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.