As the responsible committee for considering consolidation Bills, we were tasked with determining whether the Bill should proceed through the Senedd as a consolidation Bill. Our aim was to satisfy ourselves: that the scope of the consolidation is appropriate; that the relevant enactments have been included within the consolidation exercise; that the consolidation exercise is correct and the Bill only changes relevant enactments to the extent allowed by our Standing Orders; and, finally, that the Bill consolidates the law clearly and consistently. Before I say any more, I will confirm that we have concluded indeed, as the Minister said, that the Bill should proceed as a consolidation Bill.

We thank all those, including committee members, who helped inform our consideration of the Bill, including representatives of the Law Commission. Stakeholder concerns were raised with the Counsel General, and others, as outlined in our report. We are particularly grateful to the Counsel General and the Welsh Government legislative counsel for their constructive and quality engagement, and I look forward to receiving the Counsel General’s full written response to our report in due course. Our report focuses on matters that we believed to be key to our role in recommending to the Senedd whether the Bill should proceed as a consolidation Bill. Now, as Members will know, when the Bill was introduced to the Senedd last July, the UK Government had not yet provided the necessary consent for some provisions in the Bill. So, we asked the Counsel General to provide Members with an update this afternoon, and we welcome the confirmation that all the ministerial consents have now been received.

In trying to answer the question of whether the scope of the Bill is appropriate, we considered: the changes made on the recommendation of the Law Commission; the understanding of the current law and the Welsh Government’s reasoning for making changes; the changes being made to provisions in law introduced by the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2016; and the legislation that has been excluded from the consolidation exercise. As regards the changes made to existing law on the recommendation of the Law Commission, I will confirm for the record that we are satisfied with these changes. We welcome the fact that the Welsh Government and Cadw undertook a form of pre-introduction consultation. It's somewhat unfortunate that this pre-introduction work was undertaken at that time, on terms that meant that the Counsel General could not then consider it appropriate to make public the full details, but we understand that. But this is an aspect we're keen to learn from. So, our third recommendation is that the Welsh Government, and any other relevant arm's-length body, should undertake pre-introduction work with the known objective and expectation in future that full details will be made public at the same time that the relevant Bill is laid before the Senedd.

Moving on to changes that this Bill makes to provisions introduced by the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2016, the 2016 Act is the only Act being consolidated through the Bill that does not pre-date devolution in Wales; the Senedd itself scrutinised and passed this Act only six years ago. Now, we do not object to what the Bill proposes in this regard. However, we believe that such changes should be highlighted to the Senedd in a more transparent way, as we state in recommendation No. 4.

As well as paying close attention to what is in the Bill, we also took a keen interest in what is not in the Bill, in particular the exclusion of marine historic environment law. We are satisfied with the explanations provided by the Counsel General and his officials for why this decision has been made. However, we have recommended in recommendation 5 that, where the Welsh Government has taken a decision to deliberately exclude relevant law from a consolidation Bill, full reasoning should be provided in the explanatory material accompanying the Bill, including any justification based on legislative competence, and where the act of consolidating would involve more than what is permitted by Standing Order 26C. Many of these now are learning processes from the exercise we've been through.

Before closing, I would like to briefly mention two matters that are always of keen interest to my committee—the Government’s regulation-making powers and the importance of the Senedd’s role in making law for Wales. Through the Bill, the Welsh Government is giving up some regulation-making powers that it currently holds. At a time when concerns have been raised across parliaments about the balance of power tipping unfavourably towards governments and away from legislatures, we welcome the fact that the Government has identified what it considers to be unnecessary Executive powers. Conversely, the Bill also creates new regulation-making powers. Sections 81 and 163 of the Bill both contain new Henry VIII powers. In section 2(3) there is a new regulation-making power that will enable historic environment law to apply to buildings that have not previously been subject to such law. We concluded that further clarity on this new power is needed and, in recommendation 10, we asked the Counsel General to clarify whether section 2(3) of the Bill would still be compliant with human rights without the new regulation-making power. So, I thank the Counsel General for responding to this recommendation in the letter that was sent to us last Thursday, and for providing a very welcome explanation and clarification. The Counsel General has told us that, whilst it is the Government’s view that section 2(3) of the Bill would still be compliant with human rights without the new regulation-making powers, the Government also believes that the power strengthens the compliance of section 2(3). So, I also welcome the Counsel General’s further explanation as to why the new drafting constitutes a minor change to the law.

As for the importance of the Senedd’s role in making Welsh law, the Counsel General believes that the Senedd should revisit its own Standing Orders, so that a proper attempt can be made to ensure that efforts to consolidate Welsh law are not subsequently and inadvertently undone. The Counsel General has acknowledged that it is not just the Welsh Government that can bring forward legislative proposals in Wales, so, for that reason, in our recommendation 13, we call on the Business Committee to consult with Members of the Senedd, with Senedd committees and the Senedd Commission when conducting any review of the Senedd’s Standing Orders that relate to new requirements or restrictions on how the Senedd considers legislative proposals within a consolidated area of law.