Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:08 pm on 20 October 2020.
Well, Llywydd, I'm afraid the sad answer is that there's nothing to stop that from happening. In fact, this Bill opens the door to exactly that. I'm very grateful indeed to Baroness Finlay—as Jenny Rathbone said, a really distinguished cross-bencher in the House of Lords—for her assistance to us in getting our amendments, amendments supported by Plaid Cymru peers, by Liberal Democrat peers, by cross-bench peers and others in the House of Lords—to make sure that those amendments are being laid for debate. The points that Baroness Finlay makes are the ones that Jenny Rathbone has echoed here. This is a Bill that means that this Senedd couldn't prevent food being sold in Wales that is produced to below the standards that people in Wales enjoy today; couldn't even allow us to require that food to be labelled so that Welsh citizens would know what it is that they are being offered; couldn't prevent that food from being produced to lower animal health standards; wouldn't allow us to carry out our plan to ban nine different types of single-use plastics; couldn't allow us to require headteachers, as we do today, to have the level of professional qualification we currently require them to have in Wales. And over and above all of that, it takes away the ability of this Senedd and our partners in Wales to make the decisions about where money for economic development, which has made such a difference—those decisions will not be made in Wales, where they ought to be made, but behind a desk in Whitehall. It really is a dog's breakfast of a Bill. We are working hard, alongside others, to try to put those problems right, and I'm grateful for the support we're getting in the House of Lords, right across the spectrum there, to do exactly that.