I'm afraid I have to fundamentally disagree with my friend David Melding, particularly in relation to the points that he's just made on international law, which I'll come to later in my speech.

The opponents of this legislative consent motion seem to me to ignore the fundamental reality of why we're debating this today—that the people of the United Kingdom and the people of Wales, four and a half years ago, voted to leave the European Union, and we had a general election last December in which the Conservative Party stood on the slogan of getting Brexit done and the Prime Minister was elected, or his party was elected, with a majority of 80 in the House of Commons. Both in the red wall in northern England and in Wales, Labour citadels that had returned Labour Members for decades fell to the Tories—five Conservative seats were lost in Wales.

The withdrawal agreement does not deliver Brexit. That was a product of a rather painful period for the Conservative Party under the short-lived leadership of Theresa May. It constitutes a supine surrender to the negotiator for the EU, Monsieur Barnier, by the worst Prime Minister that this country has seen since, at least, Ramsay MacDonald. But of course, Theresa May had no majority in the House of Commons. Now, we have a Government that has a large majority in the House of Commons, and so it is able to deliver the sort of Brexit that the people voted for four and a half years ago. Boris Johnson wants to get Brexit done and this Bill is an essential ingredient in achieving that. So, everything has changed.

But, of course, nothing has changed for the Labour Party; they are the latter-day Bourbons of modern Britain, because they've learned nothing and have forgotten nothing. As Darren Millar pointed out, not only did they oppose Brexit—fair enough; of course they're entitled to do that—but they also legislated to stop the United Kingdom leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement, and then voted against the withdrawal agreement itself. They wanted a second referendum to reverse the first referendum before the first referendum result was delivered. They've done everything they possibly can in the last four years to undermine the British negotiating position. And the Counsel General, I'm afraid, is still at it. He's been Monsieur Barnier's enthusiastic little helper during the whole of this period—the faithful servant of the Brussels technocrats whose aim is to make Britain suffer for the impertinence of demanding the restoration of its national sovereignty. And of course, the other unstated objective is to keep all the others in the EU still in line in case they be tempted to follow the route that Britain has freely chosen to take. 

The withdrawal agreement is, I believe, wholly contrary to the Good Friday agreement itself, and therefore there's an entire justification for retaining the clause that David Melding just informed us the Government is now happy perhaps to see taken out. Because under the withdrawal agreement, it said that Northern Ireland's status should change only with the consent of the people of Northern Ireland—under the Good Friday agreement, rather, the status of Northern Ireland can be changed only with the consent of the people of Northern Ireland. The Act of Union 1801, which united us into the United Kingdom, in article 6, says that

'in all treaties...with any foreign power, his Majesty’s subjects of Ireland shall...be on the same footing as his Majesty’s subjects of Great Britain.'

And of course, the withdrawal agreement drives a coach and horses through that, because it creates a border right down the middle of the Irish sea and requires people in England and in Wales exporting to Northern Ireland to fill out export documentation, and vice versa from Northern Ireland in the other direction. Now, the Northern Ireland protocol in article 4 of the withdrawal agreement says that, 

'Northern Ireland is part of the customs territory of the United Kingdom'.

All that the internal market Bill does is to ensure that this will continue after our transition out of the European Union. Now, the European Union wants to protect its single market, of course, but then, so do we in the United Kingdom. And protecting the single market of the United Kingdom is vastly more important to the people of Wales than the single market of the European Union ever was, or, indeed, could be.

Now, you can't repudiate part of a treaty in international law, but of course, you can repudiate, in certain circumstances, a treaty in its entirety. And if there's no deal, I hope that the United Kingdom Government will repudiate the withdrawal agreement in its entirety, including the financial arrangements that the withdrawal agreement contains, and the trade matters wrongly conceded to the European Union in the negotiations. Under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, if there's a fundamental change in circumstances compared with the time when the treaty was negotiated, then it is lawful for a state to repudiate its terms and—