Constitutional Developments

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:50 pm on 19 January 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:50, 19 January 2021

Llywydd, from a Member who I believe is now in the fifth political party that he's joined since the last election, lectures on stability seem a little far-fetched. The way to debate Wales's constitutional future is to set out different propositions, to put them to the public, to make arguments in favour of them. The Welsh Labour Party and the Government that I represent will go on arguing that Wales's constitutional future is best secured through a form of radical federalism, in which the dispersal of sovereignty to four different, directly elected Parliaments in the United Kingdom is recognised, but where we choose to pool that sovereignty in order to more effectively secure common goals—an entrenched devolution settlement for a successful United Kingdom.

That is the ground that the Welsh Labour Party occupies, not the increasingly strident English nationalism of the Conservative Party here in Wales, and those candidates it appears willing to select on the basis that they will, to quote one of them, 'take a sledgehammer to the Senedd', and come here to campaign for the destruction of devolution. That appears to be the viewpoint of the modern Conservative Party in Wales, but nor will we support the idea of independence—a nineteenth-century idea to a twenty-first century problem. The real future, the constitutional future that the bulk of people in Wales want to see is proper, powerful, entrenched devolution with the advantages that continued membership of the United Kingdom brings to Wales.