioned, we see a whole host of primary and secondary legislation coming before us because of Brexit.

Of course, there are time constraints and huge workload pressures on officials in this place, and, to be fair, in Westminster, to get everything in place in good time. But, of course, we also see that there is the potential at least, as Suzy has said, that we may lose powers. We have had a discussion this week on the use of the word ‘national’ in relation to the UK rather than Wales. I thought we’d been through all of that. In terms of legislation, we’re back to being considered a region. Well, that’s not what our national anthem says. We say, ‘Gwlad. Gwlad.', not ‘Region. Region’. Those things are important. People say that they’re only words, but every lawyer will tell you that it’s the words that count at the end of the day.

Of course, when Westminster does legislate on our behalf—we are always grateful to them for legislating on our behalf, particularly in areas that are already devolved to us and have been for over 20 years—we would also like to see that legislation being made bilingually, because we have an official language here called the Welsh language. There are a few examples that we’ve noted in the committee over the past few weeks where we see monolingually English legislation that will be implemented here in Wales.

People say, ‘Well, it’s about time constraints—you don’t need to go after the detail, Dai, stop making trouble’, and so on and so forth. But, that’s how inconsistencies happen. Of course, in using this excuse, 'Because it’s easier, of course, with all of the staff and energy in Westminster, for them to do everything on our behalf now, even in those areas that are already devolved to us'—. Well, there's a risk to that because we should be legislating in devolved areas for ourselves. There should be a Wales agriculture Bill, not relying on the UK Agriculture Bill. There should be a Wales fisheries Bill, not a UK Fisheries Bill.

We saw an LCM yesterday on animal welfare that we discussed just yesterday. Now, it would've been easy for us to make that legislation here in Wales because it was only two clauses. But we had no opportunity to scrutinise it in this place until it was a fait accompli, to use another language still. We have the capacity here, and there should be a requirement that we develop our own legislation in this place as we have those powers now, and we shouldn't use the fact that we are leaving the European Union and everything has to be done in a hurry, there's never enough time, and Westminster does everything on our behalf. But there are things that can be lost in that scenario.

We saw with the LCM on international healthcare arrangements that there's a very real possibility there, since Westminster changed its mind, that they're going to expand their powers in health in an area that has been devolved to this place for 20 years. That's not right. What was required was a simple transfer of functions. Westminster tried to add to their own powers until we in this place noticed that. So, we have to be vigilant, and this protocol is crucial in that regard. Thank you.