, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Well, Chair, the Welsh Government’s approach in the immediate run is, as I said, to do everything we can to continue to benefit from the investment we have made over an extended period in having close and productive relationships with our European Union…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Using the same spirit that I thought the Prime Minister successfully mobilised to create the Windsor framework, we ought to be able to do better on Erasmus+. Erasmus+ is available for membership for countries that are outside the European Union. There are…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
What I want to see in the short term is those things that we were hoping to see after the Windsor framework that have not been delivered. When the Windsor framework was agreed, I, as it happened, was in Brussels on that very day, and I met many people in…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Well, Chair, we work hard as a Government to try and strengthen the relationship between ourselves and other stakeholders within the European Union. But, outwith the European Union, we can't do many of the things that we could do when we were members of the…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Well, I hesitate to advise, of course. If I were, I'd suggest two things, really. One is that better attention might be paid to the process by which subordinate legislation fills in the gaps in framework legislation. Is it the negative? Is it the affirmative?…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
I've always argued that we cannot treat ourselves more favourably than we are able to treat other aspects of Welsh public life, and, in an era of austerity, that has a genuine impact on our ability to have capacity to do all the things we would like to do…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Caredig—generous. We're not willing to be more generous to us as a Government than we could be to any other aspect of public services.
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Well, I thank Adam Price for those questions. Well, after more than a decade of austerity, the problem of resources runs across Government. So, it's not just in terms of legislation but it affects everything that we do. When I was Minister for finance, I…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
No, that's not how the system works at all if truth be told. The process at Westminster is quite a secretive one. We hear on the day of the King's Speech. So, there will be a phone call coming from someone within the UK Government to explain to us what will…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Thank you very much for that question. I will be careful in answering, because it's not for me as First Minister to tell the Senedd how the Senedd should interact with any other body. I can say that when the issue arises, and it did arise in the context of…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Absolutely. I entirely agree with that. My own account of this would be that for the most part of devolution we have lived with different Governments at Westminster who had a fundamental respect for the devolution settlement. Since 2019 what we have seen is…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
I think those are really interesting ideas, and I'm certainly not opposed to exploring them, but I would probably want to solve the problem in a different way. Because we could reform the LCM process in the way that Alun Davies has suggested, or we could go…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
I think that is our experience. I think it's been our experience in the whole of devolution, and it hasn't mattered that much which party is in power in Westminster. Part of the Whitehall machine is just more familiar with what goes on in devolved…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
—and when they do, that is, I think, a clear example of a democratic deficit, because consent has been denied. And the Sewel convention should mean that, in that instance, those clauses are removed and the UK Parliament does not legislate. When they do, it…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Thank you for the question, of course. Here's my response to the whole business of UK Bills being used to legislate in devolved areas. I'm going to give you three different sorts of ways that happens—two of which, I agree, lead to a democratic deficit and…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
I acknowledge the points that Adam Price made at the end, in terms of testing the process that we currently have, but the fact that the Scottish Government has yet to raise anything does demonstrate, I think, the importance of being careful in terms of…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
'We don't recognise that there is a dispute.' So, we never got into any dispute resolution process, because they wouldn't admit it into the process. The process was not the current process, however; the process was under the old Joint Ministerial Committee…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
And the response that we received from the UK Government was:
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
'Here is a matter we dispute.'
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Chair, the problem was with the funding provided by Theresa May's Government to Northern Ireland—the bung. Do you remember the £1 million bung? When that happened, I wrote, as did the Scottish Government, to Theresa May's Government, raising the issue and…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Well, I'm obviously very happy to continue to make that case with my own party colleagues. It would require a UK Government to define what it meant by 'not normally'; it would have to set out in a document the thought process it goes through in coming to that…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Well, first of all, Chair, I think the Welsh Government makes strenuous efforts, and often uphill efforts, to try to reach a point where we can get an agreement with the UK Government on Bills where the UK Parliament will legislate in a devolved area. But the…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Well, I suppose the most general point to make is that, for me, the circumstances would be last-resort circumstances. I don't want to have to be using dispute resolution mechanisms, and the whole of the inter-governmental relations review was about dispute…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Well, I thank Adam Price for that question. Just to say at the outset that I don't want to suggest that nothing will happen over the coming months. There will be things going on. There will be meetings held under the new agreement, the British-Irish Council…
, Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee
Scrutiny session with the First Minister
Which one? [Laughter.] Well, look, the good news is that the head of the independent secretariat has been appointed. And from our point of view, maybe even better news is that the person—. It was a competitive process, independently run, and it was a member…
