Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

Thank you, all, for being here today. This is the first meeting of the Legislation Committee. It's being broadcast live on Senedd.tv and the Record of Proceedings will be published as usual. Please can we make sure that mobile phones are switched to silent, just because, as we can see, the microphones are very sensitive? The Senedd operates through the medium of both English and Welsh, so we've got headphones here to assist with that, and interpretation is available during today's meeting. Before we get on to the committee remit and the rest of the papers today, does anyone have any declarations of interest that they'd like to state here today? Fab.

So, we're going to move on to item 2, and this one you would have received some information about. Before we discuss more about it, I want to say how I see the committee's work. Although it's not the most visible, it is amongst the most important, so the quality, clarity and accessibility of our laws and the proper scrutiny of what we do is incredibly important and affects everyone in Wales, so I want us all to approach the task in that way. And just to clarify, compared to the last Senedd, this committee is looking slightly differently from the constitutional committee, which has been split off from this one. So, for the record, our remit, as agreed by the Senedd on 16 June, is to carry out the functions of the responsible committee under Standing Orders 21 and 26C, as well as to consider matters relating to legislation and the competence of our laws, accessibility and the clarity of our laws. This means looking at statutory instruments and legislative consent motions, and we will be looking at that in more detail today, because obviously that's a core part of our work. It'll be good, later on, when we look through some of the training that has been prepared, which will be a good introduction before we start going into the more rigorous work next week. So, I invite Members to note the remit. Are there any questions or comments on this item? Fantastic.

So, now we are going to move on to item 3, which is the papers to note. This is just something to note about the legislative consent memorandum on the Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill. Legal advice will be provided next week, but this is just something to be aware of and have on your radar. Before I ask questions on that, I think it would be worth you maybe talking a little bit about that.

Yes, no problem at all, Chair. So, the memorandum was laid by the Welsh Government last Thursday. The Senedd's Business Committee has referred the memorandum to this committee and to the Economy, Energy and Connectivity Committee for scrutiny. The reporting deadline is the morning of 14 July. The timescales are obviously very tight for scrutiny, which is why it's a paper to note for you today, to put it on your radar. As the Chair has mentioned, a legal advice note will be brought to you next week for consideration, and subject to Members' discussion at that point, we can prepare a report for you to be considered the following week, if you wish.

That's brilliant. I'd remind Members that our role here is the legislative competence and constitutional dimension of this, so, whether this Bill makes provisions in the legislative consent memorandum in areas devolved to Wales, and whether legislative consent is being appropriately sought, rather than the policy merits or steel provisions themselves, which fall to another committee. So, our focus is on the propriety of the consent mechanism and the devolution questions it raises.

Before we move on, I think I'd ask two questions, which are: do Members have any comments? And, beyond the usual competence and consent analysis, is there anything that any Member wants to flag at this stage, with the note that we will see the legal advice next week? Fab. 

So, as we move forward to item 4, this is the part where we move from public to private, and I'm going to say this in quite a specific way. So, we're about to move into private. In accordance with Standing Order 17.42, I invite the committee to resolve to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting. Do Members agree? Brilliant. So, we are about to move into that.