Plaid Cymru will vote against giving legislative consent for the internal market Bill today. This Bill essentially takes a sledgehammer to Welsh democracy, totally undermining the devolution settlement by taking back powers in devolved areas and seriously limiting the ability of this Senedd to create any novel legislation in future that does not accord with Westminster's plans. Emboldened by the Brexit referendum vote and the vociferous and divisive campaigning that it engendered, and the constant entreaties to respect the result of that referendum and the fact that Wales voted 'leave', we have seen the drip-drip rollback of powers since 2016. No thought of respecting the results of the referendums of 1997 and 2011, when the people of Wales voted for powers here in Wales in the first place and resoundingly for more powers in 2011.

But we expect no different from the Conservatives. We started losing powers under the Wales Act 2017. Plaid argued strongly and were mocked by Labour and the Conservatives then. With EU withdrawal, Labour opposed Plaid and the late Steffan Lewis's plan for a continuity Bill to protect the Senedd's legislative competence during EU withdrawal, and relied on inter-governmental agreements with the Conservative UK Government instead. Well, that's turned out well: now we have three Senedd committees concluding that the internal market Bill drives a coach and horses through the devolution settlement. So much for the protection of inter-governmental agreements, so much for common frameworks based on shared governance instead of the continuity Bill. The internal market Bill is not merely economic, it is disastrously constitutional. There has been no issue with trading between Wales and England these last 20 years.

Even the House of Lords have been unstinting in their condemnation of the internal market Bill. Welsh Government was sidelined and ignored repeatedly during EU withdrawal negotiations over the last four years. Legislative consent was denied for the EU withdrawal Bill by Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but the Tories carried on regardless. Now in the midst of the COVID pandemic, with Brexit negotiations oven ready, as the easiest deal in the world—that's going well—if all that was not enough, we have an internal market Bill imposed upon us. A Bill breaking international law, leading to fury in Ireland and elsewhere. Our European funding, the shared prosperity fund—so-called—hollowed out, not a penny less, not a power lost; not going well, is it? The internal market Bill means losing powers, losing funding, losing control over funding, and paralysing the Senedd's future ability to make divergent laws for Wales. The internal market Bill just draws us into England, Sewel convention gone, inter-governmental agreements a joke—it's imposed upon us.

With a fisheries Bill and a trade Bill and agriculture Bill going through at present, Welsh Government is still depending on inter-governmental agreements and despatch-box promises—as empty as they are meaningless. Still, Labour remains wedded to this union of an increasingly disunited kingdom to the detriment of Wales, bleating at the injustices but complicit. Over eight centuries, English kings and the Westminster elite have either oppressed or neglected the people of Wales, or both. People often mock when I go on about Welsh history, but we don't need to recall Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf, the treachery of the blue books, drowning Tryweryn, or any other historical betrayal, because the modern-day examples keep on flooding in, where the UK Government gazumps Welsh Government on testing kits, or directs PPE to England not Wales, or the crippling underfunding of rail infrastructure in Wales, or UK Government wrecking shared prosperity, decimating farming incomes, and dismantling Wales politically with the internal market Bill. Betrayal is heaped upon betrayal, and still Labour is proud to be unionist. UK Tories are laughing at Welsh Government and laughing at Wales because we can always be brought to heel. Soon, Scotland will be free of this charade; it's only Wales and England left. No UK, then. We glimpse a dystopian future beloved of that malevolent, misinformed minority that wants to ditch the Senedd and ditch Wales. Labour needs to be on the right side of history moving forward, not side with forces laughing at Wales. Give legislative consent to dismantling my nation? Llywydd, in ending, you know and people know me as a detached, considered and dispassionate analyser of constitutional affairs, and even I say vote against legislative consent. Diolch yn fawr.