I thank the Member for a series of important questions. I want to refute what he said at the very beginning, because the Welsh Government certainly has not taken the view of being opposed to anything and everything that the UK Government has attempted in this field. We gave a modest welcome to the Florence speech, when the Prime Minister began to move back from the red lines that she'd set out in her Lancaster House speech. We gave a modest welcome to her Chequers plan. The problem that the Prime Minister has had has not been with the Welsh Government over that matter; it has been her difficulties in securing support from within her own party. How many Cabinet Ministers walked away from her Government as a result of the Chequers plan? And how many has she continued to lose on almost a weekly basis ever since? Where the UK Government has moved in our direction, we have sought to welcome that and to encourage them to do so. In the end, it has always been the Prime Minister's instance that her most import audience are those who sit behind her and who are irreconcilable to her plan that has been her undoing.

The Member asks when I last spoke to the Prime Minister; I spoke to her last week. I met the leader of the opposition just before the start of this half term, and I've discussed with them both. I'm very pleased to see this afternoon that the leader of the opposition is meeting party leaders in the House of Commons to try to do what the Prime Minister should have been doing now for many weeks, which is to reach out to other parties to find a different centre of gravity in the House of Commons where a deal could have been done.

Dirprwy Lywydd, I take absolutely at face value what the leader of the opposition says about wanting to play a constructive part himself, and I hope that he will use his position as leader of the Conservative Party in Wales to put the views that are so important on behalf of Wales to the Prime Minister herself, because I agreed with what he said about the impact of a 'no deal' Brexit in tariffs and non-tariff consequences on the Welsh economy, on our manufacturing sector, on our agricultural sector. Those are major, major difficulties that lie in our path should a 'no deal' Brexit take place, and any words that get into the ear of the Prime Minister about those difficulties are welcome.

The Member asked what we are doing to make sure that we are in touch with Welsh businesses. Well, we continue to encourage Welsh businesses to use the Brexit portal that we have established—30,000 visits to that. But it's one thing to visit the portal, it's another thing to take its advice and to do the diagnostic work that companies need to do to prepare themselves for the challenges that lie ahead. We are using our EU transition fund to continue to support businesses and other sectors in the Welsh economy to prepare for that world.

What we won't be able to do, Dirprwy Lywydd, is to indulge in the fantasy that exists among Conservative politicians that the world is simply waiting for a buccaneering Britain, that when we turn our back on our closest and most important market, that that will be replaced by these deals that are to be struck all around the world. There is no evidence for that at all. The Member knows perfectly well that the deals we already enjoy through our membership of the European Union are being denied to us the other side of the European Union. Far from having more trade deals around the world, we will start with far fewer than we have as a result of our EU membership.

Let me end with the very important final point that the leader of the opposition raised: the constitutional character of the United Kingdom the other side of Brexit. This is an issue on which my predecessor, the Member for Bridgend, has played a leading part across the United Kingdom, in trying to concentrate the minds of others on forming those ways of working inside the United Kingdom that will be necessary for it to go on operating successfully once we leave the European Union. Work was set in hand by Carwyn Jones and the First Minister of Scotland and the Prime Minister at a meeting of the JMC plenary in March of last year. That work is yet to be completed, and it is very difficult indeed to find people in the UK Government with the interest or the energy to work on that agenda when they are so overwhelmed by the difficulties that Brexit has created. But we continue to work on it, we continue to work on it with colleagues in Scotland, and we look forward to returning to that JMC plenary with a comprehensive report on all the different work strands that were agreed, because on them depends the orderly conduct of business across the United Kingdom when the European Union is no longer there.