I thank the Chair for his leadership of our work in this area and the clerks for their support. I look forward to hearing from the Minister. Some people, I think, have questioned our participative approach of asking for ideas, but I think it is a good one and I would like to commend it. Although on the first day in office you haven't come to us with a list of what you'll be doing, you're having this period of listening and consulting others, and I think that's a very valid approach and I look forward to seeing the outcome from it, hopefully including consideration of our report and the debate today. 

I want to draw on three of our visits, in particular, for my remarks: firstly, to our office in Brussels and the activity around that, second to the Basque delegation in London, and third to the Quebecois delegation in London. I went to our office in Brussels wondering if it needed significant change and a new focus in light of Brexit, thinking that what it would be doing would be very different in future, from outside the European Union, to what it had been doing within the European Union. I left thinking that the need for change was less radical than my initial presumption, and I think the reason for that was something that the Chair got over in his contribution—that what that office has been doing is largely an exercise in soft power. Now, there are certain hard diplomatic interfaces, most notably with EU funding that Wales has received, also, to at least some degree, our position that we've had within the Committee of the Regions. However, most of the work of that office has been making friends, building connections, reaching out, finding people to work with Wales on our agenda. And I think a lot of that focus and that skill set will be the same post Brexit as it has been before, and I think we really did notice, both from the delegation itself, but also talking to a number of other people, such as the Confederation of British Industry in Brussels, the extent to which UKRep is having to change its focus from the hard diplomacy of speaking in plenary at a council meeting and voting in particular ways, to actually seeking to influence and build allies, and perhaps there should have been more of that before, but UKRep is having to change what it did and is looking to Wales, to be fair to the CBI and to some of the other larger private sector organisations, for how it adjusts its diplomatic representation to a world that will have a greater focus on soft power rather than institutional levers within the European Union. 

I want to say a bit about the Basque and the Quebecois delegations, because I think they emphasise two types of what we might be trying to achieve for Wales through these international relations. The Basque approach was again—and this was a surprise to me—a very hard-edged economic approach, and it was connected with the economy Ministry and what it wanted to do is it wanted to increase Basque exports and it wanted to get more foreign direct investment coming into the Basque Country. They seemed to be its two main objectives. They were very well set up for doing it. It's a relatively well-off region within Spain, and they organise around that. And I think we need to consider is that what we want Wales to do, and, if so, our officers need to be in places that are larger sources of foreign direct investment, areas that are growing strongly or where there is a particular appetite for potential Welsh exports.

The second model I think was exemplified by Quebec more. There was also an economic aspect, and that aspect, I think, fitted quite well into what Canada was doing through its high commissioner, and there were very close relations. There was also this desire to promote Quebec from a perspective of its culture and its language, and also, I think, education. And what the structure was to do that and where it did that, it was more separate from Canada than it was on the economic aspects. And I think we need to think is that what we're trying to do as Wales: is it our particular culture? Is it the Welsh language? Is it education, perhaps sport? Are there particular things about Wales we want more people across the world to understand and know about and that we want to go out there and project? And I think we need to really understand the balance between that economic and that more cultural objective.

What I don't think we should be doing is simply trying to find other sub-state actors that we want to spend time with and be more like and 'we've got to have those connections'. I think there may be some of those connections, and, if you are a party that wants Wales to be independent, then you may want to spend time with those contacts, developing those relationships with other parties in sub-state nations that also want to break apart from those nations. But I don't believe that's what the Assembly as whole should be doing, and I would ask the Welsh Labour Government to consider very carefully what are the objectives. And I think we learnt a lot from going to the Basque delegation and going to Quebec, but I don't see the primary objective of these international relations as sub-state nations who see an independent future, or particularly working with Catalonia because they want to go in a certain direction—or some people there. Devolution for us has been a trajectory and a dynamic process, whereas for many of these other sub-state actors, there is a settlement—in Quebec or the Basque Country—with which they're pretty happy. Yes, let's learn from them, but let's focus on what we want to do, how much is about the economy, and how much is about cultural projection.