Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:39 pm on 29 March 2022.
I very much hope that we will see a Welsh elections Bill soon in the Senedd, which will show once again how Senedd Cymru, the Welsh Parliament, puts people, rights and justice at the heart of all of our actions. I remember Adam Price telling me one once that fair play and justice are part of our DNA as Welsh people. Well, there's no fair play in this Bill. Nor was there fair play in the nationality Bill—a Bill that punishes refugees, that punishes Gypsies, Roma and Travellers. This Senedd consented to a part of that Bill. Rather than consenting, I think we should have sent a clear message to Westminster that we want nothing to do with Bills that ride roughshod over people's rights. The argument that we are consenting only to those sections that are within our devolution settlement is, in my view, a weak one. The fact that there are good parts of the Bill doesn’t make it worth us here supporting it. We in this Senedd can't separate ourselves from that bigger picture. One of my heroes, the poet and communist Niclas y Glais, said this:
'The world is bigger than Wales / I know that now / But I give thanks that Wales, though small, / Is part of a world so big.'
Because we are part of something so much bigger than just the devolved settlement, so much bigger than us here in Wales, we can’t hide behind our devolution settlement and say, ‘Well, we agree with the parts that relate to devolution’. Because at its heart, as you've said, Counsel General, this is a poor Bill. We don't need this Bill. This Bill has been designed to undermine people’s rights, and as a result, we in Plaid Cymru—and I'm proud of saying this—cannot consent to such a Bill. Thank you very much.