Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Brexit Minister (in respect of his Brexit Minister responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 2:23 pm on 4 December 2019.
Thank you very much for that question, and he highlights, and I'm grateful to him for doing so, the important work that has been going on between Governments in the UK in relation to common frameworks on policy areas that touch upon the internal market if we leave the European Union. There is a subset of that that is specifically about the internal market, which deals with the sorts of issues that are currently dealt with on a regulatory basis as part of the EU single market. The priorities of the Welsh Government in relation to those arrangements are to ensure that Welsh businesses can continue to trade with businesses across the UK, which is a very, very significant market, as he obviously understands, for Welsh businesses, and to ensure that in doing so we are able to maintain the high standards that we would wish to see here for labour rights, social and environmental rights, for example, and also to ensure that the devolution settlement is absolutely protected in those arrangements.
As part of the common frameworks work overall, I have asked officials to look at whether statements by the UK Government that suggest a much, much more deregulatory approach than I'm sure any of us here would be comfortable with are capable of being managed within those existing and planned common frameworks.
On the question of a regulatory body, which his question asks me directly about, it isn't clear at this point whether that is going to be necessary. He will know that our preference has been to ensure that there are inter-governmental relationships, leading ultimately to a council of Ministers across the UK, which are able to manage relationships between the UK Governments, enabling policy divergence to be done on a managed basis. So, that is where the discussion is at this point in time. Obviously, I plan to update the Senedd on developments in this area over the coming weeks and months.