10. Debate: Brexit

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:36 pm on 22 October 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 6:36, 22 October 2019

Well, I think that is a very insightful remark. It reminds me that Mrs May's deal in her Chequers White Paper would have had dynamic regulatory alignment for goods and agrifood products, so we would have had access to the single market, and it had a customs arrangement in it. It wasn't us who walked away from Mrs May's deal; it was the then Foreign Secretary who walked away from that deal. It was Dominic Raab who refused to support that deal. It wasn't people on this side of the Chamber who scuppered Mrs May. It was people behind her and on her own side. As a result, we have this hardline Brexit. We will not support it for all the reasons you've heard: the impact on Holyhead, the impact on the peace process, the impact on workers' rights, the fact that there is a Brexit trapdoor bolted in to the deal that the Prime Minister has done. 

Darren Millar said, misunderstanding this, as other points, that the Brexit trapdoor was there at the insistence of the European Union. It's absolutely not the case at all. The Prime Minister is absolutely able to put a clause into his Bill that says, 'At the end of the transition period, it will be Parliament that decides whether or not'—not the Government untrammelled by any parliamentary oversight. After all, the Parliaments of Europe will all have a vote on this, but apparently it's not good enough for the 'take back controllers' of the Conservative Party.

And at stake here as well is the future of the United Kingdom, as we have heard. If this Assembly does decide not to give its consent, I hope that Members on the Conservative benches here will say to their Government just how serious it will be if they decide to use the Sewel convention to override the views of this National Assembly. I think sometimes that the members of the Conservative Government have no interest at all in the future of the United Kingdom, that they're prepared to act in ways that are utterly careless of its integrity. And there is something fundamentally important at stake here, and they should use the influence they have, the contacts that they have, to make sure that they understand that. 

To end, Dirprwy Lywydd, let me end with a point that Delyth Jewell made towards the end of the debate, because this is all about consent. This is all about consent. And the document that we debated here last week—the 20 points—makes it clear that, in our view, this is a United Kingdom that can only operate on the basis of consent, a voluntary union of four nations where we choose to act together, and consent is what that process is all about. That's why we have a legislative consent process, and that legislative consent process needs to be given the time it needs, it needs to be treated with the respect that it deserves, and today's debate is the start, not the end, of that process.