Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution – in the Senedd at 2:39 pm on 1 March 2023.

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Photo of Mick Antoniw Mick Antoniw Labour 2:39, 1 March 2023

Thank you for that question, and it's a very important question, and it's a very difficult question to answer. If I start, perhaps, with the resource part first, it's very difficult to say what the precise resources are. These are conversations and discussions that I will be having. I've been having discussions; they are ongoing. It's a bit difficult to evaluate the resources that are necessary to deal with what we don't know. There is so much we don't know in terms of, firstly, what the UK Government is going to do in those aspects of retained law. We obviously have to analyse ourselves, and I've obviously been looking at a list of all the Welsh retained EU law that we would want to consider. It's difficult to consider what might happen to that, because, to some extent, that depends on what decisions might be taken in England, because so many of these areas relate to, for example, issues of enforcement, common governance and so on.

So, there are many unknown factors that are actually involved. So, we're trying to do that evaluation. We're also uncertain precisely as to what the precise nature of the Bill is going to be. The view of the Welsh Government is that the Bill should be withdrawn. It serves actually no real purpose whatsoever. It is really the most appalling way of dealing with legislation. The idea that you can suddenly just wipe out thousands of pieces of legislation by a particular deadline without any real time to consider what the implications of those are and what the implications are for devolution—.

The House of Lords is currently discussing the Bill. So, it's at Committee Stage; it will go to Report Stage within a couple of weeks. There are obviously areas there where we would like to see amendments being made to it. We'd like particularly the issue of concurrent powers to be resolved, that UK Government will not exercise powers in respect of devolved areas without consent of the Welsh Government. I think the other area is, of course, in terms of the time period. If UK Government has a get out of jail card in respect of being able to extend the sunset deadline, we will ask for that as well. Why should we not have that exact opportunity as well? So, there are many factors to this Bill that are undecided at this stage, and the issue of resources is going to be a significant one. I'm sure there will be further questions to me on it. I will update the Senedd, of course, in due course, when I'm able to say more about precisely what is going to happen, and it may well be a couple of weeks yet before we know the precise format of the Bill.