Eluned Morgan, on behalf of the Welsh Government, laid an LCM on 2 April 2020 in relation to the following provisions in Part 1 of the Bill. Clause 1 confers powers on UK Ministers in devolved authorities, including Welsh Ministers, to implement the provisions of the agreement on Government procurement, to reflect the fact that the UK is now an independent party to this WTO agreement, following the end of the transition period. Clause 2 confers powers on the Welsh Ministers and devolved authorities, including Welsh Ministers specifically, to implement international trade agreements with third countries, corresponding to certain kinds of existing EU third country agreements. Clause 3 is now contained in clause 11 of the Bill; this clause provides for different types of provision that could be made in regulations made under clauses 1 and 2.

Clause 11 also gives effect to Schedules 1 to 3. Schedule 1 places restrictions on the exercise of the Welsh Ministers' powers. Schedule 2 makes provision for the procedure that is to apply to regulations made under clauses 1 and 2. Schedule 3 contains exceptions to restrictions in the devolution settlement. Consent was also sought for clause 4, which is now contained in clause 12 of the Bill. This provision outlines how certain terms within Part 1 of the Bill should be interpreted. As this provision needs to be considered alongside clauses 1, 2 and 11, the Government considers that consent is required for this provision. These are all related to the April 2020 LCM.

I have laid two supplementary legislative consent memoranda. The first was on 4 November 2020 in respect of the following provisions that relate to the collection and sharing of trade information and that were contained in Part 3 of the Bill. These are now contained in Part 4 of the current version. Clause 21 allows specified public authorities, including Welsh ports and health authorities, to disclose information to a Minister of the Crown for the purposes of facilitating the exercise of a Minister of the Crown's functions relating to trade. Clause 22 makes it a criminal offence for a person to disclose identifiable personal information in breach of the requirements in clause 21.

A further supplementary memorandum was laid on 11 January in respect of Part 3 of the Bill, as it was amended at Lords Report Stage. Clauses 15 to 18 and Schedule 6 provide for the establishment of the Trade and Agriculture Commission as a statutory body, whose role is to provide independent advice to the Secretary of State on relevant provisions in new free trade agreements. In addition, a number of non-Government amendments have been passed at House of Lords Report Stage that may be overturned when the Bill returns to the House of Commons for consideration of amendments.

The Senedd's consent is also being sought for these provisions; the Welsh Government is content with each of the amendments and would prefer the Bill to include these clauses in its final form, but recommends consent to the Bill whether or not they are retained: clause 3, which relates to parliamentary approval; clause 6 in relation to health, care or publicly funded data processing services; and clause 8 in relation to standards. These, between them, are the provisions for which consent is sought.

The Senedd has previously consented to substantially similar provisions contained in clauses 1 and 2 of this Bill in the original version of it, which was debated in the Senedd on 21 March and 12 May 2019. There are, however, some key differences. For example, the power to implement the Government procurement agreement in clause 1 can now be used to make provision in consequence of a dispute. This seems a sensible improvement. Some of the restrictions placed on devolved authorities have been removed, meaning that the Welsh Ministers will still have the power to amend retained EU law in circumstances where it falls within the scope of any freezer regulations, which could be made by UK Ministers under section 109A of the Government of Wales Act 2006, and which would otherwise restrict the Welsh Ministers' competence to amend this category of legislation. That's also an improvement to the original Bill. 

I would like to thank the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee and the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee for their detailed scrutiny of the Bill. A number of legislative consent memoranda have obviously been laid against the different versions of this Bill, and I am grateful to the committees for their consideration. I recognise there are significant challenges in co-ordinating both the Senedd and UK Parliament timetables, and whilst my predecessor and I have made every effort to provide updates to Members as the Bill has progressed in its different forms through Parliament, I readily acknowledge the challenge. The Bill's timetable has been difficult, with several UK Government amendments requiring consideration at very short notice, and delays occurring, unfortunately, at almost every stage.

Whilst some of the recommendations put forward by the scrutiny committees have not been accepted, I want to reassure the Senedd that I have acted to address recommendations where it has been possible to do that. One of the key concerns has been our willingness to accept despatch-box commitments. We have had some limited success in securing a change to the face of the Bill in relation to the data sharing provisions in clause 8, which now expressly includes the devolved authorities as one of the bodies that the relevant trade-related data can be shared with by HMRC. But, in light of the difficulty overall in achieving changes to the face of the Bill, we have looked at other options to secure assurances from the United Kingdom Government. Despatch-box commitments are, admittedly, an imperfect, but, nevertheless, legitimate technique used by Ministers in all devolved Governments to hold the UK Government to account, and this position has, of course, as Members will be aware, been accepted previously by the Senedd. I commend the motion to the Senedd.