Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:09 pm on 26 February 2020.
I'm very grateful you've allowed me to gatecrash the end of this debate. I wasn't going to speak, but, actually, I found the content of it has completely exercised me.
I absolutely refute all notion that there should be any rolling back of devolution, whatsoever. What we need to do—and I'm not going to stand here either and say what we need to do is split the difference between the Assembly and the Parliament, and, you know, the terrible Welsh Government. Because, actually, we all need to look at ourselves, because we haven't been brave, and we're in this situation today because we haven't been brave. We haven't gone for more Assembly Members, and we need them. Why do we need them? We need them, actually, because you guys have been in power for a long time, and if you had a free backbench, if you had more Assembly Members, you could have that critical analysis and that critical scrutiny that is so important from—[Interruption.] No, you do it now, but there's a freedom that comes with numbers. There's more freedom with numbers in the opposition as well. We need to have a better committee system. We need to consider how we're going to revise legislation going forward. What we need to do is have a robust and effective Parliament here. We need to build in improvements, not seek to reduce and row back. Because I'm absolutely with Carwyn on this, and I speak as somebody who was born in England, lived most of my life in the far east, and came here 20 years ago. My kids are Welsh, I claim Welshness, I love this Parliament, I'm really, really proud of it, and I absolutely do not understand why Welsh people should not have exactly the same rights as my darling husband who's a Scot, or my friends who are in the Irish Parliament. So, absolutely—we have to be equal. How we work out that tension and that balance with England—again, a country I love, respect and admire, but a political force that is much bigger than us—I do not know. And those are the things that we need to work out.
But look to ourselves first, guys, because how many times do people not turn up to committees? How many times do people not read the papers? How many times do people not bother to do accurate scrutiny? How many times do people not bother to read legislation and make all those improvements? We want to be a good Parliament here. We have to up our game, and then we start arguing about the rest of it. But do not—do not—let out failings be a reason why people should say 'no' to the Welsh Parliament.