Simplistic assertions that independence offers a magic solution by which all problems will be resolved just don't meet that challenge. But those who have nothing more to offer beyond flag-waving renditions of the British song are even more culpable. The United Kingdom will not be saved by that sort of vacuous symbolism. Still less can it be secured by the deliberate provocations of the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, the removal of powers and funds, the repeated overriding of the Sewel convention, the whole destructive repertoire of the aggressive unilateralism that is too often the hallmark of the present UK Government.

But, Dirprwy Lywydd, it does not have to be like this, as 'Reforming our Union' demonstrates. It revisits and restates our propositions for a successful, strong and durable United Kingdom. It casts these arguments in the new context created by events since its original publication in October 2019: the leaving of the European Union, a general election, the experience of navigating a global pandemic, the work of the radical federalism group, the establishment of a constitutional convention to be led by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and our own Welsh election in May of this year. And despite the complex and contested arena into which it is launched, at heart, 'Reforming our Union' sets out a formula for a union that can thrive and prosper, not in spite of devolution, but because of devolution.

It proceeds from the radical but simple proposition that, nearly 25 years into the devolution project, sovereignty is now dispersed amongst the four elected legislatures of the United Kingdom. That the United Kingdom can go on existing, not because there is a single sovereign body at Westminster, capable of overturning anything and everything that peoples in the four nations have decided for themselves, but because, as that highly distinguished constitutional reform group suggests, the peoples of the United Kingdom have chosen to continue to pool their sovereignty and to protect the social and economic rights that citizens in all parts of the United Kingdom have won—and hard won—for themselves.

Now, once this central proposition is grasped much flows from it: the permanency of devolution, other than by the decision, in our case, of the Welsh people; the redrawing of the reserved, devolved border; the codification and reduction in the scope of the Sewell convention; the reform and entrenchment of new machinery of government to bring the four nations together for common purposes; and a replacement of the Barnett formula with new arrangements, based on need and stripped of the arbitrary power of the Treasury that continues to mar the current settlement.

Dirprwy Lywydd, I want to say again today, as I did in 2019, that the 20 proposals set out in our document are not put forward on the basis that they contain all the answers. Publication is our contribution to a debate, a debate that is unavoidable and urgently needed. Here, the Welsh Government will set out before the summer recess how we will go about engaging directly with civil society and Welsh citizens on these matters, and 'Reforming our Union' will now be available in its updated form to inform that debate.