The question for me is: how does this Assembly influence how our two Governments work together to ensure that the integrity of the devolved settlement is protected? And while I wasn't a member of this committee when the work was being done on this particular agreement, the work that I've done on the committee since then has coloured how I want to put my presentation to you together, so I hope you will bear with me in my slightly tortuous route to my conclusion.

It's an Act of the UK state that enables the retention of EU law within our state borders, and it's the same Act that permits the creation of secondary legislation, which makes that acquis function. Some of that secondary legislation, made by the UK Parliament, will often affect devolved competences. That secondary legislation can be about something as uncontroversial as replacing the name of an EU institution with that of a UK or Welsh body, or it can be as significant as giving Welsh Government powers and responsibilities that they've not had before. And, alongside that, we have a situation where both Governments are working together towards a range of agreements and concordats, such as the pan-UK frameworks, and much should be achieved by those formal inter-governmental structures, such as the JMC and the British-Irish Council and so on.

But the inevitable result of this work is that Welsh Ministers could acquire power and responsibility to themselves, or indeed the reverse and cede power and responsibility to UK Ministers, asking them on some occasions to legislate on behalf of Wales in devolved areas where expedient to do so. And that alone should make us sit up and take notice, because, while we are already familiar with the idea of LCMs for primary legislation, we're not so familiar with another Parliament making secondary legislation on our behalf and, on Brexit-related secondary legislation, there is an awful lot of it, and an awful lot of it is consented to on our behalf directly by Welsh Government.

Now this debate isn't strictly about secondary legislation, but it's a useful comparison with the situation that we are discussing, and that is this Assembly's role in scrutinising for our constituents the activities of Welsh Government in all its interactions with other Governments, but especially when those actions result in it gaining or losing powers by means other than the express permission of this Assembly, or where they result in decisions in devolved areas being taken by another Government, let alone another Parliament, without our direct scrutiny.

So, subject to the expected safeguards to protect confidentiality or engagement at short notice, it is entirely right that this Assembly recommended—or even demanded, it felt like to me—a protocol between ourselves and Welsh Government by which Welsh Government informs us in due time of inter-governmental meetings. That allows committees of this Assembly to call in Ministers in advance of those meetings to help inform them of this Assembly's preferred position on the subject in question before they attend such an inter-governmental meeting. Welsh Government then has to report back to committees, as we heard, with progress reports or details of any agreements reached or changes to existing arrangements, and that in itself allows Members here to scrutinise what Welsh Government has done—maybe perhaps a little bit too late in terms of changing what it might have done, but at least Welsh Government can be held to account for its choices on our behalf.

And that's why I started this contribution by talking about what looks like the unrelated matter of secondary legislation, because it's foreseeable in my view that some inter-governmental agreements—not all of them—will result in primary legislation made by the UK Parliament and scrutinised there. We need to be certain here that Welsh Ministers have taken appropriate steps before this to protect Wales's best interests before anything is drafted, especially if what will be drafted covers devolved matters. 

The subsequent LCM process gives Members here a level of scrutiny and influence on such UK law, and there have been reassuring noises of a Sewel nature from the UK Government about that. But, when it comes to the secondary legislation that will flow from that law, itself made on an England-and-Wales basis, our capacity to scrutinise it as we should want to scrutinise it will be sorely tested, and it's being sorely tested now, with secondary legislation under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

We spoke only a few weeks ago about how difficult it was for the Welsh Government to prepare sufficiently detailed explanatory memoranda, and we encountered the same issue with Standing Order 30 statements. While we recognise that the Welsh Government is under severe pressure to digest and summarise this, errors or incomplete information compromise our ability to have faith in their preliminary scrutiny of what comes their way from the UK.

So, the protocols for that don't seem to be working entirely satisfactorily, which is why the protocol between this Assembly and the Welsh Government, which provides for notice and reporting, and an upstream opportunity to influence the Welsh Government's negotiation with the UK, is so important, because, after washing through a legislative process, downstream, we don't have much chance for consistent scrutiny or influence, and that should worry us. Thank you.