The next item on our agenda this afternoon is a debate on the general principles of the Legislation (Wales) Bill, and I call on the Counsel General and Brexit Minister to move the motion—Jeremy Miles.

Motion NDM7023 Rebecca Evans

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales in accordance with Standing Order 26.11:

Agrees to the general principles of the Legislation (Wales) Bill.

Motion moved.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. It's a huge pleasure to open this afternoon's debate on the Legislation (Wales) Bill. The purpose of the Bill is to make Welsh legislation more accessible, clear and simple to use. It makes provision on the interpretation and implementation of Welsh law and makes it a requirement that the Counsel General and Welsh Ministers take steps to improve the accessibility of Welsh law. In one aspect, this is a very technical Bill, and traditionally such a Bill would be considered as a Bill simply for lawyers. Certainly, the Bill does include a series of detailed principles on the way in which legislation works and how it should be interpreted. It's not always clear why these rules should be relevant to the citizen, but the rules and the Bill more generally are important, and there are a number of reasons for that.

First, we need these when problems arise. Their purpose is to explain the meaning of certain aspects of legislation when there is ambiguity. And by legislating for this once, we don't need to complicate other legislation with similar provisions time and time again. In addition to this, the Bill places requirements on the Government in the long term to improve the accessibility of law here in Wales. This is something that we intend to do, among other things, by developing comprehensive codes of the law on a subject-by-subject basis. Our objectives in this regard are ambitious and radical. It's also important to appreciate that the Bill symbolises the maturity of our legislature and is part of our wider vision for the governance of this nation. This includes enhancing our capacity to develop a Welsh legal jurisdiction.

I'd like to thank all the stakeholders for their assistance throughout this process, most recently for the response to the consultation of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee. I'd also like to thank that committee and the Finance Committee for their comprehensive reports on the legislation. I will be writing to both committees, responding in detail to their reports, but I will also be discussing some of the recommendations today.

One of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee's recommendations was that, during the Stage 1 debate, I should update the National Assembly on the progress of discussions with the UK Government in relation to the legislative competence of this Assembly to enact the Bill. This derives from correspondence received from the Secretary of State, to which the First Minister responded in January. The First Minister repeated our firm view that the Bill falls within legislative competence in all aspects and that the effect of the Bill would be to make the law in Wales more accessible.

Concerns expressed by the Secretary of State that the creation of an additional Act on the interpretation of legislation could make the law less not more accessible do not, in our view, take into account the fact that there are already similar Acts for Scotland and for Northern Ireland. Nor do they fully appreciate our desire and our need to make bespoke and bilingual provision for Wales. The First Minister's letter indicated that we would be happy for officials to continue to discuss any points of contention, but we have not yet received a reply. I was also asked by the committee to provide a clear explanation during the Stage 1 debate of what is meant by the accessibility of Welsh law. For Welsh law to be accessible, it needs to be clear and certain in its effect, as well as being easily available and navigable. This needs to be the case not only in respect of individual Acts or statutory instruments, but also, collectively, all of the law on a particular subject and the statute book as a whole.

The emphasis on the collective is vital. Modern legislation in Wales and across the UK is more often than not well-drafted and will generally contain a clear articulation of the change in the law affected. That enactment will be scrutinised by the legislature and will later be widely available by being published online. Of itself, it would, therefore, normally be perfectly accessible. However, it is rare for such an enactment to stand alone, and it is each enactment's relationship with the remainder of the statute book that makes legislation inaccessible. This is because the connections between one piece of legislation and others are often unclear.

Making legislation accessible is, perhaps, first and foremost about clarifying the context within which any change in the law is made and then ensuring that all law on any particular topic can be found together. Having said all of that, whether the law is accessible is a somewhat subjective question and attempting to define exactly what it means doesn't make it any less subjective. It's important to remember that the duty is to make the law more accessible. It's about good practice, about continuously improving, and actually making it part of our thinking at all times when developing law. This is one reason why I can't accept the committee's recommendation that the Government should be statutorily obliged to go beyond the duty in the current Bill and add a duty to implement a specific accessibility programme.

The tasks necessary to make the law more accessible are multidimensional, and, with that in mind, I agree with the recommendation made that non-legislative measures aimed at promoting awareness and understanding of Welsh law should be something that the Government must do, not may do.

Two of the committee's recommendations concern reporting on progress, and I'm pleased to inform Members that I accept both recommendations. This will mean that the Counsel General will report annually on the progress of the programmes to make the law more accessible. This will mean that there will be four reports made per term, following each programme being laid, which must take place within six months of the appointment of a First Minister after a general election. As part of that reporting process, we will also review the effectiveness of Part 1 of the Bill at the midway point of the next Assembly term.

Finally, I was pleased to see that the committee saw no reason to disagree with my proposal to restate section 156(1) of the Government of Wales Act 2006 concerning the equal status in law of the Welsh and English language texts and providing for that in this Bill. Assuming that the general principles of the Bill are passed, I will bring forward an amendment doing exactly that at Stage 2, along with a draft explanatory note.

The Llywydd took the Chair.

Llywydd, to conclude for the time being, I would like to again thank the stakeholders, the committees and fellow Members for their very positive approach to this Bill and to the more general aim of trying to develop a statute book for Wales that is modern, ordered, clear and accessible. This Bill lays a foundation, and I’m very aware that we have some hard work ahead of us to build on that foundation, but it’s important that we do lead and be ambitious for the future.

I’m very pleased that the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee has recommended that the general principles of this Bill should be agreed and I very much hope that you as Members will agree. Thank you.

I now call on the Chair of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee, Mick Antoniw.

Well, thank you, Llywydd. Firstly, I'd like to thank the Counsel General for the evidence and the sessions that he attended, and the precise answers he had to the various questions that we put during the process of this very important piece of legislation, which is a marker on the path of the development of a Welsh statute book, of a Welsh legislative system. So, the legislation is not only very much needed but very much welcome as well.

The Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee began its scrutiny of the Legislation (Wales) Bill last December, and, during December and January, we held a public consultation to inform our work. Throughout January, we heard oral evidence from a number of stakeholders, and we're grateful to the Assembly's outreach team who also interviewed a number of stakeholders on behalf of the committee, and we'd like to thank all those who've contributed to our work.

We make a number of recommendations throughout our report, some of which have been commented on by the Counsel General today, which we believe will strengthen the legislation and its implementation. We welcome the proposals in the Bill and we believe it has the potential, as I've said, to contribute to the Welsh Government's aim of improving the accessibility of Welsh law, although there are some comments on the issue of accessibility I will make in due course. For that reason, we recommended that the National Assembly agrees the general principles of the Bill, which is our recommendation 2. However, it's clear to us that the additional non-legislative measures, such as ensuring the availability of legal commentary on Welsh law and educating the public about Welsh law, must form a central role in improving its accessibility, and I recognise the, I think, common agreement from the Counsel General on these points. Therefore, we recommended that the Counsel General should clarify how we will make non-legislative measures a central part of improving the accessibility of Welsh law, which is our recommendation 4. And, again, I welcome the Counsel General's comments on that.

Turning to our recommendation 6, as a piece of innovative legislation, timely and robust evaluation will be critical to its success. Our recommendation 6 said that the Counsel General should commit to a review of the legislation at the midway point of the first Assembly term in which legislation takes effect—that is, by the end of 2023. Moving on, we're generally content with the provision in Part 1 of the Bill regarding the accessibility of Welsh law. However, we agree with the views expressed by some stakeholders that a clearer narrative is needed regarding the meaning of 'accessibility of Welsh law'. We believe this will be vital in facilitating robust and transparent evaluation of the success of Part 1 of the Bill. As such, our recommendation 7 said that the Counsel General should, during this Stage 1 debate, provide a clearer explanation of what is meant by 'the accessibility of Welsh law', and I welcome the comments from the Counsel General on that, which refer to the issues of clarity and availability, and also recognising there's a broader aspect to the whole issue of accessibility that needs to be developed. Certainly, within the committee, I think our consideration was accessibility in yet a slightly further and broader concept—that is, not just the clarity and availability of the law, but the accessibility in real practical terms by the citizens of Wales. I was very interested—I'm going slightly off message at the moment—in terms of the comments that were made by Lord Simon in 1949 during the Legal Aid and Advice Bill. There were some very, very positive comments made at that time about what the purpose to accessibility was, and just to read this one section here, where he said:

'Lastly, I would say what I feel most deeply—that if we are aiming at a true democracy in this country, it is not enough to boast about the language of Magna Carta; it is not enough to say that our Judges are impartial; it is not enough to say that people may trust to the fair administration of British law. If we want to make this country a real democracy we must take steps to secure that these principles of justice, protection and remedy are available to all people alike, and that it does not depend on whether they are personally able to afford it.'

I think the Counsel General will recognise that there is a broader concern about the accessibility of law, which is something I'm sure he will address, and we as a legislature, with our own laws and our legal system, will have to address in terms of the real accessibility of access to the law—the empowerment of citizens, which seems to me is a fundamental part of that.

Turning back to my script, I'd like to turn to our recommendation 8. Under section 2(1), the Welsh Ministers and Counsel General will be required to prepare a programme of accessibility. We've recommended they should also be under a duty to implement such a programme to ensure its delivery. We've also recommended that the Bill should be amended so that proposed activities that are intended to promote awareness and understanding of Welsh law should be included as a duty under section 2(3), rather than being discretionary under section 2(4), which is our recommendation 9. 

Our recommendation 10 states that section 2(7) of the Bill should be amended so that the Counsel General is required to report to the National Assembly on an annual basis on the progress made under an accessibility programme. We believe that this would provide the Counsel General not only with an opportunity to update the Assembly on proposed activities, which are progressing well, but also those that have not or will not be taken forward, and, following the laying of such a report, we envisage that we would invite the Counsel General to attend a meeting of the committee at which the report could be considered and scrutinised. And I'm glad that the Counsel General has accepted the main thrust of these recommendations: the four reports per term and to review the effectiveness. So, that is very much welcome. Our recommended amendments to section 2 of the Bill would, in our view, ensure that the bold steps that this current Welsh Government has taken towards achieving a more accessible Welsh statute book are not, in any way, diminished in the future.

Turning now to consolidation and codification, the Counsel General's plans for consolidating Welsh laws are welcome. We agree that consolidated legislation will not only help the people of Wales to understand Welsh law, it will also help those practising law. However, we believe that the uncertainty that exists regarding codification does need addressing. We recommended that the Counsel General should issue a statement clarifying his proposals and intentions for codifying Welsh law.

Moving on to Part 2 of the Bill, we are generally content with the provisions in Part 2 of the Bill regarding the interpretation and operation of Welsh legislation, subject to our concerns expressed below. We believe that the Bill's intended application has been drawn appropriately. Nevertheless, because of a potential for confusion, we believe that there would be merit in evaluating the impact of Part 2 of the Bill. This evaluation should form a key part of the review, which the Counsel General has committed to undertake. And, finally, I would like to briefly mention our conclusions relating to how the Bill may present an opportunity to make provision about the interpretation of bilingual legislation. We came to the conclusion that the interpretation of bilingual legislation should be a responsibility of the courts. The Counsel General has told us that it is his preference to restate the equal status provision in section 156(1) of the Government of Wales Act 2006 in this Bill, and we see no reason for us to disagree with this approach. However, we ask the Counsel General to provide further detail and clarity on his proposal to restate that provision. I'm grateful for the comments with regard to the proposed amendment, but, in terms of the dictionary of new legislative terms and the use of the Welsh language within that, I think that is innovative; it is a marker of the progress of this institution as a legislature. And this legislation makes a very significant contribution and is a very significant milestone in that progress. Thank you, Llywydd.

Chair of the Finance Committee, Llyr Gruffydd.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. I am very pleased to contribute to this debate to outline the Finance Committee’s recommendations in relation to the financial implications of the Bill. We have made four recommendations, and I hope that the Counsel General will take these on board as the legislation progresses.

The committee considered this Bill back in January, and, at that time, given the uncertainties around Brexit, we were concerned about the timing of this Bill, given that the Welsh Government would have to use a significant amount of its resources to deal with Brexit. This concern remains, of course, given that the deadline for leaving the EU has been extended. However, we do support the aim of the Bill to make Welsh law more accessible, clear and straightforward to use.

We understand that the Bill has been developed following a number of inquiries, including the previous report by the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee ‘Making Laws in Wales’ and the Law Commission’s report ‘Form and Accessibility of the Law Applicable in Wales’, which recommended that the Welsh Government pursue a policy of consolidating and codifying the law in Wales. However, we are concerned that the Welsh Government’s legislative resource is being committed to this Bill at a time when a significant resource will be needed to deal with the consequences of Brexit. Having said that, we recognise the implementation of this Bill will be very beneficial when considering any legislative changes due to Brexit. The Law Commission’s report suggested benefits of £23.75 million could be generated annually. This would result from savings worth £23.56 million because legal practitioners would need to spend less time conducting research, and time-saving benefits of £190,000 tied to improved capacity for non-legal civil society to have legal access. Yet, despite this significant suggested benefit, the Welsh Government did not substantiate this analysis, and it was not applied as part of the Welsh Government’s own benefit analysis within the RIA.

We heard from the Counsel General that although the impact assessment by the Law Commission was used as a starting point, the main driver for the Bill is to improve social justice by ensuring the public can have easier access to Welsh law. We accept that cost savings are not the main driver for the Bill. However, efficiencies in the legal system are explicitly identified as a benefit and a reason for introducing the Bill. As such, recommendation 1 in our report recommends that the Welsh Government undertakes further work on analysing and costing the efficiencies within the Bill, and that it includes this information in a revised RIA.

The committee was pleased to see the Bill included review mechanisms to ensure that the objectives of the legislation are being delivered in line with expectations. We have recommended that consideration should be given to the resource and financial implications of delivering the Bill’s objectives so as to ensure value for money.

The most significant costs associated with the Bill are in relation to Part 1, which makes provision to promote the accessibility of the law that is or could be made by the National Assembly and Welsh Ministers. This includes the ongoing staff costs of legislative counsel and translation services needed to deliver the programme of accessibility, namely more than £588,000 per year and nearly £3 million over five years. The Counsel General has acknowledged this work will impact on other policy staff and lawyers at the Welsh Government and that there may be costs to the private sector in understanding the new law, yet these costs have not been identified in the RIA. Therefore, we have recommended that the Welsh Government provide further information on the financial implications for Welsh Government staff and costs to other private sector bodies in its revised RIA.

Finally, Presiding Officer, only £5,000 has been accounted for transitional costs to provide guidance to professionals on the impact of the Bill. We are concerned that no other activities have been included for raising awareness, and we would have anticipated that wider public engagement would be needed to generate the benefits that the Welsh Government expects. We believe that this is especially pertinent at a time when legal aid is being cut and there may be a greater need to access Welsh laws among the general public. Our final recommendation therefore is that the Welsh Government should provide further information on how it intends to publicise the Bill, if enacted. Thank you.

First, can I thank the Counsel General and his staff for the draft Bill, and also my colleagues on the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee? I think this has been one of those occasions where part of me still wishes that I was involved in legal study and that my brain was still in that groove, because like, I suspect, all of us, I want the law to be more accessible, but when I think about quite what that means, I don't think I'm sure I know what it means. I'm taking some relief from the fact that there seems to be a difference of opinion between other members of CLAC and even the Counsel General on this occasion. Because we'll be supporting what we think are the general principles of this Bill at this stage, we want to give the Counsel General the opportunity to consider how the draft Bill might be amended as it progresses. Perhaps there's a chance here to crystallise or encapsulate precisely what you mean, Counsel General, by 'accessibility'. It is the core purpose of this statute, after all.

However, Members may know we took evidence from practitioners and academics who raised, as do I and my fellow committee members, the idea of creating an efficient functioning Welsh statute book—a sort of one-stop shop, if you like. But that evidence wasn't consistent, and I don't think we need to go back 70 years, Mick, to spot that problem. Let's take, for example, the concept of codification as the home of this one-stop shop, and I invite Members to consider what that might mean. The explanatory memorandum—and I think it's been reinforced by you today, Counsel General—suggests that codification is a process that follows a period of consolidation of existing laws that fall within the Assembly's competence, that marshals that and non-consolidated law into a framework that can cope over time with amendments and the introduction of new primary and secondary legislation, as well as guidance in a given subject area.

That's not what some of our witnesses thought it meant. In fact, Professor Thomas Watkin, on whose observations we've relied on many occasions in this institution, wasn't sure what the end point was. One witness, who was speaking from a practitioner's perspective, had in mind a code Act, a primary statute from which all else flowed, existing Acts forming chapters beneath it, constrained by amending Standing Orders. So, while there will be other non-legislative steps to help our constituents find and understand current laws in Wales—this was referred to in some of the recommendations—I think I'd like to see some further clarity on what the Counsel General means by 'codification', even if that means being explicit about what it isn't, because while all legislators should strive for their laws to be just, the first requirement for them is to provide certainty. I draw Members' attention particularly to recommendations 7 and 11 of the CLAC report to underline that point.

The explanatory memorandum tells us that prior to codification in a particular subject area, the Government should consolidate existing laws wherever possible, and I, along with other Members, have queried, actually, why we've missed opportunities to do this with previous Assembly Bills. I think it would have given us the chance to test the means of overcoming three practical challenges innate in the process of consolidation. The first of those, and it is a very positive first, is the chance to use the process of restating law to recreate it as bilingual law. Where it is actual word-for-word restatement, though, are we talking about translation of existing law or the making of new bilingual law? Because, as I hope others will mention, we do then run into the issue of which of the interpretation Acts we then apply to this—whether it's the 1978 Act, or the interpretation part of this Act.

Secondly, not all the existing law within our legislative competence is made by this Parliament. As we’ve seen, a considerable body of our secondary Brexit legislation is being made by the UK Parliament, but we are more familiar with this happening with primary legislation. If we are to produce an efficient Welsh statute book, it needs to include all law applicable in Wales, I think, regardless of which parliament has made that law. How does consolidation, as distinct from interpretation, work when there is an element of Welsh Ministers and UK Ministers acting together in a piece of existing legislation?

And then thirdly, the explanatory memorandum foresees that consolidation is going to go well beyond just simply cutting and pasting old law, and will use more modern terms, settle, perhaps, on single definitions, and even update existing law. While the Bill does make some reference to the Assembly’s role in scrutinising secondary legislation in a codified future, I want to raise a point with you now, Counsel General, for future consideration, because this applies to primary, as well as secondary legislation, I think. If Welsh Government wishes to restate law that this Assembly has made in the name of consolidation, we must proactively scrutinise that restatement with facility to amend Welsh Government drafts. If codification requires changes to this Assembly’s Standing Orders, which has been suggested in evidence, Welsh Government cannot insist upon or presume those changes. If a Member is drawn in the ballot for a backbench Bill that falls within the competence of this institution, Welsh Government cannot be allowed to withhold its support merely on the grounds that it doesn't fit neatly into a code.

So, finally, Llywydd, if, as an intended or unintended consequence of this Bill the Assembly faces any restriction on its ability to pass any law within its reserved-powers competence, the Welsh Conservatives will not support it, and I really hope we can work together to avoid any possibility of that happening. Thank you

It’s a pleasure to contribute to this important debate on the Legislation (Wales) Bill. May I thank the Counsel General for his opening statement in this debate? Naturally, we agree and welcome the intentions underpinning this Bill as a party. Because what are we talking about? Well, we’re standing in a proper Senedd now, which will be named a Senedd or a Parliament soon. We do legislate in both languages and also we levy taxes, so it’s natural that we should look at how we do legislate—our methods in legislating. Of course, as has already been explained, the purpose of this Bill is to make Welsh law more accessible, more clear and simple to use. Well, there is a challenge there in the first instance, because in looking at many pieces of legislation it can be exceptionally complex, having been built and rebuilt over a period of years, because we have a combination, as Suzy Davies has said, of England-and-Wales legislation, Wales-only legislation, and of course Welsh legislation, which has just been made by us here, and will continue to be made here of course. There is also the challenge and the excitement of creating legislation in Welsh, and the exciting challenge of interpreting legislation drafted in Welsh, because, as the Counsel General will be aware, it’s not a matter of simply translating one language to another. The matter of interpretation is pertinent here. We talk about the equality of both languages, which is extremely important, and I can see a glorious time when we will be developing legislation in Welsh, which will be interpreted in a way that may be slightly different, or the potential to interpret it slightly differently, in English, and, as we've heard, it will then be up to the courts to resolve that particular challenge. I’m pleased to have the opportunity to discuss legislation in our own nation, although it can be complex and, of course, we are talking of codification, consolidation.

Of course, we’ve been here before. The Counsel General will recall Hywel Dda, naturally. The golden year was 909, when not only did we have the laws of Hywel Dda by they were also codified. So, we have been innovative in Wales around 1,000 years ago. Before others thought of codification, Hywel was codifying in Whitland. So, we are regaining that ground, if truth be told. But, having said that, we need a definition of what exactly we mean by codification, because, as Suzy and Mick have said, we have had a lot of evidence from witnesses as to how exactly codification will work, what it actually means,  just as what accessibility means. Of course, we want to ensure accessibility for those dealing with the law on a day-to-day basis, those who are paid to do so, but we are talking more broadly here about providing accessibility for the ordinary man or woman in the street. So, that is accessibility in order to understand exactly what is happening, because that is also a challenge and not one that is always apparent to those developing legislation.

But as we are living in interesting times and we are creating our own legislation in this place, and doing so bilingually, now is the time, as more than one of our witnesses told us, to actually tackle this challenge of accessibility and codification, because from here on in we should expect that all new law should be codified and should be consolidated and should be accessible in both languages.

Therefore, yes, as a party we agree with recommendation 2, we agree with the principles of this legislation, we want to see it making progress but we also need to see the details, but that isn’t going to prevent us from supporting the general principles. Thank you.

The Counsel General to respond to the debate.

Diolch, Llywydd. I'd like to thank all the Members who've participated in the debate today. I've particularly enjoyed some of the conceptual discussions, but I think the measure of the success or otherwise of the Bill will be felt in the practical application of its provisions to the lives of citizens in Wales. I'm grateful for the support that Members have given, starting with the contribution that Mick Antoniw made. I'm pleased to hear him restate my understanding that the committee recommends the principles should be agreed. He spoke about the importance not just of the accessibility of law, but of access to law more broadly. I full-heartedly endorse that objective. It's one of the driving ambitions of the Bill. Yes, the democratic accountability argument is very important, but equally important, and to my mind a key driver of the Bill, is the social justice argument. It's incumbent on governments and legislatures to make the law accessible in the lives of citizens, in particular at a time when they find it harder and harder to access legal representation, as we know.

He referred to a number of recommendations. Just to address a few points in relation to recommendation 4, there will be a programme of work around accessibility more broadly, developing further commentary, developing the Law Wales website, and the glossary of terms in the Welsh language.

Several people mentioned the importance of the Welsh language. Of course, we had a recommendation from the commissioner about how to provide for people working in the area, and to ensure that enough people come through the system so as to ensure that lawyers who are fluent in Welsh can operate within a bilingual system in the future.

Mick and Suzy Davies—and, in fact, Dai Lloyd—spoke about the importance of understanding what codification means. It's set out there in the explanatory memorandum, but just to remind people: it is not an exercise in publishing, it's not an exercise in co-locating bits of law, it's an exercise in consolidating law that appears in different bits of the statute book so that it appears in a fresh form bilingually, in one place, and then that becomes protected by the Standing Orders of the Assembly, as the Assembly may wish to do that in future.

To address the very real point that Suzy Davies raised—the concern, I suppose, that this might be used, in a way, to present a barrier to legislation being brought forward—I'll give the assurance that that is not the case. The point of this legislation is not to tell us what the law is, it's to tell us where the law is found. So, it won't inhibit reform, it'll just tell you where in the statute book that reform ends up sitting. That's the point of it. It's not to prevent law change, it's to make it easy to find it where it has been found. So, I am very happy to give that reassurance. 

The Finance Committee, as Llyr Gruffydd indicated, expressed reservations about committing resources to the Bill when there are so many uncertainties around Brexit, but the inaccessibility of the law is a long-standing problem, and that will require action over the long term. And it's an area, perhaps, where—across the world, this is an area that is bedevilled by thinking in the short term, rather than in the long term.

Brexit, in addition, will increase the problem of complexity in the law. We've heard comments from the Supreme Court to this effect—concerns about different elements of law appearing in different places—and so the task, the challenge of making law more accessible is rendered more difficult and more urgent by the process of Brexit. 

Llyr Gruffydd also talked about the figures from the Law Commission. We haven’t chosen to lead on those figures. They’re important in terms of showing the scale, but I personally don’t think it’s easy to do a scientific analysis of those figures. For example, assessing the impact of the work of a lawyer in terms of implementing this Act, or one of the other Acts that could be created under this Act—that task does not lend itself easily to that.

In terms of the cost of raising awareness—and Llyr Gruffydd mentioned that as well—in terms of public awareness, I think that task is more relevant when specific Acts emanate from the umbrella of this Act, if I could use that term. This Act will succeed by changing the law and changing the impact of the law in people’s everyday lives, rather than that people understand what the terms and the content of this Bill are.

Improving accessibility is a long-term project, but, as I indicated earlier, that makes it even more important that we set about the task. I'm grateful for the indications Members have given in the debate of their support for the progress of the Bill to Stage 2, and I look forward to working with members of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee as they continue the scrutiny of the Bill. Diolch yn fawr. 

The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? The motion is therefore agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.