Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:57 pm on 19 March 2019.
Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm grateful to the First Minister for his statement this afternoon. I will say to him that I regret very much the tone he used when he described the opportunity to provide for a public vote and to provide for a final say for the people of this country. It is, of course, the policy of Welsh Labour, of Labour, it's the policy of the Welsh Government, it's the policy that he himself placed in front of Members some weeks ago and asked this Parliament to adopt as the policy that we would want to see pursued. I do, therefore, believe that there's been a very clear undertaking, given that the Government of Wales will not simply describe the problems and the difficulties facing us, but will proactively seek to prepare for a vote to take place. And these are two different things. It isn't simply rehearsing academic arguments. It's saying that this is the most important issue facing this country at the moment. We know there's a mess in London. We know there's a mess in Westminster. We know that the UK Government cannot agree with itself, let alone anyone else. We know that they don't know what their policy is today, tomorrow, the next week. We know all of those things. But what we have to do in this Parliament and this Government is to do better than that and to do more than that, and that means to be true to what we believe in, and not to equivocate, not to find words in which to find different ways to escape our commitments, but to argue clearly for those commitments.
So, I hope, therefore, First Minister, you will be very, very clear in committing to the policy that the people of this country should have a final say, that the Welsh Government will campaign for a remain option and to campaign to remain, and what we will do here is accept there is no such thing as a jobs-first Brexit, but what is important to us is the principle—the principle—that the people of Wales and the people of the United Kingdom should have the final say on any agreement reached.