When the UK Government first looked at a Wales Bill, the Secretary of State at the time approached the issue on the basis that he asked Whitehall departments what they thought should be devolved. Sure enough, we had the initial Bill that was based very largely on ignoring the 2011 referendum results and trying to ensure that the law in Wales diverged almost not at all from the law in England. It was a remarkable Bill because of the fact that literally nobody that I’m aware of actually supported it anywhere in this Chamber or outside.

So, we find ourselves looking now at the current Bill. I am not going to pretend to this Chamber that this Bill is everything that we would want. The Bill that I believe was a far superior Bill, a far clearer Bill, and a Bill that reflected the views of the people of Wales, was the draft Bill produced by this Government. What we have instead is a Bill that is unsatisfactory in many areas but does move ahead in others—but a Bill that has required a great deal of consideration by the Welsh Labour group here in terms of whether we would support it or not.

It was a long, detailed and finely balanced debate. We decided to look at the Bill as a package. Yes, there are some areas that are unsatisfactory, and there are areas that are yet to be addressed that will need to be addressed in the future. But, on balance, we took the decision to support the LCM this afternoon, although that decision hasn’t been easy.

It is important, Llywydd, that the people of Wales have a final say over the future of this institution and what it does, that it is enshrined in the constitution of the UK, and it’s the people of Wales who decide how this institution works, decide how many Members it has, and for them to decide what the electoral system of this institution is.

It’s also important that the Sewel convention, which, in Scotland, is enshrined in statute, also happens here in Wales. This is not an obscure constitutional point; it has resonance particularly on the Brexit debate. It is possible, for example, that the Supreme Court might say, ‘Well, actually, the Scottish Parliament has to give its consent to the article 50 process, because it has a Sewel convention enshrined in law. Wales doesn’t, so the National Assembly isn’t in the same situation’. We need to make sure that our constitutional position is identical to Scotland and Northern Ireland in advance of the next, probably, 10 years of debate that we will have over Brexit. So, ensuring that that constitutional ground is steady beneath our feet is important.

I welcome the movements made by the UK Government on energy, on transport, and on water, and in other areas they have moved forward. I welcome the fact that most of the ports will be devolved, apart from Milford Haven, for reasons that I expounded earlier on. And there are areas that will need to be revisited in the future. There are concerns about the limited scope of our powers and the impact of the restrictions in the new model. The weight of these concerns depends on an assessment of risk in relation to the ‘relates to’ test and the necessity test, and how far the Assembly’s future legislative ambitions are likely to hit against the limitations of these tests.

The UK Government will claim that this Bill provides greater certainty, but it would undermine that certainty if, within a few months or years, we find ourselves back in front of the Supreme Court asking the Supreme Court to take a decision as to where the boundary lies in terms of devolved powers.

There are positive aspects, including a clear devolution boundary in respect of devolved public authorities and explicit freedom to legislate on the private and criminal law. Minister of the Crown consents, whilst significantly reduced from the unacceptability of the draft Bill, still represent new constraints on the current settlement, although limited progress has been made on reducing the number of reservations: 217 in the draft Bill to 193 now—and some of those are pretty superficial. There are still areas where we didn’t see movement that we would have liked: the sale and supply of alcohol. There is no coherent reason put forward as to why the supply and sale of alcohol should be devolved in Scotland and Northern Ireland but not in Wales. No coherent argument has been put forward supporting that other than, ‘This the way it’s always been, tough luck.’ And that is not the way to address things in the future.

We know about the issue of the employment and industrial relations competence that we have at the moment. We saw what happened to that in the House of Lords last week: a draw in terms of the vote. It is not something that we welcome—to see what appears to be a restriction on competence. It may have been created by accident by the Supreme Court but is, nevertheless, something that we have had. And it’s not possible to conclude that the reserved-powers model—welcome though it is in theory—is fit for purpose in the long term, and one of the main reasons for this is justice and the jurisdiction.

There is no other country that I know of where two legislatures exist in the same jurisdiction. It’s unheard of anywhere else and it has an important practical effect. It is possible in the future that somebody might be arrested in Cardiff for something that is not an offence in Wales. It is possible that somebody might serve a sentence of imprisonment in a prison in England for something that isn’t an offence in England. That to me makes no sense at all as far as the future is concerned. It also confuses the public and the professions. We’re already having instances communicated to me by the Lord Chief Justice of lawyers turning up in Welsh courts and arguing the wrong law, because they assume the law is the same in both England and Wales. Simon Thomas, a few months ago, made reference to a constituent that he had spoken to. The constituent had brought legislation—an Act of Parliament—in front of him, which said that the Act of Parliament applied to England and Wales. But, of course, it only applied to England. The confusion that caused in the mind of a constituent—this is a very, very complicated way of dealing with something that is, in fact, very simple. But, of course, this complication is something that the UK Government have chosen to do.

The failure by the UK Government to engage with the fundamental questions of justice and the jurisdiction means that the Bill can’t be a sustainable, long-term settlement. The future of justice in Wales with the growing body of devolved Welsh law providing a distinct Welsh legal jurisdiction is too important to be ignored. That’s why we argued throughout the passage of the Bill that we need a commission to consider and report on the arrangements that need to be put in place to ensure we have a justice system in Wales that is fit for purpose and, of course, fit for the new devolution settlement. As the UK Government has been unwilling to take on that task, we will do so. The Welsh Government will make more announcements about this over the coming months.

That, however, is an argument for another day. Of more immediate concern to the public are these: the fiscal framework—I pay great tribute to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government for the work that he has put in in producing a fiscal framework that is, at worse, neutral and at best, we assess, slightly positive. But it was hugely important that, before we saw any substantial devolution of income tax, we ensured that Wales was not worse off as a result. He has secured that, and that is something that gives us great confidence as far as the future is concerned. And, of course, there are the implications of Brexit. We’re still not on an equal footing with the rest of the UK nations. There is still a real continued risk of visits to the Supreme Court and I strongly believe this will be the case until the issue of the jurisdiction is resolved.