Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General & Brexit Minister (in respect of his 'law officer' responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 2:39 pm on 7 January 2020.
I thank the Member for that further set of questions. On the point about the resolution and avoidance, ideally, of course, of disputes between the Governments of the UK, that has been a long-standing call of the Welsh Government, and has been a matter that we have been pressing in discussions, both at ministerial and official level, with the UK Government and with other devolved Governments across the UK.
The Sewel convention remains a very, very important convention despite not being justiciable. But it provides the UK Government with considerable discretion about what circumstances are normal or not normal, which is the key to the application of the convention. That, in our view, as a Government, is not a sustainable way forward and we want to see a clear specification of the circumstances under which the UK Government could, in extremis, take forward legislation in defiance of this institution's lack of consent. We should consider setting that out in statute, which would then provide a platform for judicial oversight of the operation of the convention. But that, on its own, isn't going to be sufficient, it seems to me, to fix the problem that we face.
When the Scottish Parliament refused its consent in 2018 to the EU withdrawal Bill, neither House of the Parliament was given any real opportunity to consider the implications of proceeding without consent. So, we want to see a more explicit parliamentary stage for consideration of the implications of going forward without the consent of a devolved institution involving, perhaps, statements by UK Ministers to the House. There is, of course, a clearer and a more radical solution as well, which is simply to provide that Parliament simply will not legislate in devolved areas without the consent of the democratic devolved institutions.