‘Westminster has ignored Wales during Brexit crisis’ – Carwyn
FIRST Minister Carwyn Jones has urged the UK Government to dump its opposition to full participation in the EU Single Market as the way to defuse what he described as the worst political crisis he had seen.
Giving an update yesterday to AMs on the Brexit situation, he said: “It is a crisis that could have been avoided. It is a crisis rooted in a reluctance to be honest about the difficult trade-offs needed in the negotiations, and an unwillingness to build a broad consensus, including with the devolved administrations, about the approach to the unprecedented challenges of leaving the EU.
“Now, of course, we have the hardline Brexiteers in the Conservative Party who are actively working to bring about a ‘no deal’ outcome, seeking to deepen the political crisis still further with a leadership election.”
Mr Jones said it was “shameful” that the UK Government had used EU and UK citizens as a “tactical pawn in what is a party-political chess game”.
Mr Jones said the real failure of Theresa May’s deal was the “worrying lack of progress in and lack of clarity of the political declaration”.
He said: “What has the UK Government been doing for the last two years? We have no idea what the UK’s future relationship with our largest and most influential trading partner will look like. The reason for this is that the Prime Minister is continuing with her failed strategy of looking inwards, focusing on managing the internal turmoil of the Conservative Party and not focusing on the needs of the UK as a whole and on the interests of Wales and the other nations. The political crisis is all of the UK Government’s own making. It needn’t have been this way.”
Welsh Conservative leader Paul Davies said: “The First Minister has made it clear that he believes the UK Government’s approach shows a lack of any meaningful engagement with the devolved administrations, but I have to say the First Minister has not extended any invitations to discuss the impact of the withdrawal agreement on Wales with me as party leader in this place.
“And, since I have been in this job, the Welsh Government has not extended any invitations to discuss Welsh Government legislation with me as leader, so it’s a bit rich to talk about engagement if that engagement only ever seems to be one-way.
“Rather than playing party politics, it would have been far better for Assembly leaders to have met and discussed the proposals and the impact these proposals will have on Wales and the operation of the Assembly. If the genuine view of the Welsh Government is to respect the 2016 referendum result and deliver a Brexit agreement that works for Welsh businesses and communities, then perhaps the communication channels have to be open both in Wales and in Westminster.”
In his response to the First Minister’s statement, Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price said it was foolish for the Welsh Government to scrap the Continuity Act, which was intended to protect the devolution settlement by preventing a “power grab” by the UK Government of powers in policy areas like agriculture and environmental protection at the time of Brexit.
Mr Price said: “It is, of course, I think, the key salient fact of the draft withdrawal agreement – all 585 pages – that it doesn’t mention Wales even as a footnote. Even the 1888 version of the Encyclopedia Britannica did better than that. And it says something pretty central, doesn’t it, about the attitude of the Westminster Government to Wales and the devolved administrations?
“The First Minister himself has rightly complained about the fact that the draft agreement wasn’t even shared in advance with the Welsh Government. But in the light of that, surely the Welsh Government’s decision to place its trust in the Westminster Government in handing over our powers to them is at best naive and at worst reckless.
“Plaid Cymru has clearly said that we will not support the withdrawal agreement as it currently stands. It rips Wales out of the Single Market and the Customs Union. It actually ignores Wales completely and our particular interests, and it’s silent, as the First Minister said, in terms of the parameters and the shape of the future economic relationship.”
Later, with the backing of Labour and the Conservatives, the Assembly voted to get rid of the Continuity Act.
A Welsh Government spokesman said: “It is now time to ask this Assembly to do what we as a government committed to in the Inter-Governmental Agreement – to repeal the Act.
“In any event, the challenge we are facing now – how to persuade the UK Government to adopt an approach to the withdrawal deal which is capable of commanding a broad political consensus, rather than one which threatens to bring us to the very edge of the most dangerous cliff – is not one which the [Act] can help us address. That Act has done its job – it’s time to move on.”
Mr Jones has confirmed that AMs will have their own vote on the withdrawal agreement.
■ UK news: page 30