I welcome the committee’s conclusions on improvement to the legislative consent processes and hope we can continue to work collaboratively to further strengthen the Senedd’s ability to scrutinise legislation and collectively defend the devolution settlement. The UK Government’s repeated breaches of the Sewel convention are unacceptable and they display, I think, a lack of respect for this democratically elected institution and the people it represents. The First Minister and I expressed our deep concern at the inaugural meeting of the Interministerial Standing Committee in March and again at the meeting in June, and we called for the codification of the convention and the strengthening of reporting mechanisms to respective Parliaments. Since then, officials from all four Governments have been looking at the convention and principles for future working. Of course, the only way to conclusively protect the devolution settlement and safeguard the future of the United Kingdom is, in my view, to place the convention on a statutory and justiciable footing, and this is something that we continue to strongly pursue. As a Welsh Government, we will also do what we can to ensure that this legislature gets the opportunity to properly scrutinise UK legislation that engages the Sewel convention and requires our consent.

But late engagement from UK Government can bring extreme time pressures to this. The emergency energy Bill was a case in point. Early and effective engagement between the Welsh Government and the UK Government is essential in all areas of policy, but where the UK Government is going to propose legislation, this is absolutely vital. These are not small matters, and the UK Government must recognise the legitimate and sometimes time-consuming detailed analysis that the Welsh Government and this institution must undertake. It is also fair to say that inter-governmental relationships have not been strong over the last few months. The instability within UK Government has prevented full meaningful engagement and progress in many areas. But we now have a new Prime Minister and a new Cabinet. We are committed to building positive working relationships where we can, and now is the moment to reset those relationships and take a fresh look together at the challenging issues, including the cost-of-living crisis. For that, we need genuine, open engagement. The mechanisms agreed as part of the review of inter-governmental relations can take us some way, and I know that the committee has been monitoring how those mechanisms are actually working on the ground. So, it is clearly vital that we work to embed the new structures, but inter-governmental relations go beyond set-piece meetings and cannot be measured solely by the number of meetings that take place. So, all Governments must adhere to the spirit as well as the letter of the inter-governmental review.

Just a few comments, to finish, on justice. I’ve been very pleased to attend the committee to discuss matters pertaining to justice. The Welsh Government is absolutely clear that we agree with Lord Thomas’s conclusions that the justice system lets down the people of Wales and that justice should be devolved. We explore these issues in more detail in our ‘Delivering Justice for Wales’ report, which the Minister for Social Justice and I launched in May, and it provides the basis for further engagement. Justice is another area where the chaos that has riven the UK Government has had an impact on the progress we’ve been able to make. So, whilst recognising that the two Governments’ fundamental positions differ, we have sought to make changes where we can, and this has proved especially difficult with such a regularly and rapidly changing ministerial team in the Ministry of Justice. I think there have been, rather unbelievably, nine different justice Secretaries since the Conservatives came to power.

So, we'll continue to work with the UK Government to make positive changes, even if they fall at the margins, and there are good things to report with good examples, I believe, of collaborative working on justice within Wales. There are projects happening or in the pipeline that are already welcome and interesting. I know I’ve commented on some of these before, whether that’s the family drug and alcohol court pilot in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan, the Grand Avenues pilot in Caerau and Ely, or the women’s pathfinder whole-system approach and the 18 to 25 diversionary service. Now, none of these things will address the fundamental failings that I think we are increasingly identifying. This Government has made it clear that our commitment is to the devolution of policing and justice, and it is a commitment that we will continue to pursue because it is about the better delivery of policing and justice. In the meantime, I welcome the committee's engagement with these issues, and particularly its intention to pursue attendance from Ministry of Justice Ministers.

So, in drawing to a close, Dirprwy Lywydd, I'd like again to pay my tribute to the committee for their work across a particularly broad remit, and for publishing such a thorough and detailed annual report. I hope that we get to a stage where we do not have to go through the detail of the retained EU law Bill, but that's something that, unfortunately, I suspect we will have to do. Diolch yn fawr.