Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:09 pm on 25 October 2022.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:09, 25 October 2022

Llywydd, the issue of whether Wales should be independent is a matter for people in Wales, and I've always said that if a party were to put that as a prospect in a manifesto and they were to win a majority of seats here in the Senedd, then, of course, if people choose that course of action, then that is the democratic will of people in Wales. Their voice is the important one—not mine, whether I think it's right or wrong. Where I will agree with the leader of Plaid Cymru is this: that if the political geometry of the United Kingdom were to alter, if one of its constituent parts were to choose a different future, that doesn't leave what remains untouched. You would have to have a very serious set of discussions about how Wales's future could best be designed in those different circumstances, and it's why, as the leader of Plaid Cymru knows, we have established our own constitutional commission to help us to think about what choices there would be available to Wales in those circumstances. Independence could be one of them, as it has been ever since his party was established and ever since it's put that prospect in front of the people of Wales. So far, people have not been persuaded of that, and there will be alternative futures that others of us would rather advocate. But that's the right place for these decisions to be debated; they're not for me as First Minister or even for political parties here to make that determination. Just as the leader of Plaid Cymru said there was an unanswerable case for a general election to determine the future economic direction of the United Kingdom, so it would be an unanswerable need for such decisions of the sort that he's outlined this afternoon to be made by the people who put us here.