Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:17 pm on 13 December 2022.
Thank you very much, and I'd like to thank Members for their contributions to this debate, particularly Huw Irranca-Davies as Chair of the LJCC, and other members of that committee as well, and I absolutely understand and appreciate the concerns that have been raised by all Members who contributed in this debate. I will certainly endeavour to ensure this does not happen again, and certainly those discussions I will be continuing to have with officials. And I'm grateful to the Chair of the LJCC for the two meetings we held over the last 24 hours. So, thank you very much for that.
I've already committed to bringing forward amendments to the regulations in the new year, and I will do that as soon as is practicable, and I commit to changing the negative to affirmative procedure, which the Chair requested I do. As I said, the changes made by these regulations are required to ensure that the vast programme of previous corrective SIs operate within the correct reference to the EU directives that aid their function, and they will help traders by providing a consistent set of controls across Great Britain, whilst also safeguarding Welsh Ministers' ability to diverge in future, if they should wish to do so. The changes are important to ensure that we have minimal disruption to imports, when the transitional staging period ends at the end of the year and new import controls apply fully to EU imports, once phasing in of the import checks is complete, in line with the UK Government's future borders target operating model. The regulations have been designed following an extensive review by officials of EU law that was, until now, not part of our statute book—laws that are really essential for the proper functioning of our border controls, which in turn protect both public and animal health and welfare here in Wales, and I would ask Members to support. Diolch.