2. Will the First Minister make a statement on the status of inter-governmental relationships between the Welsh Government and UK Government? OQ56457

Llywydd, the relationships continue to be, too often, unpredictable, ad hoc, disrupted by aggressively unilateral actions by the UK Government, and without the necessary underpinning of machinery for inter-governmental co-operation required to preserve the UK and enable it to prosper as a voluntary association of four nations.

First Minister, you like to blame the UK Government for problems or aggression in the relationship, but shouldn't you take some responsibility? You chose to have yourself filmed saying the Prime Minister is really, really awful. How does that help bring the UK Government to the table? You've concluded the UK is over; you're running candidates who support independence at the coming election. This morning, one of your Ministers supported BBC Wales appointing an ex-chief executive of Plaid Cymru as its director of content. Wasn't the Secretary of State right to tell me last week that this is all about you palling up with Plaid Cymru with a view to a coalition after the election, and, so long as we have devolution, we will be on a slippery slope to independence?

Well, Llywydd, the Welsh Government has, time after time, for a decade, under the leadership that my predecessor, Carwyn Jones, gave to this whole agenda, argued for a constitutional convention to put the United Kingdom on a footing that would allow it to prosper in the future, and that is my position and the position of my party. We believe that the United Kingdom is better off for having Wales in it and that Wales is better off for being in the United Kingdom. There's no ambiguity at all in our position. What we lack is a UK Government willing to act in a way that recognises that, 20 years into devolution, attempting to bring devolved Governments to heel rather than to bring us closer together, will ever be a recipe for securing the continuation of a successful United Kingdom.

Time after time, both Carwyn Jones and I have urged UK Ministers to enter into the serious conversations that are needed to establish inter-governmental machinery, to find independent means of resolving and avoiding disputes between the nations, to do that on the basis of a parity of participation and of respect. Instead, we face a UK Government that unilaterally and aggressively takes funding, takes powers away from devolved Governments across the United Kingdom and, in its everyday actions, feeds the forces that will lead to the United Kingdom's break-up, unless the United Kingdom Government is prepared to recognise the foolishness of its approach and instead to follow the sorts of arguments and constructive proposals that the Welsh Government has consistently brought to this debate. 

First Minister, can I ask you about positive steps that you can take in working with the UK Government to make Wales a safer place for everyone? I, along with many other Members and people across Wales, lit up my doorstep on Saturday evening to support the Reclaim the Streets campaign, not just to pay my respects to Wenjing Lin and Sarah Everard, but also to show a commitment to making our communities across Wales a safer place. You've just mentioned communities. Much more action is needed now to help women and people feel safer in our communities. Can you confirm that the Welsh Government will do what it can to positively collaborate with the UK Government on this specific issue? And could you also tell us a little bit more about the steps that Welsh Government is taking to empower women and to reassure people that they are safe in communities across Wales? 

Well, Llywydd, I thank Nick Ramsay for that very serious and pertinent question, and of course the Welsh Government will act positively and constructively with other Governments in the United Kingdom. Women in Wales and elsewhere in the United Kingdom must be safe and feel safe. And if that's to happen in Wales, then that can only be with a combination of services that are devolved and non-devolved. If the UK Government wants a constructive conversation and engagement on that issue, then, of course, they will find a ready partner for that here. 

In terms of the actions that we can take, these were set out in the statement issued earlier today by my colleague Jane Hutt, the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip, who has dedicated her whole political career to advancing the causes of women and girls here in Wales. I commend the statement to Members of the Senedd. It sets out the actions that we, as a Welsh Government, will embark upon and, as I say, in answering Nick Ramsay, where others are willing to act with us in a genuinely collaborative fashion, we will always—we will always—be prepared to do that in the most constructive way. 

First Minister, I cannot over-emphasise how deeply I disagree with everything Mark Reckless now stands for. It seems to me that one of the main barriers to good inter-governmental relations between Wales and England is the largely defunct role of Secretary of State for Wales. The incumbent, Simon Hart, has said recently that the Welsh Government should

'stop fretting about their own little status in Cardiff and...look at the bigger picture'.

Would you agree with me that the bigger picture we need to look towards, before we achieve the independence that will empower us, is actually to abolish the role of Welsh Secretary, seeing as his Government and he are so intent on undermining the devolution that the people of Wales have voted for on no less than 14 occasions, through two referendums and delivering pro-devolution majorities in every election since 1997?

Well, Llywydd, I certainly agree with Delyth Jewell that I have no sympathy at all with what Mr Reckless stands for or proposes. I often feel, when that Member is asking me questions, that what he's really doing is he's accusing me of being Welsh. And it's an accusation, Llywydd, to which I plead guilty, of course—inside out, back to front, upside down; you name it, that's what I am. The Member, I'm afraid—Mr Reckless—will never understand that, and it leads to the misguided sets of ideas that he puts in front of us.

On the issue of the Secretary of State's office, I have long believed—I've believed for more than a decade, while there were Labour Governments as well as Conservative Governments—that the continued case for territorial Secretaries of State, as they are called, has diminished year by year. I think there is a case for a Whitehall ministry that takes a constructive responsibility for relationships between the nations of the United Kingdom. I think that's a proper ambition. But territorial Secretaries of State are a hangover from pre-devolution days and, as I say, I agree with Delyth Jewell that the case for them weakens all the time, and is certainly weakened when any incumbent of that office uses the sort of belittling and demeaning language that we've seen from the Secretary of State for Wales.