Thank you, acting Deputy Presiding Officer. This is item 5, the Common Agricultural Policy (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Wales) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. We considered these regulations at our meeting of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee, again on 11 March, and we reported one merits points to the Assembly under Standing Order 21.3.

Our report focuses on the complexity of this legislation and highlights that greater clarity would have been helpful in describing its effect as a consequence. The regulations demonstrate the difficulty for the scrutinising body and for those affected by the legislation of understanding the effect of EU exit-related statutory instruments in the field of the common agricultural policy.

Amongst many barriers to understanding, a particular example seen in these regulations is the difficulty of understanding exactly what versions of EU instruments are in force at any particular time as part of domestic law under the EU withdrawal Act. We recognise that the complexity and opacity derive from the EU withdrawal Act, that’s fair to say. However, we consider that it is incumbent on the Welsh Government to seek to explain better and more fully to the Assembly and to citizens how each piece of Welsh EU exit legislation fits into the whole picture of UK and EU legislation—current and intended—on the particular subject matter. The appropriate place for this would appear to be the explanatory memorandum accompanying statutory instruments.

However, an additional concern is that end users of legislation may not be aware of the existence of explanatory memoranda or able to access them easily, and we would ask the Welsh Government to give consideration to how this situation could be improved, so as also to improve access for the citizens of Wales to the meaning of legislation.

We welcome the Welsh Government response to our report regarding the specific concerns we raised about regulations 4 and 5 of the legislation, but note that it did not comment on our wider concerns that I have just set out. Thank you.