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.