4. Will the First Minister make a statement on the work of the Joint Ministerial Committee? OQ56481

I thank Carwyn Jones for the question. Just to say,

the JMC is a disappointment, and one that is of the UK Government’s making. It hasn’t met in plenary forum since 2018, when he last attended on behalf of Wales, and has not been convened once as the forum to craft a four-nation response to the public health crisis. 

Thank you for that answer, First Minister. Do you share my disappointment that the UK Government has buried the publication of the Dunlop review, which will contribute so much to the inter-governmental machinery we have here in the UK? Does he share with me the need to have a proper system where decisions can be taken across the UK by Governments working together? Does he agree with me there needs to be an unbiased dispute resolution process, which we don't have at the moment, and a better way where we can work with our friends in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland?

I'm aware of the fact that this is the last time that I will be speaking in the Senedd. This will not be the last time I express a view, I'm sure, on this issue. First Minister, do you look forward to a day when the UK has a proper constitution, a proper structure, a time when the rule of law is enshrined in the law and not simply a convention, and a time when Wales is a full and equal partner in the governance of the UK?

Llywydd, I think it is absolutely fitting that the last time that the former First Minister takes part in First Minister's questions that he should revert to a subject on which he has for a decade led the debate across the United Kingdom. I absolutely congratulate him on that. We are very much indebted to him for the legacy that we now draw on. 

He's absolutely right about the Dunlop review. I remember talking to the then Prime Minister, Mrs May, about her reasons for establishing the Dunlop review. I gave evidence to the Dunlop review myself. I want to pay tribute as well to the contributions that Lord Dunlop made during the passage of the internal market Bill through the House of Lords. Had the Government been wise enough to take his advice then, we would not be in the desperately difficult position that we are in as a result of that unconstitutional piece of legislation. 

The Prime Minister's had the Dunlop review for well over a year, and yet he refuses to allow it to be published out of Downing Street. And the reason he refuses is, I suspect, because it offers a very different prescription for the future of the United Kingdom, a prescription very much as Carwyn Jones has outlined: one based on the principles of parity of participation, mutual respect, independence in dispute avoidance and resolution, and a constitution that is enshrined and embedded in the law, and does not rest in the hands of one of the four nations of the United Kingdom.

As well as burying the Dunlop review, this Government has now taken over three years to complete the inter-governmental review that was commissioned at the last JMC plenary that Carwyn Jones attended. How is it possible to have confidence that the UK Government is genuinely interested in securing a future for the United Kingdom when, at every opportunity it has to do something positive and constructive in that direction, to describe its actions as tardy would be to put the most generous possible construction on the way in which they behave?

First Minister, since you took office in December 2018 you've been a constant critic of the UK Government. You, in fact, have not just been critical, but you've regularly tried to undermine the UK Government's policy, particularly with regard to Brexit, and you recently described the Prime Minister Boris Johnson as being awful. That's not conducive to having a positive working relationship between Ministers. Do you accept that, in order for the next Welsh Government to have a decent working relationship with the UK Government, people will need to vote Conservative in May?

Llywydd, a vote for the Conservative Party in May is a vote to hand Wales over to Whitehall, because that is the policy of the UK Conservative Government. It is to roll back devolution wherever it can, to put us back in our place, taking on devolved Governments instead of working with us. I am critical of the UK Government, of course I am, but I do it because I am a firm believer in the future of the United Kingdom, and yet we have a Government at Westminster who every day stokes the fires of nationalism because of the utterly disrespectful way in which it treats other nations of the United Kingdom, because of its failure to discharge the most basic obligations, such as publishing the Dunlop review and concluding the inter-governmental relations review.

There is so much that can be done, and I think this Welsh Labour Government, under the leadership of Carwyn Jones and in the time that I've been First Minister, has led the way in putting positive and constructive proposals forward as to how the United Kingdom can go on being a success. That is what I want to see. The neglect of that by the UK Government, their belief that the way to deal with the United Kingdom is to roll back the history of the last 20 years, and to do so in a way that is characterised by aggressive unilateralism on their part, is a recipe for the break-up of the United Kingdom. That's why I'm critical of the UK Government, because it is sleepwalking us all into a future in which the very thing I want to see avoided becomes more likely.

First Minister, I'm sure that you and the Counsel General have raised in the JMC the question of Erasmus+. Given the hugely disappointing decision by the UK Government to turn their back on this highly successful programme of learning exchanges, would you agree with me that the Welsh Government's announcement that it is to fund a new reciprocal learning programme for the whole of the next Senedd term is a massive boost for young people in Wales? 

Llywydd, can I thank Lynne Neagle for that? I very well remember being at a meeting of the JMC on European negotiations when the then Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, David Lidington, asked us to contribute to a list of those European Union organisations to which we would wish to remain in membership after we had left the European Union itself. Membership of Erasmus+ is available to countries far beyond the European Union, and I can assure the Member that it was always at the top of the list of things that we argued for, alongside Scotland, alongside Northern Ireland, to make sure that those opportunities remained available to young people here in Wales. And it was an act of straightforward cultural vandalism of the UK Government to turn its back and, more importantly, to refuse to offer to young people across the United Kingdom the ongoing opportunities that Erasmus+ would provide.

We've continued to make the case—we've argued and argued that it's not too late for the United Kingdom to take up that opportunity—and it's only the UK Government that has refused to do that, and the European Commission is clear that without unanimity amongst the four UK nations, they're not able to offer us that opportunity. That's why we made the announcement we did at the weekend, an announcement of which I'm enormously proud: a multi-annual programme that guarantees for the whole of the next Senedd term our young people will be able to travel abroad, work abroad, study abroad, and that young people from elsewhere in the world will come here to Wales. We get so much more out of that than we put into it.

I recently attended on St David's Day an event with Seren students in the United States of America—four young people from Wales studying at Harvard, Yale, Chicago and Princeton universities, Ivy League universities every one of them. They sat there in their rooms with a Welsh flag behind them. They are ambassadors for Wales every single day, and the young people who will come to Wales and the young people who will go from Wales to 50 different countries now, as a result of this scheme, will be our finest ambassadors. I couldn't be prouder of the fact that we now have given them those opportunities and we should all be proud of them as well.