however, memorandum No. 5 was only laid last Friday afternoon, meaning it has not been subject to scrutiny by any Senedd committee. This is clearly frustrating, as my colleague John Griffiths, Chair of my fellow committee, has mentioned, and it's regrettable.

While our two reports comment on specific provisions in the Bill, this afternoon I will focus on the extensive commentary in our reports on the overall Welsh Government’s approach to seeking to using a UK Government-proposed Bill passing through a different Parliament in a different place to legislate for Wales on wholly devolved matters—again, a matter referred to also in his remarks by my fellow Chair, John Griffiths, today. This is a familiar refrain, I know, to Welsh Government Ministers and to this Senedd, and in fact the Minister today said he recognised this in his opening remarks. I sometimes feel that secretly Ministers do agree with us in their quiet moments as they rest their heads on their pillow, and at some point they're going to move to explicitly saying that and acting in that way as well.

We're concerned with the cumulative constitutional implications of the Welsh Government’s approach, and it's not just because of the potential impact on devolution, regardless of issues over expediency and so on. But it's also in terms of the accessibility of law for our citizens. Now, I know that the Minister herself is unable to be with us this afternoon but, with regards to the Minister’s comments to us previously that many building control professionals work in both England and Wales and that there is therefore merit in similar provisions being applicable in both nations, we get that, but we do not see why commonality of law across England and Wales could not be achieved by a Senedd Bill, with the full scrutiny referred to by my fellow Chair. We're also unclear as to how requesting provisions for Wales in a UK Bill, as well as planning for a future Welsh Bill to deal with other matters relating to building safety, is in step with the Welsh Government’s own commitment to improve the quality and the accessibility of bilingual Welsh law. It's a principle the Government stands on. We want to see them standing by that.

Now, the Minister did cite to us—our committee—capacity issues in Welsh Government as one reason for using UK Bills to legislate for Wales. But we just are not convinced by this argument to allocate resources to support the development and passage of the UK Bill through the UK Parliament rather than allocating those resources to bring forward a Welsh Bill, even simultaneously, though our Senedd. We find the reasoning and approach confusing, given that Welsh Government officials would have developed the policy instructions for the relevant bespoke clauses in the Bill, and subsequently commented on draft clauses prepared by the UK Government’s legal counsel anyway. Furthermore, it is clear that inter-governmental working has continued whilst the Bill is progressing through the UK Parliament, which will also, in itself, have had time and resource implications.

Now, the Welsh Government is aware that we remain deeply concerned about its capacity, if this is an issue, to bring forward primary legislation, and we are pursuing this issue across the Welsh Government as a whole. But we also have concerns that the Welsh Government may, in pursuing this approach, have missed another opportunity to utilise the justice system we already have in Wales to deal with, for example, such matters that may be dealt with by the New Homes Ombudsman scheme provisions, which are detailed in memorandum No. 3.

Let me turn now to the issue of what we see as an emerging democratic deficit caused by explicit Welsh Government legislative choices. In our second report we noted that a number of amendments have been made to the Bill that mean that the Welsh Ministers will now have a consultative role before certain regulation-making powers are exercised by the Secretary of State. As we've said in many other reports on Welsh Government legislative consent memoranda for UK Bills, a role for the Welsh Ministers, whether that be a consultative or a consenting role, before a UK Minister exercises a regulation-making power contained in a UK Bill, does not address the inherent democratic deficit that means that the Senedd is excluded from shaping and agreeing to law that will apply in Wales. We stand strongly by this.

Recommendation—. Llywydd, my apologies, I've gone slightly over; I'll draw my conclusions quickly here. Recommendation 1 in our first report asked the Minister to seek amendments to the Bill to ensure that the Welsh Ministers are given equivalent commencement powers relating to the provisions for Wales to those already given to the Secretary of State, so that Welsh Ministers are fully in control of when the provisions for Wales come into force. So, we are disappointed with the Minister's response to that recommendation that she doesn't consider this necessary and would not pursue such amendments. We just don't see that relinquishing this control is appropriate, and there is a contrast here with the approach taken by other Ministers in other Bills within this Senedd term. But, as we stated, we respectfully disagree with the overall decision to use a UK Bill to address building safety in Wales, regardless of expediency or resources, for the reasons we've given. Whatever assessments may have been undertaken as regards the practical benefits of seizing the opportunity shouldn't outweigh the democratic mandate of the Senedd and the consequential accountability of Welsh Government to this Senedd. So, we remain deeply concerned at that approach in many Bills.

Llywydd, our report on memorandums No. 3 and No. 4 for this Bill was the twenty-sixth report on legislative consent memoranda that our committee has laid in seven months. We're shortly due to lay our twenty-seventh. Now, these statistics, just to note, aren't particularly welcome, but they need to be highlighted, because the vast majority of legislation currently being made for Wales is not being made in Wales.