4. What assessment has the Welsh Government made of the implications for Wales arising from the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill? OAQ54890

I thank Delyth Jewell for that, Llywydd. The Welsh Government's position on the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill was set out in the legislative consent memorandum published yesterday. It does not recommend that the Senedd gives its consent to this Bill.

I thank the First Minister for that answer. We had an interesting discussion in the external affairs committee yesterday about the LCM for this Bill, where you explained your thinking on that very clearly. Now, I've since read the LCM, and I broadly agree with your analysis. Plaid Cymru accepts that Brexit is going to happen, but that doesn't mean that Boris Johnson should be given carte blanche to impose damaging impositions on Wales, dilute workers' rights or remove parliamentary scrutiny.

I'm particularly concerned about the lack of restriction on the power that the Ireland-Northern Ireland protocol gives to the Secretary of State, since it would allow them, in theory, to amend the Government of Wales Act without this Senedd's consent. So, First Minister, can you give me your assurance that your Government will make categorically clear to the UK Government, in this Thursday's meeting of the JMC(EN), that this is wholly unacceptable and demand that the Bill be amended so that this specific power can never be used?

I thank Delyth Jewell for that. I was asked in the committee yesterday, Llywydd, whether I had any sense of hierarchy amongst the objections to the Bill that are set out in the memorandum. I was reluctant to put them in that sort of order, but it is quite certainly unacceptable, and ought to be unacceptable to every Member of this Assembly, that the withdrawal agreement Bill provides a power to the Secretary of State to amend, by secondary legislation, the primary legislation that has established this National Assembly for Wales, and could do that without our consent at all. Now, that is a completely unacceptable power. It ought not to be in this Bill. It's not there because of the National Assembly for Wales; it's there, as Delyth Jewell explained, because of the Ireland-Northern Ireland protocol. It would be at no cost to the UK Government to make it clear that it does not intend to use that power in relation to the National Assembly for Wales, and that is what it should do.

Now, my colleague the Counsel General and Brexit Minister has written on more than one occasion on exactly this matter to Mr Barclay, the Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union. It will be a subject for conversation at the JMC(EN) on Thursday. Any Government that has won an election has a mandate, Llywydd, and that's why we accept that we are leaving the European Union, but a mandate is not a blank cheque or a carte blanche, and it is not right that a Government should believe that it is beyond scrutiny or beyond challenge. Certainly, we will be making sure that that challenge is firmly put to the UK Government at every opportunity.

Do you accept that we now have a UK Conservative Government with a majority, a decent majority, and a clear mandate to get Brexit done? And on that basis, instead of carping and trying to have the old arguments that, frankly, were taking place before the general election, isn't it about time that you and your Government moved on, joined team UK, and batted on the same side as the UK Government to get the best Brexit deal possible as we leave the European Union? I'm glad that we're leaving the European Union on 31 January, that's what the people of Wales voted for and it's about time we implemented it and we had a Welsh Government that got behind that vision too.

Well, Llywydd, of course I understand that the Member is in favour of leaving the European Union, and he now has a Government that will deliver for him what he has wished for. That doesn't mean, surely—that, surely, does not mean that he believes that his Government in Westminster is beyond questioning? That it is somehow wrong that we should say to them that giving the Secretary of State the power to amend the devolution settlement by secondary legislation is something that is not acceptable to the National Assembly for Wales.

On this side, we certainly say that the protection for workers' rights that was in his Conservative Government's last withdrawal Bill—and no doubt he supported that Bill at its time—the fact that those workers' rights protections have disappeared from this Bill is not acceptable to us. It was acceptable to him when it was in the Bill, it's acceptable to him when it's not in the Bill—anything that his Government does will be acceptable to him, but it won't be acceptable to us.

The fact that we reached an agreement with his previous Government on the independent monitoring authority to make sure that there would be somebody on the monitoring authority who would understand and represent Welsh interests—we were glad to reach that agreement. But the new Bill allows a Secretary of State to hive off the responsibilities of the independent monitoring authority to another public body without any safeguard for Welsh interests at all. That is not acceptable to us. That's why we will be scrutinising this legislation, trying to get it improved, so that it works better for Wales. And there is absolutely nothing wrong in us carrying out our democratic duty in that way.

First Minister, as you just said, we discussed this matter at length in the committee yesterday when you asserted that, by recommending to the Assembly that its legislative consent is not given, you are not expecting a constitutional crisis. If the Assembly does refuse its consent, as you want, what do you think the consequences will be?

What I said in the committee, Llywydd, was that this is not a Government that is looking for a constitutional crisis. We are not objecting to the European withdrawal agreement Bill in order to pick a quarrel with the new UK Government. We are simply exercising the democratic rights that this National Assembly has to consider the Bill and to vote on it. And if a majority of Members of this National Assembly choose not to provide consent, that will be a very important statement of the democratic decision that this body will have come to. There will be consequences, Llywydd, of that of course. The UK Government will have to decide whether, for the first time in 20 years, it overrides the democratically expressed view of the National Assembly for Wales. That is a really important decision and it can't be expected to be consequence free.

First Minister, we all know that the withdrawal agreement that the Bill is there to implement actually was negotiated in October by the Prime Minister with the EU. Nothing's changed since that negotiation. We had a Bill put forward by the Prime Minister in October that failed, and he no longer decided to proceed with that particular Bill. He came back with a Bill, following his victory in the December election, with major changes to that Bill. Do you agree with me and have concerns that those changes have actually weakened the rights of people in this country as a consequence, and also weakens the scrutiny of the future negotiations with the EU that the UK Government intends to have?

Well, Llywydd, David Rees makes a really important point. The changes are to a Bill that the Prime Minister himself put in front of the House of Commons only in October—the Bill he was then prepared to support. The changes in the most recent version of the Bill make things worse from the point of view of Wales and not better. Why has the Prime Minister reneged on the commitment that he made in October on unaccompanied child refugees? Why has that been taken out of this Bill? Why has the parliamentary oversight that he was prepared to agree in October, why has that been taken out of this Bill now? Why when there was an agreement with his predecessor that a transition period could be extended if the United Kingdom believed it was in the United Kingdom's interests for it to be extended—nobody was imposing an extension, it was if a UK Government believed it was the right thing to do—why is he denying his own Government the ability to do that? On so many points set out in our legislative consent memorandum, this Bill is a worse Bill than the same Prime Minister produced in October.