Thank you, Huw, for those comments, and also for the work your committee has done and the work that it will do. Of course, there are a lot of constitutional engagements taking place between the four nations of the UK at the moment, including on the issue of common frameworks, some of which are being considered by committees within this Senedd, and these frameworks, of course, were created on a co-operative basis in order to enable the four nations to work together in the post-Brexit environment. It was unfortunate that the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 came along to undermine them, but the common frameworks work is still ongoing, and we hope that that will begin to take some form of prescience.

The fact that there are significant constitutional problems and prescience is no surprise to us. Those of us who attended the inter-parliamentary forum, which I know you attend now and I've attended previously, on a cross-party basis—I think the chair of Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee then was Sir Bernard Jenkin—were consistently saying unanimously that the current relationships don't work, that there are major constitutional problems that need to be addressed. So, this is not something that is of partisan nature. The question is how you actually resolve those, and that is of course where differing views come in, and, again, I think it's why the work of the commission is so important.

If we take seriously our democracy in this country, if we take seriously the threats to it, the challenge to it, the challenges of participation or non-participation or how people perceive the political governance that we have within this country, if we fail to address that, we are really letting down future generations of people within Wales and within the United Kingdom. The reason why we have a specific Welsh commission is not in some form of nationalistic or isolationist process, but because it's important we explore ourselves our own role within that, and recognise where Wales fits within that and what those particular options are, in what is a very changing environment, particularly post Brexit.

You raise a number of issues with regard to inter-governmental relations that are really important. It's certainly true that there have been a lot of delays for a whole variety of reasons, which we are all familiar with, as to Government, particularly in Westminster, being able to get on with its job, and I don't think we've actually overcome all of those yet. But there are inter-governmental, inter-ministerial meetings now taking place. The meeting of the First Ministers and the Prime Minister, that took place and they've agreed a number of areas of work. The body below that, the Interministerial Standing Committee, is a body that will be meeting, in fact, tomorrow, and I will be chairing that on this occasion. We'll be looking at a whole host of those, so we will be reviewing the state of relations and the various issues around Sewel, around inter-governmental relations, around the implications of things like retained EU law and so on. I think that notification has obviously gone to you, as Chair of your committee, to inform you that that is taking place.

The point you made that was very important was that it's about exploring with the people of Wales, and you're absolutely right. The quality and the strength of the work the independent commission is doing will be dependent, to some extent, on the extent to which it is able to do that engagement. I was quite encouraged by the innovative ways and the different assemblies and groups and so on that are being set up to achieve that. We know it is not easy. But it is important for me that it does happen.

How will the UK Government react? Well, I suppose it depends which UK Government we're talking about. With the current UK Government, relations are difficult in the sense that the arrangements with regard to good processes for legislation are still not in place. Too much legislation is coming forward where there is no engagement. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill is a classic example: massive implications for us and very little engagement. The retained EU law Bill—a significant impact on us, on thousands of pieces of legislation, standards, environmental issues, and food standard issues and many other areas as well—is one where we were promised the world in terms of engagement, and the engagement was minimal. We still do not have any clear indications as to the scale. There is work that is going on between officials, so it is getting better. But all the issues we raised with regard to the sunset clause, with regard to concurrent powers, and so on, I raised a year ago, and they've still not been addressed. I will be pressing on those particular issues. 

How will the UK Government react? Well, I think a Government that takes seriously the governance of the UK and the hegemony within the UK has to take all of these seriously, and I hope that will be the case. It is, obviously, a difficult environment, but we will carry on working as co-operatively as we can, setting out the views we have from the Welsh Government in terms of the direction of the reform, what good parliamentary processes are, how democracy should work better, and we will give very serious consideration, as I know your committee will, once the independent commission's report has been published.