Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Brexit Minister (in respect of his "law officer" responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 2:46 pm on 17 September 2019.
Can I first thank the Member for drawing attention to the speech that I gave in the Eisteddfod, which I feel otherwise might have had a slightly more limited audience than she will now have given it? So, I thank her for that. She mentions the efforts of the Secretary of State for Wales to deliver a stable settlement for devolution. I'm afraid I see it slightly differently from her, and I take for example the discussion that the First Minister mentioned earlier on the shared prosperity fund, which is a matter that should be entirely devolved to Wales, and he has not championed that position in my discussions with him. We have called on several occasions for there to be full engagement in the question of regional funding following the departure from the European Union, and that has not been taken up. That is one of many, many examples of where the current devolution settlement falls short and where the UK Government's commitment to a stable devolution settlement falls short.
She mentions in her closing question the break-up of the union as though that would be a thing that we would advocate. Let me be absolutely clear to the Member that the people taking the wrecking ball to the British constitution are people like the Brexit Party and people like her who are advocating the kind of hard and 'no deal' Brexit that runs a very serious risk of tearing the UK apart.