I thank the Member again for a very interesting and engaged contribution. As he says, there are things in the document that we do agree with across parties. Let me agree with him that the most radical proposition in the document is its reconceptualisation of sovereignty. I don’t think there’s any doubt that 20 years ago, when devolution was first thought of, it was in the minds of the people who debated it a belief that devolved institutions existed to be able to flex national policy to meet local circumstances, and the default position was that powers rested in Westminster and that some of them had been let out on a conditional basis to others to exercise. Now, 20 years into devolution, I simply don’t think that that stands up to examination any longer. And that’s why in this paper we talk about popular sovereignty, dispersed in each part of the United Kingdom, endorsed by referendums, of course, from which devolved institutions obtain and retain their legitimacy. And that in future, what we need is not a sense of parliamentary sovereignty that has some apparently unlimited character in which Westminster is always able to exercise legislative competence in respect of the whole United Kingdom, but that idea of dispersed sovereignty where sovereignty is not handed down. Even the word 'devolution', I think, is misleading 20 years on, because it still has at its core that sort of sense of things being handed down—held here and handed down—whilst what we argue for in this paper is a sense of sovereignty located in the four nations and then pooled back upwards voluntarily for purposes that we agree are best discharged on that wider footprint. And I suppose the biggest disagreement between us is that Plaid Cymru doesn’t believe that there is a case for that pooling upwards—you don’t believe there is a set of common purposes that would be better discharged on a UK basis, while we continue to believe that that is the case, and that in order to be part of that greater club, you have to be a member of that greater club, as we have always argued in relation to the European Union. But that’s a proper matter for debate and difference of view and persuading one another and others of the merits of that case. But I agree with what Adam Price said in his contribution that that is the most radical change of the way we conceptualise, as I say, the way that the four parts of the United Kingdom operate with one another. And then we argue, as he knows, for that to be entrenched—for it to be beyond the ability of one part only of the four constituent parts to overturn that. It has to be entrenched in the four parts of the United Kingdom.

He asked about the relationship between this and Alun Davies’s work, and this, of course, is predicated on the continuation of the United Kingdom. It talks about the way the United Kingdom can continue to survive and thrive, but as I said in my statement, that survival is at greater risk today than any time in my political lifetime, and that other parts of the United Kingdom have choices that they can exercise. And what Alun will be looking at are the options that there would be for Wales in different circumstances than the ones envisaged in this report. That’s why this is a Government report, and that’s why he’ll be carrying out his work in the freer way that he will be able to do.

Thank you for the advice on the future constitution of the Labour Party. [Laughter.] Let me simply say here what I said in the speech that I made to the Labour Party conference, where I outlined, prefigured, some of the things here and said there that my views on devolution and its entrenchment in the United Kingdom are mirrored by my views about the way the Labour Party needs to operate. So, I don't believe in independence from the Labour Party, but I do believe that the principles that we outline here apply to the Labour Party, just as they apply to our constitution more generally.

Finally, to deal with the issues of risk and reward and the constitutional convention, I think the difference between us is simply this—that I think in Plaid Cymru's view of the United Kingdom it's never possible to have a calculation in which rewards outweigh risks. Whereas, for me, while there are times when I think that the calculation is adverse, I think the possibility exists for it to be otherwise, and that on the whole it has been otherwise, and on the whole that our membership of a United Kingdom, with a national health service, with a social security safety net, with a national approach to meeting the welfare needs of our people—that the calculation has been on the side of the people of Wales, and that the people of Wales have benefited from that calculation. It isn't always as clear cut as I would like it to be, and it's under strain, not just because of Brexit, but because of a decade of unparalleled austerity as well. But I believe the potential exists for it to be otherwise, and a Labour Government with the sort of prospectus that we would lay out would once again tip that calculus firmly in the direction of a United Kingdom where the rewards are far greater for Wales than they otherwise would be. 

I don't want to end on a negative note, but we are keen for a constitutional convention on a UK basis. It's what I said to Paul Davies—that to start it by ourselves is, in some ways, to undermine the whole purpose of the paper, which is to draw into the conversation others. Now, I don't want to sound like I rule out the idea that, if we cannot engage other people in it, if this attempt to draw other people in doesn't get us anywhere, we wouldn't still want to have some conversation of our own. But to start with one of our own I think starts at the other end of where this paper would like it to start. We need to draw others in, because, if we don't have others in, we won't achieve what we want to achieve in this paper, and that's why our efforts at this point are directed at trying to stimulate that wider conversation, because it is on the basis of that wider conversation that the future of the United Kingdom, which we want to secure, will be achieved.