Llywydd, for almost over 100 years, Parliament has been concerned about the potential abuse and undermining of democracy of international trade agreements, and that was why a convention was developed, which was eventually put into force in 2010 by the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act. It was an example of Parliament taking back control. This, at the very least, gave Parliament a 21-day window to scrutinise trade agreements and, if it felt it necessary, to hold a debate and a vote. Now, the European Union (Future Relationship) Bill has been introduced to bypass effective democratic scrutiny in Westminster and in the nations of the UK, and the implications of the Bill and the agreement are massive. They impact on the exercise of power in Wales and the UK, and they concentrate enormous power in the hands of Government Ministers, particularly in Westminster. Now, this, in my view, is a contempt of Parliament, and it's an insult to this Welsh Parliament and the people of Wales, because it prevents us from being able to consider the issue of legislative consent. That undermines the Sewel convention, and it undermines the Wales Act 2017, which gave Sewel a legislative status. So, the way the UK Government has handled this further undermines parliamentary democracy across the UK.

Returning to the Bill and the trade agreement, its only saving grace is that it provides Welsh business with a vital breathing space, allowing it a limited degree of frictionless trade for the next couple of years. The imminent impact on the Welsh economy of an alternative of greater border restrictions and tariffs would have had the effect of, as has been said, blighting whole sections of Welsh agriculture and the manufacturing economy. But, aside from this, it represents a really bad deal for Wales and the UK, and, again, it just exposes the incompetence of the leadership of the Tory Government.

In the long term, it is very good news for the EU, because it enables a European transitional programme for the gradual relocation of manufacturing and financial services from the UK, a process that started with Brexit several years ago and is now increasing apace. Its impact on our steel and automotive industries will be to gradually run down and relocate new investment. So, the deal, in its current form, will continue the process that has just begun of the ghettoisation of the UK economy, as Welsh ports are bypassed for direct and unfettered links with Europe to and from Ireland. The deal provides no long-term protection for workers' rights or for the maintenance of environmental and food standards, and in fact it actually provides the exact mechanism for their demise, which undoubtedly is what was intended to pave the way for a trade agreement with the United States. We must also not delude ourselves that a Biden trade deal will do anything other than protect and expand US interests, which are already focused on increased co-operation with the EU, when you heard Biden's comments after his election, pushing the UK into a secondary, vassal tier of engagement. It offers no protection for our public services, and in particular the national health service from such predatory arrangements, and in fact it paves the way for privatisation.

Now, the abolition of Erasmus has already been described as educational and cultural vandalism, and I urge the Welsh Government to explore as far as it can the establishment of our own Wales-EU Erasmus agreement.

Wales doesn't feature in this deal—it is an afterthought. The bypassing of Welsh interests is consolidated by the internal market Act, which brings and end to the Sewel convention and recentralises power in a small number of hands in No. 10 Downing Street, even bypassing the UK Parliament. So, this week, we have seen the circulation in our communities of an offensive far-right leaflet calling for the abolition of the Welsh Parliament. Now, the connivance in this project of the right wing of the Welsh Tory party is there for all to see. These are the same people who were behind the Brexit campaign—Anglo-British nationalists who are happy to see Scotland leave the UK and for Wales to be neutered. Were they ever to succeed, it would be the end of Wales, which would become little more than a region of England, because these people don't just want to abolish the Senedd, they want to abolish Wales, with the connivance of the Welsh Tories, whose actions, I have to say, will go down in history as one of the great betrayals of this country.

Llywydd, the clock is now ticking on the future of the UK, with a Tory Government that has no interest in Wales. The Tories have become the hapless cheerleaders for the break-up of the UK, which appears to me more and more attractive and inevitable month by month. So, it is now imperative that socialists, liberals and progressives across Wales have to come together to plan a new future for Wales and for the other nations and regions of the UK, and I say that we have to do this before it is actually too late.