However, the meaning of legislative references to 'the Secretary of State' changed for many functions in Wales long before devolution in 1999, with the creation of a Secretary of State for Wales in 1964 and the establishment of the Welsh Office in 1965. It may be hard to imagine Cledwyn Hughes, let alone George Thomas, declaring a unilateral declaration of independence on how to manage a pandemic in Wales, and they were, of course, subject to collective Cabinet responsibility, but they had at least the progenitors of the legal powers applied today. It was thus, in the mid 1960s, that we began really to see the separation of Wales administratively from some UK Whitehall departments—a separation that was then used to demand devolution. Why should the national health service, established from Wales by Aneurin Bevan for the United Kingdom, be balkanised in this way? How high a price must we now pay for the barrier erected between our NHS in Wales and the UK Government?

The devolved health system in Wales failed to deliver mass testing, before finally seeking help from the UK Government, and it is now behind in mass vaccination. In Wales, we are disadvantaged by that interface, and the apparent administrative lethargy of our devolved system. We also lose out compared to how things would be if we were a truly united kingdom, because powers to set the priority groups for vaccination are devolved. Under devolution, we decide how to distribute a population share of vaccine. We adopt pretty much the same categories and order as the UK Government has for England, but we are getting the vaccine into people's arms less quickly. If the UK Government were in charge in Wales as well as in England, with the same vaccine categories, we would benefit not just from their faster roll-out, but a higher-than-population share, due to our population being older. Thanks to devolution, we don't. Is this what people wanted when they voted in referendums in 1997 or in 2011 or, indeed, in 1979? Did anyone seriously consider that the inclusion of health, in particular, among the list of devolved competencies meant that the Welsh Government could decide when they could leave their house, or enforce a border with England to prevent people from entering or leaving Wales? Of course they did not.

Now, of course, the Minister has form when it comes to trying to ignore the results of referendums he doesn't like. When Wales and the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union, he promised to respect the result, yet then spent much of the next four and a half years trying to block it. Thankfully, that failed, but the legacy of that attempt, the setting of this Senedd against the people of Wales and what they voted for in that referendum, has undermined devolution. It was the UK Government that got Brexit done, in the face of our institutional opposition and with unprecedented support across much of Wales. Similarly, while the Minister and colleagues like to call for the 2011 Welsh referendum to be respected, they haven't respected it any more than have the Conservatives. After a vote for law-making powers to be devolved in 20 defined areas, but otherwise reserved to Westminster, they decided to do the reverse of what had been voted for, by instead devolving all powers unless reserved.

Further powers were also devolved, not only without a further referendum, but specifically contrary to the mandate of that 2011 referendum. The referendum guaranteed voters that tax-raising powers would not be devolved without a further referendum—a position that was enshrined in law. A statement was even printed on the actual ballot paper stating that

'The Assembly cannot make laws on...tax...whatever the result of this vote.'

Yet, this institution, renamed as the Welsh Parliament or Senedd, without so much as a 'by your leave' from our voters, whom we have redefined to include 16-year-olds and essentially all foreign nationals resident in Wales, now has the power to put up income tax as much as it wants. The terms of the 2011 referendum have been set aside.

We're also seeing the end of our over-representation in Westminster, as we fall now from 40 MPs to 32, just as Scotland fell from 72 MPs to 59 after devolution—this being delayed for Wales until the boundary review following devolution of primary legislative powers. It wasn't a consequence of the 2011 referendum that the 'yes' side chose to spell out when seeking release from the admittedly cumbersome procedures applying to legislative competence Orders. And of course, that referendum didn't give Wales the choice of ending devolution; that process has only ever been allowed to move one way—in the direction of independence.