Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:07 pm on 10 July 2019.
Well, I thank the Member for that supplementary question. He'll recall, I think, the speech that the First Minister made to the Institute for Government a few weeks ago, where he said that devolution, effectively, wasn't simply a question of what happens in Wales, but it's also a question of what happens in Westminster, and it's incumbent on Westminster to look at how Westminster and Whitehall operate in a different way in order to give full support to the devolution settlement. There are some parts of that speech that I think we can welcome. The Prime Minister talks about the UK resting on and being defined by the support of its people, in that sense of being a voluntary association of nations, and we welcome the recognition that devolution is now a stable and permanent part of the UK's constitution, as the speech indicated. I think, if Westminster and Whitehall are serious about addressing how they re-evaluate how they work to support devolution, that will only be a good thing, but I do echo the Member's response in relation to the fact that, if you're going to give a speech that is about the future of the union and the future of devolution within it, then the least you can do is have a conversation with the devolved administrations in advance of that so that, as he describes it, that sense of joint venture of the constitutional settlement is retained and preserved.
But there's also, frankly, a very practical point to this: we have been pressing here for progress on the inter-governmental review for the last 15 months, and we have very little to show for it so far. He will have seen the announcement made by David Lidington last week and the response of the Welsh and Scottish Governments to that. Actually, pressing forward with that progress would have been a very good way of demonstrating commitment to the devolution settlement here in the UK, and to launch another review without acknowledging that, I think, was unfortunate. And I think had the Prime Minister sought the advice of the devolved administrations, we could have had a constructive discussion about the terms of reference and about how they could be better constructed to meet some of the significant challenges that we face in dealing with the UK Government. We note the emphasis in particular on the importance in the review of the territorial offices, and I think the First Minister was clear in his speech back in May that there is now an opportunity and a need, in fact, for the role of the Wales and Scotland offices in particular to be radically rethought in this post-Brexit world.