I'm hoping my contribution will be less political, in one sense, than we've just heard. I welcome the opportunity to reflect upon the impact of reaching the deadline of 11 p.m. Greenwich mean time on Friday 31 January. My colleague Mike Hedges, who sits alongside me, will feel trepidation at that deadline as it's a critical point to deciding whether sufficient people have been brought into the Swans in order to reach the play-offs, as the transfer deadline is reached at 11 p.m. on Friday evening—[Laughter.] Now, that's not an attempt to belittle the other significant events, but to remind us all that not all eyes will be focused on that single event. Now, many people around us will actually be looking at other aspects, even though the news coverage will be focused on nothing else. 

And there will be many others who will see it as a time when we will no longer be citizens of the EU and all that entails for us—positive in the eyes of some; negative in the eyes of others. Now, I fully recognise the outcome of the vote of the majority of the voting electorate in Wales in June 2016 and that the UK is leaving the EU, but, once again, I will stress that the means by which we leave and the path that we take are crucial to our future. I do hope that it is a bright future, and I will always work towards that, but it is our duty to ensure that we test the decisions taken by Governments, we critically analyse the future strategy for a strong and vibrant economy and that we scrutinise the legislation that comes forward to ensure that the law that impacts upon the people we represent is good law, not flawed or rushed to simply deliver a populist solution.

We all know that the potential for leaving the EU will essentially come through the trading relationships that the UK forges with other nations. There is no doubt that there will be concerns as to how UK mandates for such agreements will be created and the role that devolved nations for such agreements will have in setting that mandate. Many across this Chamber have expressed a view that it is important that all devolved nations are part of both the team setting the mandate and also the team that undertake negotiations. So, this is something well established in this Parliament.

Currently, there is no formal mechanism to ensure that the Welsh Government or this Parliament would have any say in negotiation and confirmation of these agreements, even in circumstances where they engage devolved competence. We should be involved in setting the direction of the negotiations and be included in establishing the mandate for those negotiations. We should be in the room when negotiations discuss devolved competencies or matters that impact upon devolved competence. This is often the case across our European neighbours and elsewhere in the world, so why not here?

Now, I understand that there has been a meeting of the ministerial forum on trade, but the outcomes have not yet been published, and clarification on our role in the process remains in the periphery. I welcome the Welsh Government's efforts to move the agenda forward on how we can change the current constitutional settlement and support its position as set out in the recently published 'Reforming our union: shared governance in the UK'. This is clearly the approach that suits the interest of Wales and our citizens, being able to influence any trade deal in order for it to be to the benefit of Wales and its citizens.

We only need to look at the events this week to consider the risks that can occur in such trade negotiations and thus why our voice must be heard and duly considered. Take yesterday, we heard from the UK Government that they were going to accept Huawei as part of the future of the 5G networks, but across the waters, we saw Republican senators tweeting how this would impact upon their consideration of any UK-US trade deal—effectively trying to blackmail the UK into succumbing to the decisions of their Government and their interests, not ours. It is important that our interests must not be sacrificed to suit the political interests of one group only. Difficulties will arise.

Last time we debated trade agreements in this Chamber the Conservatives put an amendment forward denying our valid concerns over the current trading negotiating stance of this UK Government. Instead, they prefer to block them out from people’s minds. The amendments that they had stated that we should have no involvement in trade negotiations as it's reserved matter. I hope they're changing their minds now. But what does that say for the ambitions of the Welsh Conservatives? They're more than happy to leave it to Westminster and not involve us—