6. Statement by the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution: Interim Report of the Independent Commission on the Constitutional Future of Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:09 pm on 31 January 2023.

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Photo of Mick Antoniw Mick Antoniw Labour 5:09, 31 January 2023

Thank you, Rhianon, for those comments. The commission has set out a programme of much deeper engagement, much deeper consultation, and the establishment of groups within communities with which it will engage, and I know that that was one of the points that I raised and others raised when we met with them—'How are you going to go about it?' There was clearly a lot of work and a lot of thought about it. And we all know from our own engagement with our communities that it's not an easy process. People who are disengaged from civic society in that way are difficult to engage with—they have dropped out for a particular reason—but I'm confident that they are clearly addressing it, and that they will be doing some very, very different things and ways of doing it. 

In terms of our discussions, this is a challenge for all of us, isn't it? How do we turn these debates, which are about how people can influence matters, influence the decisions that affect their lives, into more than technical discussions? Well, look this happened—we only have to look through history. It has happened before. The Chartists—what was that? That was about constitutional reform; it was about almost nothing else other than constitutional reform. The establishment of democracy is about constitutional reform. Keir Hardie, on the Labour Representation Committee before the establishment of the Labour Party, talked about home rule, constitutional things, because they recognised the importance in terms of identifying where power was and how you could exercise and democratise it. 

So, that is the core, I think, of the debate that we're having and that we must have and I think will be underpinning many of the future discussions that we're going to have on this very, very important issue. I'm glad that we've been able to have this hour. I'm grateful for the generosity of the Llywydd for allowing this debate to take place in this way, but this is really only the start of that work, I think.