Which brings us immediately to the short debate. I call on Mark Reckless to speak to the topic that he has chosen. Mark Reckless. 

Can I check if I can be heard?

Yes, you can. You can carry on. 

Thank you. Constitutional matters cease to be esoteric when they come to determine whether your mother or your grandfather receives a live-saving vaccination. Welsh Ministers may not want to sprint or compete, but the speed with which we vaccinate and the fact that we are lagging the rest of the UK in Wales inevitably reflects on devolution. Many in Wales may only last year have become aware of how exorbitant Welsh Ministers' powers are, but on lockdown they generally stem from the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984. The reference to Welsh Ministers reflects our position since the Government of Wales Act 2006.

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.

When Wales voted against devolution in 1979, it was asked to vote again in 1997, but after voting for it then by however narrow a margin, no chance to reconsider has been allowed. Fair enough, you may say, if such a referendum should be no more than a once-in-a-generation event. Perhaps 24 years is not yet quite a generation, with the average age at which we have our first children rising, but it's not far off. What is the status quo ante? What would the position of Wales be if we did not have devolution; if this institution and the Government it begets were to be abolished, as my party desires, campaigns and advocates? Our opponents like to suggest that the alternative is some sort of viceroy who comes down from London or south-east England to govern Wales, and of course, John Redwood received great opprobrium for returning to Wokingham to sleep with his wife. But I don't believe that the Minister seeks to suggest that the current occupants of the Welsh Office are any less Welsh than he.

In 1979, Labour argued, at least at an official governmental level, that, since power was exercised by the Welsh Office, it needed to be made more democratically accountable. By four to one, the people of Wales said 'no', not, I submit, because they didn't believe in democratic accountability, but because they didn't support the whole gamut of administrative devolution that a minority faction within the Labour Party had inflicted on them.

Lockdown restrictions separate me from my office shelf of diaries, memoirs and biographies of leading Labour luminaries in Wales in the 1960s and 1970s, but my recollection is of how little those books say about splitting off parts of UK Government departments into a Welsh Office, or what the rationale for this was. The 1964 Labour manifesto merely stated in a plan for the regions that:

'In Wales, the creation of a Secretary of State, to which we are pledged, will facilitate the new unified administration that we need.'

Then leading figures such as Roy Jenkins and Jim Callaghan sat for Welsh constituencies, but they were UK figures and this was not their project. Policy divergence in most areas was limited, economic development was the Welsh Development Agency and then, Nicholas Edwards's non-Thatcherite approach perhaps an exception.

A reversion to that Welsh Office model, which we saw from 1965 until 1999, could draw our United Kingdom together again, with less difference for difference's sake, whilst saving the £65 million a year that we spend on this Senedd, for starters. What, though, would be wrong with reverting to the constitutional arrangements that we enjoyed before the Welsh Office and a Secretary of State for Wales? We could integrate all departments properly; we could empower local government, allowing Welsh councils greater freedoms than they now have; we could return Welsh education to at least the standard seen in England; we could once again rely on a single, integrated NHS, true to the model of Aneurin Bevan and deal with COVID together.

There is nothing about the Westminster model that prevents legislation specific to Wales, when appropriate, if necessary, promoting a greater role for the Welsh Grand Committee. That approach allowed Wales specific education Acts and the development of Welsh language policy; it led to the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Wales finally implemented in 1920; and a differential approach to Sunday closing from 1881 to 1996. Instead, we have an unbalanced devolution process. Never a settlement, despite the Government of Wales Acts in 1998, 2006, 2014 and 2017; a process that only ever moves in one direction—towards independence. Despite those four Acts, the Welsh Government is always demanding more. Recently, it was the devolution of justice and a demand that limits on Welsh borrowing be removed, with less UK restraints on the Welsh Treasury than the EU provided for Greece. When, Minister, will your demands ever cease? Why must we be dragged in the wake of Scotland as if their history and outlook is ours? And if devolution is always a process and there can only ever be more of it, then, how can people ever become comfortable with it? If devolution is not stable and not sustainable, won't we, sooner or later, have to end it? Surely, we must ultimately abolish this place or sleepwalk to independence.

I call the Counsel General to respond—Jeremy Miles.

Thank you, Llywydd. And, here we are again today, with a baseless argument—that what Wales needs now, amid a number of global crises, is less democratic accountability, and that we should abolish this Parliament and any concept of modern Wales.

We are part, of course, of a union—a voluntary union—of four nations, but the coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated, in particular, that this nation is benefiting from the fact that this Senedd can make decisions that are appropriate for the people of Wales: for our public services, our health service, and our economy, although the Member's contribution has been entirely misleading on many of those elements, as we all know.

In addition to that, as the First Minister said recently, it is clear that our voice doesn't have much influence on the current UK Prime Minister. The Westminster Government is, at best, heedless in terms of devolution, and, at worst, entirely opposed to it. As the approach to Brexit and the coronavirus has demonstrated, the Westminster Government follows very different priorities to the priorities of Wales. It's only this Parliament, in that context, that has the democratic mandate and powers to stand up for Wales.

This relates to more than the pandemic or Brexit alone. It is pertinent to the full range of powers that are devolved. Decisions made in Wales by this Parliament can reflect our history, our culture, our language, as well as our environment, our people and our national aspirations.

Devolution has more than won its place in the constitutional landscape of the UK. It is legally established and it has been supported in two referenda. In the second of these, we saw an increase in the majority in favour of enhanced powers for our Senedd.

It's still surprising to me that a Member who has preached on the need to respect the result of a referendum on the European Union is now trying to overturn recent democratic decisions. The appropriate way of doing that, of course, would be to win a mandate in the Senedd elections in May, forming a Government, gaining the confidence of the Parliament on the issue, and requesting a referendum from the UK Government.    

A similar mandate, incidentally, would be required for those who seek to take Wales out of the United Kingdom. We don't want that to happen for the reasons that I outlined earlier. A strong Wales that has its voice heard and its needs reflected—and certainly better heard and reflected than today—in a strong UK is what we want to see. Now is not the time, so soon after the UK Government has taken us out of our European family of nations, neither to separate further nor, as the Member seeks, to curtail our democracy in Wales.

Independence is, of course, the path that the current Scottish Government seeks to take for its people. We don't want to see Scotland leave the union, though we respect the right of Scottish people to make that decision. If it did happen, we would need to fundamentally revisit Wales's relationship with England. But, the surest way to lead to a dissolution to the union is simply a defence of the status quo. Let me be clear: there is no case for the status quo. As a recent Financial Times editorial put it, Britain's constitution is a mess. The union itself is in peril. The best way to support the union and its constitution is, contrary to the Member's theme, to respect and, in fact, to extend the devolution of power to Wales and across the UK.

Yet, the UK Government has inflicted constitutional vandalism upon various powers, most recently—despite, I should say, the valiant efforts of the House of Lords—through the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, which threatens to constrain the legislative space for the Senedd in areas that are currently devolved. It threatens the Government of Wales Act 2006, and a reduction in devolved power, all at the whim of the UK Government. It's an appalling state of affairs that I have been compelled, as law officer, even to contemplate seeking the intervention of the courts.

I do want to acknowledge the long programme of work between the four Governments on co-operation within the UK in that area, and I pay tribute to civil servants in all nations, and our partners and stakeholders, for the efforts that they have made to ensure that we have had in place the common frameworks for the end of the transition period. But that collaborative spirit certainly was not reflected in the actions of the Johnson Government in its unilateral imposition of this legislation. As well as ignoring the Senedd's refusal to consent to the internal market Act 2020, UK Government didn't even bother to give any of the legislatures in the UK sufficient time to scrutinise the legislation—a fresh constitutional outrage, particularly given that the European Union (Future Relationship) Act 2020 is one of the most important constitutional statutes of recent history. The full effects of it will only become clear in the medium term. The UK Government has broken the Sewel convention, and we as a Government will continue to ensure that the Senedd can exercise its right to scrutinise legislation within our devolved competence, but we bitterly regret that we cannot guarantee that the Senedd's consent will be respected. 

Llywydd, I fear I've painted a bleak picture, so let me finish on a more positive note. The pandemic has shown Wales acting at its best, as a confident and caring nation that can collaborate within the UK and internationally, whilst also making its own decisions for its own people—through the worst of times, we have supported each other, and because we are part of the UK and because we have the devolved powers to respond to the needs of our citizens and communities. The Welsh Government is, I would say, at the forefront of creative, constructive constitutional thinking in the UK because we believe in Wales in a reformed union, and as we adjust to life outside the European Union and, before too long, to life after coronavirus, shared governance of the UK has never been more important. That's what we set out in 'Reforming our Union' in 2019—20 propositions for public debate for a more ambitious, more democratic constitutional future. We don't pretend to have all the answers—no one has, incidentally—but we believe we've asked the right questions, and it's time that we came together now as politicians and as civil society to answer those questions and offer a path of radical reform that meets the needs of today and tomorrow's Wales.

I thank the Counsel General, and that concludes that debate and brings our proceedings to a close. Good afternoon.

The meeting ended at 16:42.