The European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:07 pm on 7 January 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:07, 7 January 2020

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.