3. Statement by the First Minister: The Legislative Programme

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:13 pm on 16 July 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 4:13, 16 July 2019

Llywydd, I thank Suzy Davies for that. I look forward to the Conservative Party here using one of its very many debates that it has here in its own time to bring forward the legislative programme that it says it would introduce were it ever to be so unlikely as to be in a position to do so here in Wales. It would be a short debate, I understand that, but we look forward to it.

I understand the points that Suzy Davies has made about the tension between the need for proper scrutiny here and the speed with which we were having to deal with the volume of Brexit-related legislation. Part of the frustration was because we had to bring forward our SIs after UK Government SIs were in place, because often what we were doing depended upon what they were doing first, and the delays in them bringing forward their SIs had a knock-on effect on what we would do here. That is very much the case in relation to the agriculture Bill. When the UK was due to leave the European Union on 29 March, with more than two years of this Assembly term still to go, we were confident that we would have had everything in place that we needed to bring forward our own agriculture Bill. That is certainly not the case now. We may be leaving on 31 October—who knows? We hope not, of course, but even if we do, the amount of time that would be left in this Assembly term simply means that it is not feasible, as we thought it was before the UK Government's original plan went down in flames, when we thought that we would be able to do that.

I recognise the tension, of course, between what goes on the face of the Bill and what we leave to secondary legislation. And no doubt we will debate that, the balance, in all the Bills that we bring forward. But the example that the Member chose to highlight demonstrates why some of the claims that are made about the need for things to be on the face of the Bill are simply not sensible. In my view, it would have been genuinely nonsensical to have put the price of a unit of alcohol on the face of the Bill, because, every time you needed to change it, you would have needed fresh primary legislation. That would be—[Interruption.] Well, David Melding tells me, 'No, it wouldn't'. David, Suzy Davies is shouting at me, 'Yes, it would'. So, I think maybe you two should have a conversation first. Some things are rightly in secondary legislation, which is scrutinised on the floor of this Assembly, and a detail of that sort, when prices will change, inevitably, over time—putting it on the face of the Bill was not, in my view, the sort of detail that belongs there. It’s properly—[Interruption.] It's properly brought forward through regulation and regulation is properly scrutinised on the floor of this Assembly. So, I see this will be a debate that we will continue as each Bill is brought forward. But I do want to recognise it’s a proper debate, a proper debate, and I recognise that we will have to have it each time as to what is properly on the face of the Bill and what’s properly left to regulation, even when we disagree about where the line might be drawn.

As to the point that the Member made about accountability, I really think this is another fault line on the floor of the Assembly. The culture we want to create in our public services is one of high trust, in which we recognise the professional expertise of people who work in these services, and we work with them to create the outcomes that we want. I don’t want a culture of mistrust, and that’s what I heard the Member outline—that sense of accountability is always being suspicious of what people are up to in our public services, always feeling that they have the spectre of the Welsh Government sitting on their shoulder for everything they do. That’s not what I think of as accountability, and I certainly don’t think it produces good public services.