Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:03 pm on 22 October 2019.
Thank you, Llywydd. I will be succinct on these. The regulations were laid for the purposes of sifting, under the EU withdrawal Act 2018 in accordance with Standing Order 27.9A, and the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee scrutinised the instrument as a proposed negative instrument at its meeting on 16 September 2019.
We considered the criteria set out in Standing Order 21.3C and in our report laid on 17 September, and we recommended that the procedure for the regulations should be uplifted to the affirmative procedure. Our recommendation resulted from a question relating to the timing of the regulations. In particular, there appeared to be a conflict between EU law setting a time limit upon the use of this power to authorise the marketing of fruit plant material from countries outside the EU, while the regulations set no time limit, as was mentioned by the Minister. So, we're pleased to note the Welsh Government accepted our recommendation for an uplift in procedure. We considered the instrument again as an affirmative instrument at our meeting on 14 October, and there were no further reporting points.