Part of 2. Questions to the Counsel General and Minister for the Constitution – in the Senedd at 2:43 pm on 1 March 2023.
Thank you for the further question. Just to say, by way of starting off, all the issues and concerns, many of which the Member has raised and so on, have been raised at the Interministerial Standing Committee. I have raised those. I chaired the recent meeting and, of course, those things are being looked at at UK Government level, as part of the intergovernmental arrangements that we have. We'll have to wait and see what the outcome of those are.
In terms of pragmatic prioritisation, it does come back again to not knowing what you don't know, and obviously one thing we would clearly want to priortise is our own legislation—the legislation that's been approved by this Senedd. But, of course, the difficulty on that is also trying to understand when we're prioritising what the implications are when you don't know precisely what may happen on the other side on similar legislation at the UK Government level as well, and the way that may interreact or impact. I mentioned the example of enforcement earlier, because, often, there are common enforcement arrangements and so on, and so all those things have to be taken into account. Probably, I can't really tell you very much more than that at the moment. I've obviously attended quite a number of Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee meetings on this. It is very much work in progress at the moment, and I will, of course, do everything I can to answer further questions and update when we are clear about what is happening. There is a lot of work that is under way at the moment, trying to understand the extent, the 4,000 or so pieces of other legislation, aside from the Welsh legislation, which have to be evaluated and what are the parts that we want to prioritise, and if there are any ways of actually trying to streamline that process. Either way, it's not going to be easy. Either way, it is going to be chaotic and, no doubt, will lead to all sorts of unforeseen consequences, but we have to deal with it as it is at the moment. Until we know the final shape of the Bill, there are still quite a number of uncertainties.