Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:33 pm on 13 November 2019.
Thank you very much. I do regret the fact that there has been no shift within Government in light of the arguments that we have put forward. Certainly, I am not at all convinced as to why the Government couldn't have given a free vote to its own members. There are examples when members of this Government have been allowed to disagree on other issues and I simply can't understand why you couldn't have allowed that freedom in this context, particularly in light of the words spoken to me by the First Minister in this Chamber some 28 hours ago, that this is not a matter for Government but a matter for the Senedd. Each of you, as members of the Government, are Members of this Senedd, and with the honour of making a decision on this institution for generations to come.
I have no doubt that 'Senedd' will be the widely used term to describe this institution, as David Melding has said. I am confident that we will vote today to describe ourselves as 'Aelodau o'r Senedd / Members of the Senedd'. I think the fact that we have pushed so hard on this means that we have won that argument and that by default, 'Senedd' will be the name of this institution. What I can't quite work out—and I may be being stupid here, but, if we're going to call ourselves 'Members of the Senedd', if everyone is going to call the institution 'Senedd', why is the legislation the one place that doesn't give it the name 'Senedd'? It makes no kind of sense whatsoever to me. I do have an idea for a bilingual name for this institution, a name in Welsh and in English: that is 'Senedd'. The people of Wales understand that, and the Government has lost an opportunity here to show that it is serious about creating a country that is proud of its heritage and confident in its future.