In this Chamber yesterday, the Welsh Government spent a considerable amount of time bringing forward legislative amendments readying the statute book for Brexit: regulations on everything from potatoes to tax, plant health to accounting, social care to rural affairs—you name it. And whilst these votes did not take long, I know that the preparatory work will have done. It will have taken days of painstaking and expensive work for lawyers, officials, Ministers, committees and translators. These regulations are just a tiny fraction of the work that is going on inside and outside of Government. Just consider the millions of working hours spent on Brexit in Whitehall, and for what? So we can lawfully ready ourselves for economic carnage.

I don't dispute that the Government needs to do this work, but I am simply horrified by the colossal waste of time, energy and resources we have already poured down the drain named Brexit. When it comes to the stormy waters we find ourselves in, I want to see more energy being put into keeping the economic ship afloat rather than preparing for it to sink. Because it isn't just costing the Government and taxpayers money, time and resources. Airbus recently said they'd already spent tens of millions preparing for a 'no deal' Brexit—that is tens of millions that should have been spent here in Wales on research and development, apprenticeships and new equipment. Little wonder that the Confederation of British Industry and the Trades Union Congress have now told the Prime Minister that this country is facing a national emergency. They said,

'We cannot overstate the gravity of this crisis for firms and working people'.

And what has been Theresa May's response to this emergency? Firstly, to make one of the most shameful speeches ever made by a Prime Minister in this country, blaming Parliament and, by extension, individual MPs for betraying the public—a grotesque smear in a country that just three years ago lost a Member of Parliament to a political assassination.